New Bielau

New Bielau is near the junction of Farm roads 155 and 2144 three miles south of Weimar in the northwestern corner of Colorado County. The site was settled by German families who moved from the Industry, Texas, area just before the Civil War. More Germans arrived after the war, and by the 1870s the community was called New Bielau, after Bielau, Germany. A school was organized there in the 1870s, and a German Methodist church was built in New Bielau in 1879. In 1883 the school served fifty-four pupils. Trinity Evangelical Church was organized in the community in 1886, and its building was completed by 1888. In 1904 the school had sixty-one pupils and one teacher. The community had two churches, a school, a cemetery, and scattered dwellings in 1940. At different times New Bielau had a store, a gin, and a blacksmith shop. The New Bielau school was consolidated with those of Weimar by the 1950s. A contiguous community named Content that evidently contained Anglo-Texan settlers shared churches and a school board with New Bielau. In the 1980s both communities were served by the New Bielau community center and the Trinity Church.