Holy Cross Lutheran Church of Wartburg was founded on July 1, 1841. The parish was intended to cover most of Monroe County in its inception. Eventually, several churches were planted throughout Monroe County with Holy Cross as their mother church.
The Illinois territory was organized in 1809. Monroe County was created from St. Clair and Randolph counties with Waterloo as its county seat on January 6, 1816.
Wartburg received its name from Wartburg Castle in Thuringia, Germany, where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into German. A post office was serviced Wartburg from May 28, 1881 to December 31, 1907. The church's mailing address is 5765 Maeystown Road, Waterloo, IL 62298.
Illinois was admitted into the United States as the 21st state in 1818. Monroe County was first settled in 1782. In 1800, 800 people resided in Illinois country; 650 dwelled in what is now Monroe County.
German immigrants contributed greatly to the explosion in population for Monroe County between 1800 and 1860 (a jump from 650 to 12,832). Among these immigrants, 700 immigrants from Saxony settled in St. Louis and Perry County, Missouri, in 1838.
The founding pastor of Wartburg, Rev. Georg Albert Schieferdecker, was among this group. He was twenty-five years of age when he arrived in the New World on the Copernicus. Rev. Schieferdecker is responsible for establishing many of the LCMS churches in Southern Illinois.
During the first three years of Holy Cross' existence, services were held in homes. The main house where services were held, Rev. Schieferdecker's house, was situated near where the intersection of Maeystown and LRC Roads stands today. The house, owned later by Holy Cross member Johann Christian Just, was later moved to its current location, across the street from the present church building.