A History of St. Paul’s United Church of Christ
Written in 1979
(to be updated in 2009 for 130th Anniversary)
On March 18, 1879 Salem Lutheran Congregation held a special meeting in the church in Franklin Township to decide about the building of a new church. With a big majority it was voted to build the church in the village of Delano instead of out in the country. The minority kept on holding their services in the Franklin Township Building and affiliated with the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod.
The majority who wished to build in Delano organized a new congregation on April 
20, 1879 at the home of John Eppler. The following charter members were present. Gustav Rettke, Jacob Horsch, Jacob Geiger, Louis Bock, Henry Bentz, John Eppler, Gustav Hackenbeil. William Ziebarth, Fred Japs. Conrad Marth, Henry Karsdorf and a Mr. Bornemann.
Of these charter members Gustav Hackenbeil, John Eppler, Gustav Rettke, Louis Bock and William Ziebarth were elected as the church board and building committee. The name adopted for the new congregation was German Evangelical Congregation and it became affiliated with German Evangelical Synod of North America - the American 
counterpart of the state churches of Germany.
On February 15, 1880, the dedication of the new church took place with Pastor Bauer of St. Paul officiating. The mother of the present organist of fifty-seven years of service, Mildred Sawatzke, was the first child baptized in the new sanctuary.
Until 1883 the congregation was served by a traveling pastor.
In 1883 Delano and Albion Township were merged into one charge for twenty years. Later the Forest City church was connected with Delano for a number of years.
In 1
934 the Evangelical Synod merged with the German Reformed Church (which in October 1975 celebrates its 250 years in America) into the Evangelical and Reformed Church. In 1947, the local church added the identifying name of St. Paul's.
In 1957 the Evangelical and Reformed Church united with Congregational Christian Churches into the United Church of Christ in Cleveland in a service attended by two later ministers, Kosower and Meiners.
After this until 1970, the Watertown Community Church was yoked with St. Paul's. From the spring of 1968 until April 15, 1974, St. Paul's United Church of Christ was yoked in the Delano United Shared Ministry with the Delano United Methodist Church.
In 1922, the home at 237 Buffalo Street was built as a parsonage. The functional Christian Education-Fellowship unit was dedicated on November 9. 1958. The congregation has its own well kept cemetery three miles west on Highway 12. 
One son of the congregation, the late Rev. Henry Rieder, was ordained into the Christian Ministry in 1914.
Appropriate to illustrate the current outreach of the church is the fact that three-fifths of the church board have Scandinavian backgrounds.
Lumber to build this church was donated by the charter members. It came from the "Big Woods," as the Delano area was called in those days.