THE STRACKBEINS

Monument to the Friedrich Strackbein Family, the first generation of Strackbeins to settle in Texas

The Strackbein family has been blessed with a godly Christian heritage which can be traced back from the working-class town of Frohnhausen, Germany in the late 1600s to the hardscrabble of the Texas Hill Country in the 1850s.

The Vereins Kirche, the first public building and church meeting house in Fredericksburg, Texas.

Since settling in the Fredericksburg, Texas area in 1851, the family has served Christ’s church in various posts across the Lone Star State. The first two generations of Strackbeins in Texas were active members of Zion Lutheran Church in Fredericksburg, a German-Texas community that has long maintained a keen sense of its history.

A young Wes Strackbein

When a contingent of the family moved northward to Central Texas, Wes Strackbein (1896-1976) in time took up the mantle of spiritual leadership for the family and helped to found the old Rock Church in Cross Plains in the 1930s and was among its most esteemed leaders for decades. Prior to the building of a formal meeting house, regular church services were held in the Strackbein home, and the vigorous Bible study and Gospel singing that emanated from Wes and his wife Evie’s abode near Turkey Creek are thoughtfully remembered to this day by those who heard and witnessed it.

Howard and Wes Strackbein

In the early 1950s, Wes’s son, Howard (1922-2009), moved with his wife Ruby (1930- ) to the Texas coast where they’ve left an indelible mark over half a century as stalwart laborers at Word of God Church in Aransas Pass. Though he passed away in 2009, Howard Strackbein remains a beloved figure in the family for his sincere faith in God and his legacy as a captivating storyteller.

Howard and Ruby Strackbein

Building on this heritage, Howard’s youngest son Roger, and his wife Jenny, have been among the vanguard of the modern homeschool movement, a movement birthed out of a desire by parents to obediently train their children in the ways of the Lord (Deut. 6:4-7). In the middle 1980s, they served as leaders of a fledgling homeschool support group in the Coastal Bend at a time when home education was not deemed legal by Texas state authorities. As they stepped out in faith to personally disciple their children, another family in their group was aggressively prosecuted for homeschooling before the landmark victory in the Leeper case ushered in a new era of freedom in Texas. Following this, Roger and Jenny founded SHELTER (Supporting Home Educators in the Lower Texas Region), an outreach to local homeschool families which hosted yearly conferences in Corpus Christi until 2002.

Roger, Howard, and Wesley Strackbein

At the close of 1995, their son Wesley was accepted as an intern with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a legal advocacy organization founded in 1983 to defend parents’ fundamental right to homeschool their children. Wesley spent two years in Northern Virginia with HSLDA, first as an intern and later as project manager for the Communications Department. After returning to Texas at the end of 1997, Wesley served as spokesman for SHELTER and editor of SHELTER’s Harbor Newsletter. From 1998 to 2013, he also worked with Vision Forum, handling media relations, marketing, and a variety of editing responsibilities for the ministry. Wesley has edited numerous books, including Life is But a Vapor: The Life & Letters of Michael G. Billings and John Calvin: Man of the Millennium, and his articles have been published in Patriarch Magazine, the Patriot Update, the Schwarz Report and the Johnson City Record Courier, among other media outlets.

Roger and Wesley Strackbein

Wesley has also served as producer on multiple film projects, including The League of Grateful Sons, The Mysterious Islands, as well as the new documentary recently completed by the Strackbeins, Anchored: A Grandfather’s Legacy, which brings to life another rich family heritage that stands behind Unbroken Faith Ministries—God’s faithful witness through the Holdens over five generations.

Read about the Holdens here.