On February 26, 1867, Henry Precht and his wife Louise sold St. Paul's Lutheran Church a one-half acre plot on the northwest corner of what are now Roads 17 and QI for $15.00, and the church was built there that same year. The Prechts, who owned a small farm on the corner, later sold another acre to the congregation. The builder was Fred Oberhaus, a 25-year-old immigrant from Germany who had come with his family a few years earlier. His father, Kaspar Oberhaus, and the Oberhaus family were members of the new church. Trained as a carpenter in Germany, Fred Oberhaus designed and constructed the building and also made its furnishings, including the altar, pulpit, and pews, in his shop. The records do not identify the rest of the building crew, though they were likely mostly church members, many known for woodworking skills and accustomed to logging when the countryside was still heavily wooded. When the old church building was torn down in 1981, its framing revealed the thoroughness of the original design and construction. The building measured 36 feet wide and 60 feet long, with a small sacristy at the back. It had no formal foundation; instead, its sills rested on large carefully leveled stones. Its basic support system consisted of seven identical frame sections of hand-hewn material spaced at ten feet, and its sills, plates, bell tower supports and frame, and bracing were all hand-hewn. The structure is estimated to have contained more than 2,000 feet of timbers, all skillfully handcrafted, and its rafters were small natural logs, five to eight inches in diameter, hand-hewn on one side. Unlike many churches in Germany that were often unheated, this church had two wood stoves. There was no chancel area; a simple altar stood at the front with a very high pulpit directly behind it. The pews were arranged in three sections, with two short sections on the sides and a longer center section. There was no center aisle, but instead two side aisles entered from the narthex. A divider down the middle separated the men's side from the ladies' side, and hats and coats were hung on it. At the second annual congregational meeting on December 30, 1868, it was reported that the new church had been completed at a cost of $2,343.04, with $2,237.00 received in the building fund and a remaining debt of $106.04.