Alsatians of Texas
Castroville, Medina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1842, Empresario Henry Castro brought his first colonists to Texas to settle land west of the Medina River. Most of the immigrants were from the Rhine River area of Europe. Many claimed the province of Alsace, on the border of France and Germany, as their homeland. The Alsatian colonists brought with them their combined French and German heritage, which has left a distinctive mark on this area of the state. In 1844, Castro laid out a townsite, which the settlers chose to name Castroville. It became the center of Alsatian culture in Texas. The houses, European in style, are primarily single-story dwellings of cut limestone, mortared with adobe, and white-washed. Over the years, farming has been the major occupation of people in the area, as it was in Alsace. The Alsatian immigrants and their descendants have made a distinct impression on area politics, holiday customs, cusine, and religion. Winemaking, using grapes grown along the Medina River, is another early tradition that has continued over the years. The history of Alsatians in Texas is a reflection of ethnic and cultural diversity in the state's rich heritage. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1842 the empresario Henri Castro brought his first colonists to the land west of the Medina River, most of them from the Rhine country and many from Alsace on the French-German border. Two years later he laid out a townsite the settlers named Castroville, which became the heart of Alsatian culture in Texas. They built white-washed, single-story limestone houses in the European manner and carried over farming, winemaking, cuisine, and customs that still flavor the region.
Why it matters
Castroville shows how a single wave of European immigrants planted a distinct old-world culture on the Texas frontier that endures generations later.
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Related people
- · Henri Castro
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Louis Haller House
Castroville, TX
Louis Haller was a teenager when he emigrated from France to the Alsatian colony at Castroville in 1845, part of Henri Castro's ambitious settlement scheme on the Texas frontier. He scouted for the Texas Rangers and hauled freight during the Civil War before marrying Leonie Naegelin and raising a family in this limestone house, built around 1877. Its distinctive corner fireplace, whose chimney angles up through the wall to emerge at the roof peak, marks it as a fine example of the region's Alsatian-influenced pioneer craftsmanship.
Site of the Homestead of Henri Castro
Castroville, TX
Henri Castro, a French-born naturalized American, became one of the Republic of Texas's most important empresarios when he won authority in 1842 to plant a colony of Europeans in the rugged country west of San Antonio. Recruiting hundreds of families — many Alsatian — he founded Castroville on the Medina River in 1844, spending his personal fortune to shelter and provision colonists he treated "as though they were his children." He reserved this central block as his own homestead, built a stone house, and even planted an experimental garden to learn which crops the land would bear.
Cordier-Tschirhart-Seal House
Castroville, TX
In 1844 the empresario Henri Castro planted a colony of Alsatian immigrants on the Medina River west of San Antonio, and Castroville still wears that Old-World heritage in its steep-roofed stone cottages. Jean Baptiste Cordier, one of those first settlers, raised this dwelling from local limestone with three rooms below and an attic above — a modest but sturdy piece of the frontier. Over the decades it passed through the hands of a blacksmith, a shoemaker, and the Tschirhart family, its shared occupancy a snapshot of how tight-knit these pioneer households were. Restored by later descendants, it earned recognition as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1976.
Henri Castro
Castroville, TX
Henri Castro, born in Bayonne, France, of Portuguese noble descent, became a naturalized U.S. citizen before helping negotiate a crucial loan for the cash-strapped Republic of Texas — service that earned him a diplomatic post from Sam Houston. As empresario between 1843 and 1847 he brought at least 2,134 European colonists to this corner of Medina County, spending his own fortune to sustain them. His dedication drew comparisons to Stephen F. Austin, and Castro County later took his name.