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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Henri Castro's first colonists came to Texas in 1842, Texas was not yet part of the United States. It was an independent republic, only six years past its break from Mexico, short of money and short of people. Its leaders needed settlers to farm the land, pay taxes, and hold the frontier. Like Mexico before it, the Republic of Texas turned to empresarios, promoters who were granted land in return for bringing in colonists.
The land west of the Medina River was a hard place to start a new life. It lay beyond San Antonio, at the edge of settled Texas. The country was beautiful but exposed, and any community planted there had to fend for itself.
Across the Atlantic, the Rhine valley was under its own strain. In the early and mid-1800s, large numbers of people from the German-speaking lands and nearby regions emigrated because of crowded farmland, hard times, and the hope of owning land. Alsace was a borderland that had passed between French and German rule more than once, and its people often spoke a Germanic dialect while living under the French flag. They grew up between two cultures, and they brought both with them.
People & events
At the center of this story is Henri Castro, known in Texas as Henry, an empresario who took on the job of filling a stretch of frontier with European farmers. Recruiting colonists from across an ocean meant persuading families to leave everything they knew for land they had never seen. Beginning in 1842, his recruits made that trip. Most came from the Rhine country, and many called Alsace home.
In 1844 Castro laid out a townsite. The settlers named it after him: Castroville. That small act tells you something. These were people who had staked their futures on his promise, and they put his name on the map.
The settlers then built a town that looked like home. They cut limestone from the land around them, set it in adobe mortar, and whitewashed the walls, producing modest single-story houses unlike anything else on the Texas frontier. They farmed, as their families had in Alsace. They planted grapes along the Medina and made wine. Their customs, food, faith, and even their local politics took on a flavor the marker calls a combination of French and German heritage.
What stands out is how long it lasted. Castroville did not simply blend into the frontier. It became the center of Alsatian culture in Texas, and the community's descendants carried those traditions forward for generations.
Its place in the American story
Americans often picture westward expansion as Anglo-American settlers pushing west from the old states. Castroville complicates that picture. A large part of the frontier was settled by immigrants who came straight from Europe, and Texas in particular drew whole communities of German-speaking and other European settlers in the 1840s and after.
Castroville is one of the most distinctive of those communities, because its people did not fit neatly into one nationality. As Alsatians, they were French and German at once. That mixed identity reminds us that the immigrants who built America often arrived with layered, complicated backgrounds that a single label cannot capture.
The town also shows how immigrant cultures can last. Building styles, holiday customs, cooking, and religious life brought over in the 1840s still mark the area today. Like the marker says, this is part of the ethnic and cultural diversity that runs through Texas history, and through American history as well.
If you visit
Castroville lies just west of San Antonio, and it makes an easy, rewarding side trip from the city. Take your time once you arrive. This is a town best seen on foot, at an unhurried pace.
Watch for the houses the marker describes: low, single-story buildings of cut limestone with whitewashed walls and simple, sturdy lines. Their style is closer to the European countryside than to the typical Texas small town, and once you know what to look for, you will spot them around town.
Think about the Medina River too. The settlers farmed its valley and grew grapes along its banks, and the landscape still helps explain why they chose this place. If local food or holiday traditions catch your eye, remember that they may trace back to that first generation of colonists.
On a Hill Country road trip, Castroville pairs well with the other European-founded towns of Central Texas. Taken together, they show how immigrants shaped this part of the state.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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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.