Bednar Family Homestead
Burton, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Czech immigrants Joseph and Anna Bednar and their six children (Vincenc, Anna, Frantiska, Peter, Cyril and Alzbeta) traveled to Texas in 1876. After Joseph died in 1876, Anna and her children worked as tenant farmers until becoming landowners in 1883 when Anna purchased 195 acres of the Henry Cheves league from Leopold Supak. Much of the land has since remained in the Bednar family with continuous agricultural farming. Over the years, the Bednars have been instrumental in creating and sustaining a thriving Czech community that established Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Sacred Heart Cemetery, County Line School, and a network of roads and mail delivery for the area. (2019)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Czech immigrants Joseph and Anna Bednar arrived in Texas in 1876 with their six children, part of the wave of Central European families who settled the farmlands of Austin County. After Joseph's death that same year, Anna and the children worked as tenant farmers until she bought 195 acres in 1883, and much of that land has stayed in the family under continuous cultivation. Over generations the Bednars helped build a thriving Czech community, founding Sacred Heart Catholic Church and cemetery, the County Line School, and the roads and mail routes that knit the area together.
Why it matters
The homestead reflects how immigrant farm families put down roots that grew into enduring ethnic communities across rural Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Joseph Bednar
- · Anna Bednar
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
McGregor Cemetery (Scottish Presbyterian Cemetery)
Nelsonville, TX
In the early 1850s a close-knit band of Scottish immigrants—McGregors, Carmichaels, McLeans and more, many from the isle of Lismore in Argyllshire—settled western Austin County by way of North Carolina. They founded Galatia Presbyterian Church and, in 1868, opened this graveyard with the burial of Mary McGregor. When the last interment came in 1900, the cemetery remained as the community's final trace.
Hackfield Farm
Industry, TX
Friedrich Hackfeld left Germany and, by the 1850s, had put down roots on this Austin County land, anglicizing his name to Hackfield when he became a citizen in 1860. What began as a single-room log cabin grew, room by room and generation by generation, into a full German-Texan farmstead—and Friedrich's skill at digging wells brought water to neighbors as well as his own family. The farm's evolving buildings and plantings capture a whole immigrant world settling into the Texas soil.
Henniger Family Cemetery
Industry, TX
Nicholaus Henniger (1794–1853) emigrated from Germany in 1847 with his wife Fredericke and their children, building a log house and prospering as a cattle raiser on the Texas frontier. Alongside his neighbors he helped raise a gristmill, establish a school, and keep German traditions alive. When an infant son died, he set aside this family cemetery, where he and nine relatives are buried; the farm remains in the hands of his Vogelpohl descendants.
Nassau Plantation
Round Top, TX
Purchased in 1843 by the German Emigration Society, or Adelsverein, the 4,428-acre Nassau Plantation was named for Duke Adolf of Nassau and became one of the show places of early Texas. Though Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels rejected it as a colonist way station—fearing German settlers might lose their culture near non-German neighbors—it hosted his lavish horse races and feasts, and quieter visits by his successor, John O. Meusebach. Never colonized, the two-story oak plantation grew cotton before the bankrupt society sold it in 1848, and it was later divided among German farming families.