County Line School, Church, and Cemetery
Yoakum, DeWitt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The County Line School was housed in five different buildings on six different sites, beginning in the 1860s. In 1898, the County Line School District encompassed several miles in De Witt and Lavaca counties. By 1927, eight grades were taught at the school. The district was consolidated into other De Witt County schools in 1949. At its 1874 admission into the Colorado Baptist Association, the County Line Baptist Church avowed 30 members. After sharing a building with the County Line School on eight acres of land conveyed by the Rev. Wade Hollan, the church and school moved their building to local resident George Benbow's land. Services were held here until 1919, when the church disbanded. In 1902, 3.5 of the eight acres once owned by the Rev. Mr. Hollan were sold to the County Line Cemetery Association. Though the oldest grave in the County Line Cemetery dates from 1867, local tradition says that the first person to be buried here was a Mr. Simpson. Since 1907 the cemetery has held a spring decoration day for area families. All that remains of the three institutions which formed the backbone of the County Line community is the cemetery, which continues to serve the surrounding areas. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Straddling the DeWitt–Lavaca county line, this rural community organized a school as early as the 1860s and a Baptist church admitted to the Colorado Baptist Association in 1874, the two often sharing a single building on land given by the Rev. Wade Hollan. A cemetery followed, with burials dating to 1867 and an annual decoration day held since 1907. The school consolidated away in 1949 and the church disbanded in 1919, leaving the cemetery as the community's last surviving institution.
Why it matters
School, church, and cemetery were the three pillars of countless rural American settlements; here the cemetery alone endures to mark a community that has otherwise vanished from the map.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Wade Hollan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Beasley School
Shiner vicinity, TX
Schooling in this corner of Lavaca County began as early as 1885 at the Broom Weed school, where Mary Singer taught every child in a single room. When that frame building proved inadequate, the Beasleys hosted classes in their home and donated an acre for a new schoolhouse that took their name. A two-room building followed in 1910, along with a teacherage, well, and windmill—though in these farming years the school term ran only five months, timed around planting and harvest, before finally closing in 1951.
Daule School
Cuero, TX
Founded in 1892 as a one-room wooden schoolhouse, Cuero Colored High School was the town's first school for Black children, drawing pupils from farm families who could attend only when field work allowed. Principal Eugene Daule guided Black education in DeWitt County for four decades, stretching meager, unequal resources as far as they would go; the school was renamed in his honor in 1937. Under later leaders it built a celebrated band and a broad curriculum before closing in 1965 when Cuero's schools finally integrated.
Wied School
Hallettsville, TX
Opened in 1895, Wied School served a rural community settled by German and Czech immigrants, including the Wied brothers who gave it its name. Classes ran from a modest three-room schoolhouse, teaching grades that later reached the tenth, with a curriculum that reflected local life—Czech-language instruction and agriculture—since cotton farming set the school calendar. Declining population led to consolidation in 1966.
Vysehrad School
Hallettsville, TX
Established in 1887, Vysehrad School took its name—meaning "high castle"—from the Czech heritage of the farming families who settled Lavaca County. Frank Jakubik taught the first classes before the original building burned in 1905 and was replaced by a two-room schoolhouse. Through decades of growth and consolidation with neighboring schools, Vysehrad endured as an independent district serving more than thirty square miles.