F. Xavier Schmidt House
Castroville, Medina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built about 1870 by German artisan who constructed many houses in area. Cypress logs were floated down the Medina River, adzed lengthwise for attic timbers. Has 22-inch walls of limestone quarried nearby; hand-carved stone fireplace; outside kitchen, unique stairway landing. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1966.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Around 1870 a German artisan who built many of the area's houses raised this sturdy home in the Alsatian settlement of Castroville. Cypress logs floated down the Medina River and adzed for attic timbers, 22-inch limestone walls quarried nearby, a hand-carved stone fireplace, and a separate outside kitchen all reflect old-world craftsmanship. It was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1966.
Why it matters
The house preserves the European building traditions that immigrant craftsmen carried into the Texas Hill Country, giving towns like Castroville their distinctive architectural character.
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Related people
- · F. Xavier Schmidt
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Joseph Meyer Homestead
Castroville, TX
Joseph and Katherine Meyer, immigrants from Alsace, bought this four-acre homestead in 1855, part of Henri Castro's colony surveyed by John James in 1844. Remarkably, it survives as the only undivided tract in Castroville, its house built in the distinctive Alsatian style with thick rock walls plastered in lime from Meyer's own kiln near the Medina River. The land passed down through Meyer's daughter and a succession of later families.
Dubuis House
Castroville, TX
In 1847, in the newly settled Alsatian colony of Castroville, French priest Father Claude M. Dubuis and Father Chazelle raised the first two rooms of this house; Chazelle soon died of typhus. Dubuis, the colony's first priest, was twice captured by Comanches that same year yet escaped unharmed, and later rose to become Bishop of Texas. The dwelling was the colony's first example of French-Alsatian architecture and was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1966.
St. Louis Church
Castroville, TX
Built by Alsatian immigrants of Henri Castro's colony in the Republic of Texas, St. Louis Church was dedicated in 1846 by John Odin, the first Catholic bishop of Texas. One of its early pastors, Claude Dubuis, later became a bishop himself. In 1868 the Sisters of Divine Providence opened their first permanent school in Texas here, and Castroville became the order's first mother house in the state.
Landmark Inn
Castroville, TX
These weathered limestone buildings rose beside the Medina River ford on the old Eagle Pass–San Antonio road, where Alsatian colonist Michel Simon settled in 1844 as part of Henri Castro's immigrant colony. Later owners turned a home and store into a wash house, residence, and two-story hotel, while a riverside mill built in 1854 was modernized over the years and even generated hydroelectricity by the 1920s. Ruth Lawler kept up the old tradition of hospitality at her "Landmark Inn" before deeding it to the state in 1974.