First County Courthouse
Castroville, Medina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Erected 1854; first permanent courthouse in Castroville, the first seat (1848-1892) of Medina County. When built, structure was on old road to San Antonio. This building took place of temporary office space which County Court had used 6 years. It was built by Joseph Burger and has 18-inch-thick walls of native limestone. Additions to original building include one-story wings on both sides and outside staircase to the second floor. After Hondo became County Seat this building was used as a school; now houses City Hall. 1968
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1854 of native limestone with walls eighteen inches thick, this was the first permanent courthouse of Medina County, whose seat was then at Castroville along the old road to San Antonio. Mason Joseph Burger raised it to replace the temporary quarters the county court had used for six years. After the seat moved to Hondo, the sturdy building served as a school and now houses City Hall.
Why it matters
It stands as a tangible record of civic order taking shape on the Texas frontier in the years of early statehood.
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Related people
- · Joseph Burger
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
Site of the Homestead of Henri Castro
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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.
Louis Haller House
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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.
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.