Haby Settlement
Rio Medina, Medina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Located on the high bluff on the west side of the Medina River, seven miles north of Castroville, the Haby Settlement was established in the 1840s. Francois Joseph II and Marie Anne Haby, Jean Jacque and Marthe Haby, and Catherine (Haby) and Michel Gsell and their families immigrated to Texas from Oberentzen, Alsace, France. Other Haby family members followed as well as the family of George Joseph Beck, also from Alsace, France. The two families purchased land together to farm and develop. The eldest sons of Francois Joseph II, Joe and Nicolas, were among the twenty-seven colonist men who founded Castroville on September 3, 1844, and served Castro as paid hunters to bring in venison. Known as the “fighting Habys,” the family protected the settlement against the dangers of the frontier with several Haby men joining the Texas Rangers. The Habys quickly realized the importance of water and took advantage of an ingenious system of gravity-fed ditch irrigation allowed them by the perennial artesian springs, named Die Quelle by the family, which are flowing to this day. Most of the Haby homesteads also included a rock-lined well into the shallow river gravel or a cistern to capture rain water off the roof of the home. The Catholic School in Haby Settlement was operated by the Sisters of Divine Providence from Castroville from 1874 to 1895 and was housed in the first home of Andrew Haby. Today, the Haby Settlement reveals around ten quaint stone Alsatian homes with many farms and ranches in the area still owned and operated by Haby descendants.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the 1840s, families from Oberentzen in Alsace, France—the Habys, the Gsells, and the Becks—settled a high bluff above the Medina River, part of the wave of Alsatian colonists Henri Castro drew to this stretch of the Texas frontier. Two Haby sons helped found nearby Castroville in 1844, and the clan earned the nickname the 'fighting Habys' as several joined the Texas Rangers to defend the settlement. They harnessed the perennial artesian springs they called Die Quelle with gravity-fed irrigation ditches, and their stone Alsatian homes and family farms endure today.
Why it matters
Haby Settlement preserves a distinctly Alsatian corner of Texas, showing how European immigrant communities carried Old World farming and building traditions onto the American frontier and put down roots that lasted generations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1840s the stretch of country along the Medina River, west of San Antonio, was the raw edge of settlement. This was the era of the Republic of Texas and its immediate aftermath — a young, thinly populated nation eager to fill its frontier with farmers who could turn wild land into productive homesteads.
To draw them, Texas used the empresario system, granting agents the right to recruit and settle colonists. The Frenchman Henri Castro was one of the most successful of these agents, and he looked to his home region of Alsace for hardy immigrant families. That is how a corner of North America came to be settled by people from Oberentzen and its neighbors.
Alsace in that era was a French province, but its people spoke a Germanic dialect and carried a blend of French and German traditions — which is why the family here could name their springs "Die Quelle," German for "the spring." They arrived on a genuine frontier: fertile but dangerous, beautiful but unforgiving, a place where survival depended on water, work, and one another.
People & events
The settlement rose on a high bluff on the west side of the Medina River, about seven miles north of Castroville. Its founding families came together from Oberentzen, Alsace: Francois Joseph Haby II and Marie Anne Haby, Jean Jacque and Marthe Haby, and Catherine Haby with her husband Michel Gsell, all with their families. More Habys followed, along with the family of George Joseph Beck, also from Alsace, and the two families bought land together to farm and develop.
The Habys were quickly woven into the founding of the whole colony. Two of Francois Joseph II's eldest sons, Joe and Nicolas, were among the twenty-seven colonist men who founded Castroville on September 3, 1844, and they served Castro as paid hunters, bringing in venison to feed the settlers. On a frontier ringed with danger, the family earned a fierce reputation — the "fighting Habys" — with several of the men joining the Texas Rangers to protect the settlement.
They were as ingenious as they were tough. Understanding at once that everything depended on water, they harnessed the perennial artesian springs they called Die Quelle with a system of gravity-fed irrigation ditches, and those springs flow to this day. Most homesteads also had a rock-lined well dug into the shallow river gravel, or a cistern to catch rain off the roof. And they tended the life of the mind and spirit too: from 1874 to 1895 the Sisters of Divine Providence from Castroville ran a Catholic school in the settlement, housed in the first home of Andrew Haby.
Its place in the American story
Haby Settlement is a small, vivid chapter in one of the great American stories: the arrival of European immigrants who carried their Old World skills onto the frontier and made them the foundation of new communities. The Alsatians who settled this bluff brought stone-building traditions, farming know-how, and a language all their own, and they planted them in Texas soil.
What makes the place remarkable is how much of that inheritance survived. Immigrant enclaves often dissolved within a generation or two, their distinctiveness absorbed into the broader American mix. Here, stone Alsatian homes still stand, and many of the surrounding farms and ranches remain owned and worked by Haby descendants — a rare, living continuity across nearly two centuries.
The settlement also captures the double character of the frontier experience. These were peaceful farmers who came to build and cultivate, yet who took up arms as Rangers to defend what they had made. That mix of cultivation and self-reliance, of Old World craft and New World grit, is very much part of the larger American frontier story.
If you visit
This is a landscape to read slowly. Look for the cluster of quaint stone Alsatian homes — roughly ten of them — set among working farms and ranches. Their thick masonry walls are a direct transplant of European building traditions, and seeing them here, deep in Texas, is the whole point of the visit.
Think about water as you look around, because the settlers certainly did. The artesian springs they named Die Quelle still flow, and the logic of their gravity-fed ditches, rock-lined wells, and rooftop cisterns explains why they chose this bluff above the Medina River in the first place. Understanding that turns an ordinary view into a lesson in frontier survival.
Much of this land remains privately owned and worked by descendants, so if the homes remain private, admire them from the public road rather than expecting to wander among them. Paired with a stop in nearby Castroville, the settlement makes a rich half-day of Alsatian Texas — a reminder that a distinct Old World culture put down roots here and never entirely let go.
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
- · Francois Joseph Haby II
- · Marie Anne Haby
- · Michel Gsell
- · George Joseph Beck
- · Henri Castro
Related events
- · Founding of Castroville (1844)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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