Rossville
Rossville, Atascosa County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First Scottish community in southwest Texas. Founded 1873 by brothers William F.M. Ross and John C. Ross. Born in north Scotland, they came to Texas in 1867. Here they were awarded a contract to carry U.S. Mail. On the route, they noticed fertile soil and plentiful game of this region. They soon settled here and persuaded other Scottish families to join them. Rossville came to have a one-room school, cotton gin, post office (established 1877), two grocery stores, a bakery and a saloon; but it declined after being by passed by the railroad. (1969)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1873 the Scottish-born brothers William and John Ross, who had come to Texas in 1867 and won a contract to carry the U.S. Mail, noticed the fertile soil and abundant game of Atascosa County along their route. They settled and drew other Scottish families after them, founding what became the first Scottish community in southwest Texas. Rossville grew to boast a school, cotton gin, post office, stores, a bakery, and a saloon before the railroad passed it by and it faded.
Why it matters
Rossville is a small monument to the ethnic patchwork of Texas settlement and to the familiar frontier fate of towns left behind when the railroad chose another route.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William F. M. Ross
- · John C. Ross
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Anchorage Cemetery
Poteet, TX
The Stiggins family emigrated from Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1882, among them Mary Jane, who had studied medicine, and her fiancé Thomas Whittet, a former sea captain who named the place Anchorage as the spot where he would "drop anchor." In 1896 the couple deeded land for a church and cemetery, and Mary Jane practiced medicine across the area, delivering many of its babies. A frame church served until 1958, and the cemetery association still tends the burial ground and its chapel.
Site of San Augustine Church
Pleasanton, TX
The Esparza brothers—Manuel, Enrique, and Francisco—had survived the fall of the Alamo as children, sheltered within its walls while their father Gregorio died in the 1836 battle. In the following decade they brought their families to Atascosa County to farm and ranch, and soon built a small family chapel; in 1869 Enrique donated five acres to the Catholic Church, and the Esparzas raised a larger native-stone church they named San Augustine. Damaged by a 1940 storm and closed in 1942, the mission church was eventually razed, leaving only memory of the settlement it once anchored.
Ihnken Family Cemetery
Castroville, TX
Early Castroville colonists—Dutch and German immigrants who arrived on Henri Castro's ships in the 1840s—rest in this small family plot, where Marie Becker Ihnken was buried in 1847. Her son Gerhard, a leading citizen, farmed vast lands and ran a sawmill, store, and orchard, and is credited with bringing the area's first reaper and binder. One of Medina County's oldest cemeteries, it holds eight marked Ihnken graves and, by tradition, a freedman who worked for the family; it has stayed inactive since 1950 to protect unmarked graves.
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.