Round Top Community
Round Top, Fayette County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Home of the Townsends, Hills and McH. Winburn, veterans of San Jacinto; Joel W. Robison, one of Santa Anna's captors; John Rice Jones, first postmaster general, Republic of Texas; and John C.C. Hill, boy captive of Mier Expedition and adopted by General Santa Anna. A center of German culture and crafts of 19th century. Examples: Nassau Plantation; Art of Mathias and Rudolph Melchior; Rev. Adam Neuthard's School; Stone Masonry of Carl S. Bauer; Lutheran Church with Wantke's handmade organ; and S. K. Lewis Stage Coach Inn.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This Fayette County community was home to a remarkable cluster of Texas founders — veterans of the Battle of San Jacinto, one of the men who captured Santa Anna, the Republic of Texas's first postmaster general, and a boy taken captive on the Mier Expedition. By mid-century it had also become a vibrant center of German immigrant culture, from plantation life and craftsmanship to schools, churches, and a handmade pipe organ. Its stagecoach inn and stone masonry still echo that heritage.
Why it matters
Round Top ties together the birth of the Texas Republic and the wave of German immigration that shaped the Hill Country, showing how revolutionary founders and Old World settlers built a new society side by side.
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Related people
- · Joel W. Robison
- · John Rice Jones
- · John C. C. Hill
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
- · Mier Expedition
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Waldeck Cemetery
Fayetteville, TX
For more than a century this Fayette County cemetery has served Waldeck, a community of German immigrants first known as Long Prairie. In 1866 the settlers gathered to build a combined school and church and to set aside a burial ground, with Louis Tittel deeding six acres for the purpose. Among its 530-plus graves lie generations of German-Texan families and veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Vietnam.
St. John's United Church of Christ Cemetery
Burton, TX
The Evangelical St. John's congregation, formed by German settlers near Burton in 1894, established this hilltop cemetery in 1899, its early records naming German families like Wolff, Arndt, and Rogas. A children's section holds some 53 young graves from the cemetery's first decade, and a central plot honors the church's ministers. Seven matching monuments in a row mark young men who died in France during World War I, joined by veterans of the world wars, Korea, and Vietnam.
Kaiser Cemetery
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When John Frederick Kaiser and his family stepped off the boat from Bremen in 1848, they joined a wave of German immigrants already settling the blackland country around Frelsburg and the Brushy community in newly organized Colorado County. In 1859 Ludwig and Anna Kaiser deeded a small parcel for a school and burial ground, and Ludwig's death the following winter opened the cemetery that still bears the family name. Its German-inscribed headstones, Confederate and later veterans' graves, and clustered family plots trace the arc of a rural German-Texan community from the Republic era through the twentieth century.
Moses Baine
Brenham, TX
Born in Ireland, Moses Baine emigrated to the United States in 1819 and, with his wife Cecilia, joined Stephen F. Austin's colony at San Felipe in 1830. He fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto and afterward built a permanent home near Brenham in 1837, later serving in the Somervell Expedition as a soldier of the Republic of Texas. Returning home in 1843, he prospered as a stock raiser and farmer.