Serbin
Serbin, Lee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Trilingual (Wendish-German-English) community founded 1854 by 588 Wends under leadership of the Rev. John Kilian. The Rev. Kilian (Evangelical Lutheran) named place Serbin because the Wends were descendants of Serbs. A thriving town 1865-1890; had grocery, dry goods, jewelry, drug and music stores; shops of wagon maker, blacksmith, saddler; post office, 3 doctors, 2 dentists. On Smithville-Houston oxcart road-- sending out cotton, other produce, and hauling in staples. Decline began about 1890 as railroads bypassed settlement by several miles. (1969)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1854, some 588 Wends—Slavic Lutherans from what is now eastern Germany—sailed to Texas under the Rev. John Kilian and founded this trilingual settlement, naming it Serbin for their Serbian ancestry. Perched on the Smithville-Houston oxcart road, the town boomed from 1865 to 1890 with stores, tradesmen's shops, doctors, dentists, and a busy trade sending out cotton and hauling in staples. When the railroads passed several miles away around 1890, the little Wendish capital began its slow decline.
Why it matters
Serbin is the cradle of Wendish culture in America, a rare immigrant community that carried an endangered Old World language and faith across an ocean and planted them on the Texas prairie.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Rev. John Kilian
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fisches Park
Industry, TX
This roadside park sits on land once granted to Friedrich Ernst, remembered as the father of German immigration to Texas, in Industry — the state's oldest permanent German settlement. When Highway 159 was routed past the Fisches family farm, Annie Fisches, an automobile enthusiast, deeded ground to the state in 1939 to create a rest stop under Texas's new roadside-park program. Closed in 2008 for lack of funds, it was reopened by a community unwilling to lose it.
Industry Post Office
Industry, TX
By 1831 the family of Johann Friedrich Ernst had settled along the Gotier Trace and founded the community of Industry, and Ernst's letters home to Oldenburg—one printed in German newspapers—drew a wave of countrymen to Texas, earning him the title "Father of German immigration to Texas." Mail for area residents came addressed in his care, and his partner and son-in-law Johann Gottlieb Sieper became the town's first official postmaster in 1840. The Ernst store, long held to be the site of the first post office, survives today in a memorial park.
New Ulm Cemetery
New Ulm, TX
Founded in 1841 as Duff's Settlement for landholder James C. Duff, this Austin County community was renamed New Ulm in 1853 to honor the German city many settlers had left behind. When the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad laid tracks a mile south in 1892, the town center shifted, but the old cemetery—its earliest recorded burial dating to 1853—remained. Among those interred is Josef Lidumil Lesikar, a leader in bringing early Czech settlers to America.
In This Grave Rest James Goucher and Five Members of His Family
Serbin, TX
This grave holds James Goucher and five of his family, killed in a raid by Indians on November 26, 1836, in the dangerous first year of the Republic of Texas. A true pioneer, Goucher had cut the first road from San Felipe to the settlements on the Colorado River—a route known for years afterward as 'Goucher's Trace.' The State of Texas set this monument in 1936, the state's centennial.