Serbin
Serbin, Lee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Here in 1854 under the leadership of Rev. John Kilian Ev. Lutheran Pastor about 600 Wends seeking religious liberty established the first Wendish settlement in Texas. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1854, some 600 Wends—a Slavic people from the borderlands of Germany—crossed the Atlantic under the leadership of the Reverend John Kilian and founded Serbin, the first Wendish settlement in Texas. Like so many who came before, they were seeking the freedom to worship as they chose. Their colony became the heart of Wendish culture in America, anchored by the Lutheran faith that had drawn them across the ocean.
Why it matters
Serbin is the cradle of Texas Wendish heritage, a rare surviving thread of a small ethnic group who left Europe to keep their faith and identity alive on the American frontier.
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Related people
- · Rev. John Kilian
Related events
- · Founding of the Wendish settlement in Texas (1854)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Serbin
Serbin, TX
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.
Holy Cross Cemetery
Giddings, TX
Holy Cross Church was founded in the Rabb's Creek area in 1873, and its cemetery opened that same year with the burial of Pastor Johann Zapf. The parish later sold the church site but kept the graveyard, building a new church near Warda in Fayette County in 1882. The 53 graves that remain mark the resting place of an early German settlement's founding congregation.
Grassyville Cemetery
Paige, TX
German immigrants settled the Grassyville community in the 1850s and organized a Methodist church, and many of this cemetery's gravestones are lettered in German script. The two earliest burials date to 1871, and among those resting here are seven Confederate veterans who served in a Texas artillery battery during the Civil War. Though the village itself has vanished, the burial ground remains in use.
Lee County
Giddings, TX
Straddling the Old San Antonio Road on land first surveyed for Moses and Stephen F. Austin's colony, Lee County became in 1854 the heart of Wendish settlement in America, when Pastor Johann Kilian led his Sorbian-speaking congregation from Central Europe to a new home here. Their school was the only one in the United States to teach in Wendish, a Slavic language that survives in the modern world chiefly here and in Australia. The county was organized in 1874 and named for Confederate general Robert E. Lee, with Giddings as its seat.