SPJST Moravia Cemetery
Hallettsville, Lavaca County, Texas
Marker Inscription
IMMIGRANTS FROM NORTHEASTERN MORAVIA (CURRENT CZECH REPUBLIC) SETTLED IN THE AREA PRESENTLY KNOWN AS MORAVIA, TEXAS. MORAVIA WAS FOUNDED BY JAKUB HOLLUB AND HIS SON-IN-LAW IGNAC (J. E.) JALUFKA WHEN THEY ESTABLISHED A STORE IN 1881. THEY NAMED THE COMMUNITY AFTER THEIR HOMELAND OF MORAVIA. A TOWN QUICKLY GREW WITH A BLACKSMITH SHOP, A GIN, A SCHOOL, STORE AND MORE. SPJST LODGE NO. 23 NOVA MORAVA WAS ESTABLISHED AS A CHARTER MEMBER OF SPJST (SLOVANSKA PODPORUJICI JEDNOTA STATU TEXAS), A NON-DENOMINATIONAL CZECH FRATERNAL ORGANIZATION, IN 1897. THE FIRST MEMBERS OF THE LODGE CONSISTED OF IMMIGRANT FARMERS, STOREKEEPERS AND TEACHERS WHO MET AT THE MORAVIA HIGH SCHOOL. THE GROUP BUILT A LODGE HALL IN JANUARY 1914 AND, IN 1922, DECIDED TO ESTABLISH A CEMETERY. ON MAY 8, 1922, SPJST LODGE NO. 23 PURCHASED ONE AND A HALF ACRES OF LAND FROM FRANK BLAHUTA. THE FIRST BURIAL IN THIS HISTORIC CEMETERY IS THAT OF WILLIE TROJCAK, WHO WAS ONE-AND-A-HALF WHEN HE PASSED AWAY ON SEPTEMBER 10, 1923. SEVERAL VETERANS FROM WORLD WAR I, WORLD WAR II AND THE PERSIAN GULF WAR ARE BURIED HERE. THE CEMETERY IS BORDERED BY PASTURES AND A FENCE, AND INCLUDES GRANITE AND MARBLE HEADSTONES ORIENTED IN A FEET-TO-EAST POSITION WITH NATURAL VEGETATION. ORIGINALLY, THE CEMETERY WAS ESTABLISHED AS A BURIAL PLACE FOR MEMBERS OF LODGE NO. 23 AND THEIR FAMILIES BUT NOW ANYONE MAY PURCHASE A LOT. BURIALS INCLUDE CATHOLIC AND NON-CATHOLIC MEMBERS. SPJST MEMBERS PROVIDED FUNERAL AND BURIAL SERVICES TO ITS MEMBERS IN THE CZECH LANGUAGE. THE BURIALS HERE PROVIDE A HISTORY OF SPJST LODGE NO. 23 CZECH-MORAVIANS AND THEIR FAMILIES.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Immigrants from northeastern Moravia settled this stretch of Lavaca County in the 1880s, naming their new community after the homeland they left in what is now the Czech Republic. In 1897 they chartered SPJST Lodge No. 23 Nova Morava, part of a Czech fraternal benefit society, and in 1922 the lodge bought an acre and a half to establish this cemetery. Conducted in the Czech language and open first to lodge members and later to all, its headstones face east and record generations of Czech-Moravian farmers, storekeepers, and teachers.
Why it matters
It preserves the fraternal, mutual-aid traditions that Central European immigrants used to build community, faith, and identity on the Texas prairie.
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Related people
- · Jakub Hollub
- · Ignac Jalufka
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Moravia General Store
Hallettsville, TX
Czech immigrants Ignac Jalufka and Jakob Hollub brought their families to northern Lavaca County in 1874, and the community they founded in 1881 was named Moravia after their homeland. In 1889 Jalufka raised a two-story frame building here—groceries and a saloon below, a dance hall above—that became the community's social hub for masquerades and celebrations, while he also ran the post office. Passing through several owners and surviving prohibition, the trimmed-down general store stayed in business over a century, closing in 1990 before reopening in 1996.
SPJST Velehrad Cemetery
Hallettsville, TX
The Velehrad community, settled largely by immigrants from Moravia, created this cemetery to serve its people; Filip Bucek envisioned a national Czech burial ground but died in 1877 before it was established, and his wife Johana became its earliest known burial in 1878. It holds founders and members of the SPJST, a Czech fraternal benefit society formed in 1897, including its first vice president, Ferdinand Breska. As residents moved away after World War II the community declined, but the SPJST still tends the graves.
Radhost School
Hallettsville, TX
The farming community of Radhost was settled largely by Czech immigrants, who funded a school that opened in 1873. It began as a one-teacher school taught in the Bohemian language and grew into a two-classroom English school with a new building in 1930. Serving grades one through ten, its calendar bent to the rhythms of farm life, beginning each year only after the crops were harvested, until it was annexed by the Hallettsville district in 1955.
Novohrad School
Moulton, TX
Novohrad, a Bohemian farming settlement named for a town back in Bohemia, opened its own school in 1882 to serve the children of Czech families. A one-room building gave way in 1900 to a two-room structure with a stage that hosted Czech-language plays performed by adults; enrollment peaked at 81, and some pupils learned to read and write Czech in after-hours tutoring. Two former students died in World War II service before the school closed in 1953 and its pupils moved to Moulton.