The Joseph Meyer Homestead
Castroville, Medina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Joseph (1803-87) and Katherine (Koos) Meyer, pioneers from Alsace, bought this 4-acre homestead in 1855. Except for a roadway, it remains as platted by surveyor John James for Henri Castro in 1844, and is the only undivided tract in Castroville. The house is typically Alsatian in roof line and room arrangement. The thick rock walls were plastered with lime from Meyer's kiln near the Medina River. Meyer gave his land to a daughter, Mrs. Leahr. Alex, Rosalie, and Fred Jungman, and the Robert Gerloffs were later owners. Col. and Mrs. Irvin Keefer bought the tract in 1960. 1976
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Castroville's Alsatian settlers gave the Texas Hill Country a rare European folk architecture, and this untouched homestead is a living record of that immigrant world.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1840s the Republic of Texas was eager for settlers and offered huge land grants to promoters, called empresarios, who promised to bring in colonists. One of them was Henri Castro, who recruited families largely from Alsace, a region along the Rhine on the border between France and Germany.
In 1844 Castro's colonists founded Castroville on the Medina River west of San Antonio. It was exposed country at the edge of settlement, and the newcomers faced drought, disease, and a hard frontier life. The town was carefully laid out, and surveyor John James platted its lots for Castro that same year.
The Alsatian settlers brought their language, their Catholic faith, and their way of building with them. Their houses, with steep roofs and thick stone walls, still give Castroville a look unlike almost anywhere else in Texas, which is why the town is often called the "Little Alsace of Texas."
People & events
Joseph Meyer and his wife Katherine (born Koos) were pioneers from Alsace. In 1855, about a decade after the colony's founding, they bought this four-acre homestead. Joseph, born in 1803, was already in his fifties, and he lived until 1887, long enough to see the struggling frontier colony become a settled town.
The Meyers built in the style they knew from home. The house is typically Alsatian in its roofline and the arrangement of its rooms. Its thick rock walls were plastered with lime from Meyer's own kiln near the Medina River, a sign of the self-sufficiency frontier life demanded: if you wanted plaster, you burned your own limestone.
Meyer later gave the land to a daughter, Mrs. Leahr. After that the property passed to a series of owners: Alex, Rosalie, and Fred Jungman, then the Robert Gerloffs, and in 1960 Col. and Mrs. Irvin Keefer. Through all those hands, something unusual survived: except for a roadway, the tract still matched the lines James had drawn for Castro in 1844, making it the only undivided original tract in Castroville.
Its place in the American story
The Meyer Homestead is a small window onto one of the great stories of nineteenth-century America: immigration. Millions of Europeans crossed the Atlantic in that era, and many came as part of organized colonies like Castro's, carrying their customs and building traditions into a new landscape.
Castroville stands out because so much of that Old World character survived. In many immigrant towns, original houses and lot lines were lost to later growth. Here, an entire original homestead remains as it was laid out, offering a rare look at how an immigrant colony was planned and lived in.
The homestead also reflects how Texas grew during its years as an independent republic. Land grants and colonization contracts were the tools the young nation used to fill its frontier, and the families who answered that call, from Alsace and elsewhere, helped shape the state Texas would become.
If you visit
Look closely at the house: its steep roofline and solid, thick-walled build are the hallmarks of Alsatian construction. It is one thing to read that the walls were plastered with lime from a kiln by the river; it is another to stand in front of them and think about the labor that took.
The homestead is privately owned, so admire it respectfully from the road unless you know otherwise. The four acres themselves are part of the story: this is what a full original Castroville lot looked like before towns everywhere were subdivided into smaller pieces.
Castroville is an easy drive west of San Antonio and a natural stop on a Hill Country road trip. Spend some time walking the old town to spot other Alsatian-style houses, and visit the Medina River, the lifeline that drew the colonists here and supplied the stone for Meyer's kiln.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Joseph Meyer
- · Katherine Meyer
- · Henri Castro
- · John James
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Henri Castro
Castroville, TX
Henri Castro, born in Bayonne, France, of Portuguese noble descent, became a naturalized U.S. citizen before helping negotiate a crucial loan for the cash-strapped Republic of Texas — service that earned him a diplomatic post from Sam Houston. As empresario between 1843 and 1847 he brought at least 2,134 European colonists to this corner of Medina County, spending his own fortune to sustain them. His dedication drew comparisons to Stephen F. Austin, and Castro County later took his name.
Site of the Homestead of Henri Castro
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Henri Castro, a French-born naturalized American, became one of the Republic of Texas's most important empresarios when he won authority in 1842 to plant a colony of Europeans in the rugged country west of San Antonio. Recruiting hundreds of families — many Alsatian — he founded Castroville on the Medina River in 1844, spending his personal fortune to shelter and provision colonists he treated "as though they were his children." He reserved this central block as his own homestead, built a stone house, and even planted an experimental garden to learn which crops the land would bear.
Alsatians of Texas
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In 1842 the empresario Henri Castro brought his first colonists to the land west of the Medina River, most of them from the Rhine country and many from Alsace on the French-German border. Two years later he laid out a townsite the settlers named Castroville, which became the heart of Alsatian culture in Texas. They built white-washed, single-story limestone houses in the European manner and carried over farming, winemaking, cuisine, and customs that still flavor the region.
Ihnken Family Cemetery
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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.