Witte-Schmid Cemetery
Shelby, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This pioneer graveyard is an important reminder of the German heritage of Austin county. Following two of their sons to America, Dr. Ernst Witte (b. 1791), a native of Blomberg, Germany, and his wife Lizette (Linnemann) bought 1422 acres here in 1856. Near this site, the Wittes built a home which Witte heirs later donated to the Texas German Society. Dr. Witte died in 1869 and was buried here; Lizette died in 1883. The following year, the Wittes' heirs sold the land to Ernst and Lizette's granddaughter Emilie Sophia and her husband John Scmid. More than twenty family members are buried here. The cemetery features upright marble and granite gravestones, with some inscriptions written in German.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This pioneer graveyard holds the graves of Dr. Ernst Witte, a native of Blomberg, Germany, his wife Lizette, and more than twenty family members who settled Austin County land in 1856. Following two of their sons to America, the Wittes built a home nearby that heirs later gave to the Texas German Society. The cemetery's upright marble and granite stones — some inscribed in German — quietly record a family's roots in the community.
Why it matters
German-language gravestones make this small cemetery a tangible record of the immigrant heritage that shaped rural Austin County and much of central Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the rolling farmland of Austin County was a magnet for German families looking for a fresh start. Texas had only recently become part of the United States, and its cheap, fertile land drew a steady stream of immigrants from the German states, who arrived through Gulf ports and fanned out into the countryside between the Colorado and Brazos rivers.
When Dr. Ernst Witte and his wife Lizette bought their acreage here in 1856, they were joining a movement already reshaping this part of Texas. Whole neighborhoods spoke German, worshiped in German, and kept the customs of the old country alive on the new soil. The years that followed were turbulent ones for the region — the Civil War would soon test every community in the state — but for families like the Wittes, the daily work of clearing land, raising crops, and building homes went on.
This pocket of central Texas became one of the most durably German corners of the American South, and its cemeteries are among the quietest, most honest records of that heritage. A gravestone lettered in German is a small monument to a family that carried its language across an ocean and kept it.
People & events
The story begins with two sons who came to America first. It was to follow them that Dr. Ernst Witte — born in 1791 in Blomberg, in what is now Germany — and his wife Lizette, born a Linnemann, made the long journey late in their lives. Ernst was already in his sixties when they purchased more than fourteen hundred acres of Austin County land in 1856, a considerable stake for a couple starting over so far from home.
Near this spot the Wittes built a house, and it clearly meant something to their descendants: rather than let it pass out of the family's story, Witte heirs later donated the home to the Texas German Society, preserving a piece of the immigrant experience for others to remember. Ernst died in 1869 and was laid to rest here; Lizette lived on until 1883.
The following year the family land changed hands within the family itself, sold to Ernst and Lizette's granddaughter, Emilie Sophia, and her husband John Schmid — the second name this burial ground carries. Over the years more than twenty family members were buried here, so that the cemetery reads almost like a family tree written in stone, generation beside generation.
Its place in the American story
America's story is, in large part, a story of immigrants — and the German wave of the mid-1800s was one of the largest of them all, leaving its mark from the farms of the Midwest to the Hill Country of Texas. The Wittes' journey, made to reunite with sons who had gone ahead, is the kind of family chain migration that quietly built much of the country.
What makes a place like this valuable is that it preserves that heritage in the immigrants' own hand. Public monuments tend to record the famous; a family graveyard records the ordinary people who did the settling. The German inscriptions here are not translated or smoothed over for later visitors — they are the language the family actually used, chiseled to last.
Across the United States, thousands of such small cemeteries anchor the memory of communities that might otherwise vanish from the record entirely. This one stands for all of them: proof that the people who came looking for land and a future left something rooted and permanent behind.
If you visit
Come expecting something modest and intimate rather than grand. This is a pioneer graveyard, not a manicured memorial park, and its power is in its plainness — upright marble and granite stones standing in the open Austin County countryside.
Look closely at the lettering. Some of the inscriptions are written in German, and reading a name and date carved in that older script is the closest thing to hearing the family speak. Notice the span of years the stones cover, and how many share the same surnames; you are looking at several generations of one family gathered in a single quiet place.
It fits naturally into a slow drive through the German-settled country between the Colorado and Brazos rivers, a region dotted with old churches, small towns, and other reminders of that heritage. Give yourself a few unhurried minutes here. Places like this reward the visitor who is willing to stand still, read the stones, and imagine the long journey that ended on this ground.
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
- · Ernst Witte
- · Lizette Witte
Related events
- · German immigration to Texas
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Witte-Schmid House
Shelby, TX
Dr. Ernst Witte, trained as a lawyer in Hanover, Germany, immigrated to Texas and in 1856 bought 1,422 acres in Austin County, raising cotton and building this farmhouse around 1860. Constructed of stuccoed sandstone with fachwerk interior walls and locally sourced adobe, the house carries distinctly Germanic details — clipped gables and eyebrow windows inspired by Witte's home near Hanover. It stayed in the Schmid family until 1986 and stands as a rare survivor of mid-nineteenth-century German rural architecture in Texas.
Henniger Family Cemetery
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Nicholaus Henniger (1794–1853) emigrated from Germany in 1847 with his wife Fredericke and their children, building a log house and prospering as a cattle raiser on the Texas frontier. Alongside his neighbors he helped raise a gristmill, establish a school, and keep German traditions alive. When an infant son died, he set aside this family cemetery, where he and nine relatives are buried; the farm remains in the hands of his Vogelpohl descendants.
St. Paul Lutheran Church
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In 1903, fifteen members broke away from a local congregation to found a German Evangelical Lutheran church in the farming community of Shelby, in Austin County's German-settled countryside. For much of its first half-century the congregation worshiped in German and kept old-country customs—men seated on the left, women on the right, and women barred from voting in church affairs until reforms in the 1940s. As it moved through a succession of Lutheran synods, the church anchored the immigrant community that built it.
Town of Shelby
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Named for 1822 settler David Shelby, this Austin County town grew up around the mill of German pioneer Otto Von Roeder. Families like the Ohlendorfs and Vogelsangs arrived in 1845, followed by more German immigrants in later years, and the community gained a post office in 1846, a school in 1854, and agricultural, singing, and band societies. Mission work begun in 1876 led to the founding of Peace and St. Paul Lutheran churches, and by 1900 at least a dozen businesses operated here before farming's decline scattered residents to city jobs.