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.
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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.
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 Brethren Church Cemetery
Industry, TX
This is the cemetery of the third-oldest congregation of the Unity of the Brethren, a faith rooted in the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia and carried to the German settlement of Industry by immigrant families. Worship began here in 1860, the church was formally organized in 1875 with nine charter families, and the burial ground was in use by 1880. Among its more than two hundred graves are headstones bearing verses in Czech and the resting places of more than twenty veterans.
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.