Witte-Schmid House
Shelby, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Dr. Ernst Witte, educated as a lawyer in Hanover, Germany, prior to immigrating to Texas, purchased 1,422 acres of land in 1856, at the age of 63, and quickly improved the property value, producing cotton and adding this farmhouse around 1860. Witte died in 1869, leaving the property to his widow, Lisette. In 1884, her heirs sold the house to Emilie, grandchild to Ernst and Lisette, and John Schmid, a Swiss settler, where it remained in the Schmid family until 1986. An excellent example of rural vernacular architecture, the house was constructed with stuccoed sandstone, with interior walls of fachwerk and locally-sourced adobe. It includes a center-passage plan, asymmetrical placement of the hall with two summer beams and flat ornamental balusters, common characteristics of homes built by successful German settlers in the area in the mid-19th century. On the exterior, two of the most conspicuous Germanic details are the clipped gables, or schiefergedecktes dach, and the eyebrow windows (removed in the 1960s and restored in 2004), or dachgaube. These features were apparently inspired by Witte’s Home in Kleefeld, near Hanover. Relatively unchanged, the porch was added around 1910 by the Schmid family and the roof replaced in the 1960s and 2004. Overlooking the rolling landscape of Austin County, the Witte-Schmid house stands as a reminder of German immigration in the mid-19th century and its impact on the architectural history of Texas. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2017
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The Witte-Schmid House preserves the building traditions German immigrants carried to the Texas hill country, a lasting mark of the migration that reshaped the state's rural culture.
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Related people
- · Ernst Witte
- · John Schmid
Related events
- · German immigration to Texas
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Witte-Schmid Cemetery
Shelby, TX
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.
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.