Arneckeville

Adam Christoph Henry Arnecke gave the place its name, though not until 1872, when he took the post office and kept it until 1903. The settlement itself dated from 1859, and the Arnecke log house stood until 1947. Zion Lutheran Church, built of logs in 1865, doubled as the school until a separate building went up in 1890 on land Arnecke donated. His son, Dr. C. A. H. Arnecke, built the first drugstore and opened a hospital. By 1885 there was also a steam gristmill and a cotton gin, with daily stages running to Meyersville and Goliad.

What the plaque says

Arneckeville A native of Germany, Adam Christopher Henry Arnecke settled in this area in the 1850s and opened the community's first general store. Originally known as Zionsville, the settlement later was named for Arnecke. By the end of the 19th century, Arneckeville had blacksmith shops, doctors' offices, a cotton gin, post office, school, and a church, Zion Lutheran, that was organized in 1865. Although the small German community began to decline when a farm-to-market road was built to Cuero (7 miles north), it has retained much of its pioneer heritage. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 6.5 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• De León Plaza — 21 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 21 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.

More markers nearby

• Hopkinsville Community, A Colony of Freedmen — 3.6 mi
• Hephzibeth Looker Taylor — 4.3 mi
• Josiah Taylor — 4.3 mi
• Burns Station Cemetery — 5.2 mi