Bernard Scherrer

Scherrer may have helped start the Texas cigar trade. Staying with Friedrich Ernst at Mill Creek, later Industry, he taught Ernst to roll cigars, and Ernst began a cigar business. Scherrer came by way of New Orleans, where he joined the German travel writer Detlef Dunt, and got his passport at Brazoria from Henry Smith on April 29, 1833. Joseph Biegel persuaded him to buy a quarter league and settle, and since neither Biegel nor his wife could read or write, Scherrer was an asset. His farm now lies under the waters of the Fayette power plant lake.

What the plaque says

Bernard Scherrer (1807 -1892) Bernard Scherrer left his native Switzerland at the age of 22 for extended travels before reaching Texas in 1833. After serving in Burleson's regiment during the Texas Revolution, he received a land grant in Colorado County but settled in Biegel settlement (Fayette County) about 1838. Here he served as justice of the peace, county commissioner, and in 1845 he married Gesine Eliza Margarete Koch. He left his civic, farming and freighting duties to serve in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. This cabin, Scherrer's first residence in Texas, was moved to this location in 1975. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 15 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 18 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 27 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.

More markers nearby

• Round Top Community — steps away
• Round Top — steps away
• Nassau Plantation — 2.6 mi
• Town of Shelby — 6.4 mi