Birthplace of the SPJST

The courtroom meeting on this plaque was a break with a national society. Texas Czechs had belonged to the C.S.P.S., founded in St. Louis in 1854 to provide for widows and children, and by 1897 Texas held twenty-seven of its lodges. Members here objected that its premiums were pitched to eastern industrial workers, whose death rates ran well above those of Texans. Frank Cihal and Kubena sat on the committee that drafted a Texas constitution, and Kubena then ran the new society from a single room in his Fayetteville general store until his death in 1938.

What the plaque says

Birthplace of the SPJST On December 28, 1896, twenty-five Czech-Texans gathered in the district courtroom of this courthouse to establish a new fraternal benefit insurance society, the Slovanska Podporujici Jednota Statu Texas, more commonly known a the SPJST. The SPJST held its first convention in the same room on June 20, 1897. I. J. Gallia served as the society's first president and J. R. Kubena was the first secretary. The SPJST officially began its business in Texas on July 1, 1897. SPJST headquarters now is located in Temple. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 1.1 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 8.3 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 12 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.
• Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin Catholic Church (High Hill) — 13 mi
  A red brick Gothic Revival church of 1906 in a German farm settlement, where two San Antonio painters spent 1912 faking marble columns and stone vaults on wood.

More markers nearby

• Site of a Twin Blockhouse — steps away
• The First U. S. Postal Rural Mail Route in Texas — steps away
• W. S. Robson — 0.4 mi
• Fayette County — 0.7 mi