German Settlements

Bettina's founders were a fraternity of young, highly educated German freethinkers known as the Society of Forty, influenced by the writings of Etienne Cabet and Charles Fourier. They named the commune for the writer Bettina von Arnim, a friend of Meusebach's family. Their first building was a thatched common house forty feet long, followed by an adobe house with a shingled roof. The first harvest was good, but quarrels over work and over the role of a young cook broke the group apart. Several members later became prominent, among them Dr. Ferdinand von Herff and Jacob Kuechler.

What the plaque says

German Settlements 3 settlements were begun in 1847 on Fisher-Miller land grant by German Emigration Company, under Commissioner General John O. Meusebach. Castell: Llano County's first permanent town, settled with Fredericksburg pioneers. Only lasting settlement made on the grant by the German Emigration Company. Leiningen: site 3 miles to east. Non-existent today. Bettina: first communal settlement in Texas. Located where Elm Creek enters Llano River. Abandoned in less than a year, when supplies ran out. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 16 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.
• Fort Mason — 16 mi
  A reconstructed officers' quarters on Post Oak Hill above Mason, standing where the army's stone fort was taken apart by the town that grew up below it.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 17 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.
• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 24 mi
  A limestone cave on the James River where about four million Mexican free-tailed bats raise their young each summer, kept open to visitors by a family's gift.

More markers nearby

• Castell School — 0.4 mi
• Trinity United Methodist Church Cemetery — 0.4 mi
• First Known Religious Services in Mason County — 0.4 mi
• St. John Lutheran Church Cemetery — 0.9 mi