Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church

Frenstat took its name in the summer of 1886, when about forty Czech Catholic families were established here, some arriving from Caldwell, eleven miles north. The Handbook of Texas calls Holy Rosary the first Catholic church in Burleson County. A post office served the settlement from 1891 to 1908, a cotton gin and general store stood nearby, and in 1931 about eighty-five Czech families lived in the vicinity. The local school was consolidated into the Somerville district in 1948.

What the plaque says

Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church In 1884, Catholic settlers from Czechoslavakia first arrived in this area. They named their settlement Frenstat for the community they had left, Frenstat Rod Radhost, Moravia. By 1887, the Rev. Joseph Chromcik regularly visited Frenstat. That year, Adolf Polansky sold land to the Galveston Diocese for school, church and cemetery purposes. Members met in the schoolhouse until building a sanctuary in 1889. During the next few decades they formed men's and women's service organizations. Since that time, the congregation, now part of the Austin Diocese, has grown in membership and facilities, which include a grotto of the Virgin Mary of Lourdes. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 9.3 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.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 19 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.
• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 23 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Round Top and Festival Hill — 23 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.

More markers nearby

• Lyons — 5.4 mi
• Deanville — 6.4 mi
• Lake Somerville — 8.0 mi
• Thomas J. Gary — 8.1 mi