Radhost School

Radhost closely matches Radhošť, a 1,129-metre peak in the Moravian-Silesian Beskids of the Czech Republic. That name is the Czech form of Radegast, a Slavic god said to have been honored on the summit in antiquity. A chapel built in 1898 and a statue of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the ninth-century missionaries to the Slavs, stand there now, and pilgrims climb to them. THC does not say what the Lavaca County settlement was named for, so the match is likely rather than proven. The settlers founded their school in 1873, taught in Bohemian.

What the plaque says

Radhost School Settlers of the community of Radhost, many of whom were immigrants from Czechoslovakia, funded the building of a school which opened in 1873. Beginning as a one-teacher school taught in the Bohemian language, it became a two-classroom English language school with the construction of a new building in 1930. Radhost School housed grades one through ten, and subjects included reading, writing, health, civics, history and drawing. Reflecting the importance of farming in Radhost, the school year began in the fall after crops were harvested. The school remained in use until 1955, when annexed by Hallettsville Independent School District. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lavaca County Courthouse — 4.5 mi
  A limestone Romanesque courthouse of 1897-99 on the square of a town founded by a widow trader, in a county seat that once printed the Socialist Party's state paper.
• St. Mary's Church of the Assumption (Praha) — 13 mi
  The mother parish of the Czech settlements around Flatonia, a stone-fronted church of 1895 whose ceiling Gottfried Flury turned into a turquoise garden, with an August 15 feast since 1855.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 13 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin Catholic Church (High Hill) — 15 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

• Richardson Chapel United Methodist Church — 3.9 mi
• American Legion Hudgeons Post 230 — 4.0 mi
• St. Mary's Parish — 4.4 mi
• 50th Anniversary of Battle of Galveston — 4.5 mi