Saint Ludmila's Academy

The plaque calls her a Slavic saint without saying who she was. Ludmila, born about 860, was a Bohemian duchess, baptized with her husband Boriwoi about 871. The couple gave up the throne and retired to Tetin, where her grandson Wenceslas lived with her. His mother Drahomira, jealous of the old woman's influence, had two nobles kill Ludmila in 921; tradition says they strangled her with her veil. She became a patron of Bohemia, and her feast falls on September 16. For Shiner's Czech families, a school in her name tied the town to Bohemia's first Christian rulers.

What the plaque says

Saint Ludmila's Academy The first Catholic school in Shiner was built in 1896 by Scherbohm and Mewes, contractors. The two story French style frame building housed two classrooms, a dining room and kitchen on the first floor, and a residence for the Sisters on the second floor. Named Saint Ludmila's Academy in honor of a Slavic saint, the school opened in February 1897 and was operated by the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament religious order in the state of Texas. The co-educational boarding and day school enrolled fifty-seven students the first year. Courses included German and Czech language; music courses featured piano, guitar, and mandolin. In 1902 two years of high school were added to the elementary grades. In 1916 a new structure was built to meet increased enrollment. In 1928 a four-year high school was incorporated, and the school received the designation of an academy. After 1939, no pupils were accepted as boarders. An elementary school was built in 1951, and a gymnasium, auditorium and cafeteria were added to the campus. In 1963 the Shiner Parish erected St. Paul High School. The educational complex is known as the Shiner Catholic School. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spoetzl Brewery — 0.8 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.
• Lavaca County Courthouse — 13 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.
• Gonzales Memorial Museum — 18 mi
  A 1937 Centennial museum for the Immortal Thirty-two who died at the Alamo, holding the small iron cannon Gonzales calls its Come and Take It gun and the Handbook calls a second one.
• St. Mary's Church of the Assumption (Praha) — 18 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.

More markers nearby

• Sarah Creath McSherry Hibbens Stinnett Howard — 0.5 mi
• First National Bank of Shiner — 0.7 mi
• Shiner — 0.8 mi
• Captain Charles Welhausen — 0.8 mi