Site of Moravia School

Moravia's schoolchildren grew up between two languages, and one of them was a dialect. The settlers came from northeastern Moravia in the early 1870s, replacing Anglo-Americans who probably began leaving about 1865, and brought a speech that differs from standard Czech. The Handbook counts that dialect as part of the school's course of study. In the early 1980s a few residents still spoke nothing else, and Czech survived in hymns and in the Rosary. When Hallettsville absorbed the school in 1972, the 1923 building was later torn down.

What the plaque says

Site of Moravia School Many Czech and German immigrants settled in this area of South Texas in the 1870s. Moravia was a Czech farming community that included homes, a Catholic church, businesses, and a school. The first school in the Moravia community was a one-room structure located about one mile northwest of this site. Students attended classes on a tuition basis. The one-room schoolhouse was destroyed by fire in 1878, and students temporarily attended school in a former store building (about 1 mile north). Land at this site was acquired in 1885. Moravia School, a two-story schoolhouse with two classrooms, was erected in 1887. Classes were conducted primarily in the Czech language until 1895. Additional land acquisitions in 1908 and 1922 enlarged the school property, and in 1923 materials from the 1887 structure were used in the construction of a larger school facility with four classrooms. Serving students from a large rural area, the Moravia School continued to grow as other rural schools declined. Students participated in scholastic, literary, and athletic activities. The Moravia School was closed following the 1971-72 school year and was consolidated with the Hallettsville School System. (1989)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• St. Mary's Church of the Assumption (Praha) — 7.6 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.
• Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin Catholic Church (High Hill) — 9.7 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.
• Lavaca County Courthouse — 10 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.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 13 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.

More markers nearby

• Moravia General Store — 0.3 mi
• Novohrad School — 5.4 mi
• Radhost School — 5.6 mi
• Hackberry — 6.4 mi