Site of New Colony School

New Colony's name is Czech, Nova Osada, and it came from a lodge before it came from a school. The Handbook says the first meeting to organize a lodge of the Slavonic Benevolent Order of the State of Texas, the SPJST, was held at the Vine Shiller farm in January 1907. An acre for the lodge hall came from John and Frances Shenkir, and the school opened in that hall in 1909. After the schoolhouse was removed, the Leedale Extension Homemakers Club built a community center on the site in the 1950s, home to SPJST Lodge 69 until 1971.

What the plaque says

Site of New Colony School In 1905-1906 Czech families from Elgin (Bastrop County) and Taylor (Williamson County) relocated to this area and established the Nova Osada (New Colony) community. The first school, known as "Blue School," opened in 1909 in a one-room fraternal lodge hall built in 1908 on land purchased from John and Frances Shenkir. Vince Stepan, Sam S. Bennett, and B.S. Guess served as first trustees. A 3-room school, built here in the early 1920s, served the area until 1942 when New Colony School merged with the Rogers Independent School District. The schoolhouse was later moved from this site. (1995)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 14 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 14 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

More markers nearby

• Bryant Station — 3.8 mi
• First United Methodist Church of Rogers — 4.3 mi
• Joseph "Joe Tex" Arrington, Jr. — 4.3 mi
• Alvin Ailey — 4.3 mi