Site of the Homestead of Henri Castro

Castro's contracts with the Republic, signed on February 15, 1842, covered two grants on which he was to settle 600 families: one west of San Antonio, the other along the Rio Grande between Camargo and La Sal del Rey. He recruited mostly in Alsace. His first thirty-five colonists left San Antonio with him on September 1, 1844, and on September 12 they elected two justices of the peace and a constable and adopted the name Castroville. In the colony's first year 558 headrights were issued. Indian raids, cholera and the drought of 1848 followed.

What the plaque says

Site of the Homestead of Henri Castro Henri Castro (1786-1861), a naturalized American of French origin, befriended the Republic of Texas and became interested in settling here. In 1842 he was given authority to establish a colony of Europeans in Southwest Texas. He succeeded in obtaining some land here on the Medina, from a 1766 grant made by Chares III of Spain. He recruited 485 families and 457 single men, mostly Alsatians. Using his personal wealth, he cared for the colonists as though they were his children. In 1844 he had the Castroville townsite platted, reserving as his homestead this block next to the courthouse site, in the center of town. He erected a stone dwelling and outbuildings, and planted an experimental garden, to discover crops suited to the locality. Bringing his wife Amelia (Mathias) and their four foster children from France, he lived here permanently. As a moral obligation, he continued to direct the state affairs for his colony, although it had impoverished him. On the eve of a trip abroad when the Civil War was beginning (1861), Castro and his wife deeded the homestead to their adopted son, Lorenzo. Castro died at Monterrey, Mexico, soon afterward, and was buried there. Lorenzo sold the homestead in 1872. 1978

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Landmark Inn State Historic Site — steps away
  A store and stage stop at the Medina River ford in Henri Castro's Alsatian town, with a mill race under the ground and rooms you can still rent for the night.
• Casa Navarro State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The adobe and caliche-block home of José Antonio Navarro, a native-born signer of the 1836 declaration, and the last remnant of the Tejano neighborhood called Laredito.
• Mission Concepción — 23 mi
  A stone church dedicated in 1755 that has never fallen into ruin, its convento ceilings still painted, and the ground where the Texas Revolution's fight for San Antonio began.
• King William Historic District — 23 mi
  Mission farmland turned German merchants' quarter on the San Antonio River, renamed in World War I, then saved by a neighbor who restored fourteen houses, starting with his own.

More markers nearby

• Henri Castro — steps away
• First County Courthouse — steps away
• General Wool and the Chihuahua Road — steps away
• Alsatians of Texas — steps away