The Joseph Meyer Homestead

German settlers in Texas traded their old farmstead plans for local ones, but kept bellcast and saltbox roof lines, casement windows, stoves, cellars and, in Medina County, a habit of hewn stone. Builders there favored cut limestone, often covered in plaster and whitewash, and the Hill Country and Medina County hold the greatest concentration of German stonemasonry in south central Texas. Castroville builders also cut cypress along the Medina River into shingles, for home use and for market.

What the plaque says

The Joseph Meyer Homestead Joseph (1803-87) and Katherine (Koos) Meyer, pioneers from Alsace, bought this 4-acre homestead in 1855. Except for a roadway, it remains as platted by surveyor John James for Henri Castro in 1844, and is the only undivided tract in Castroville. The house is typically Alsatian in roof line and room arrangement. The thick rock walls were plastered with lime from Meyer's kiln near the Medina River. Meyer gave his land to a daughter, Mrs. Leahr. Alex, Rosalie, and Fred Jungman, and the Robert Gerloffs were later owners. Col. and Mrs. Irvin Keefer bought the tract in 1960. 1976

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Landmark Inn State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• Moye — 0.4 mi
• Henri Castro — 0.4 mi
• Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church — 0.5 mi
• Site of the Homestead of Henri Castro — 0.5 mi