Town of Shelby

Before it was Shelby the settlement was called Rödersmühl, Röder's Mill, after Otto von Röder's grain mill of about 1841. August Vogelsang bought the mill in 1845. Many of the settlers came from well-educated middle-class families, and their knowledge of Latin earned Shelby a place for a time among the Latin settlements of Texas. In 1867 the town hosted a large singing festival in honor of Prussian soldiers who had died in the Seven Weeks' War, drawing German singing groups from across the state. The post office closed in 1912.

What the plaque says

Town of Shelby Named for 1822 settler David Shelby, this town grew up at the mill of German pioneer Otto Von Roeder. The Ohlendorfs, Vogelsangs, Rothermels, and Vanderwerths arrived in 1845; other Germans came in ensuing years. The post office opened 1846 with Shelby as postmaster. A school (1854), an agricultural society, a singing society and a band were started. Mission work, begun in 1876, led to founding of Peace Lutheran and St. Paul Lutheran churches. By 1900 there were at least a dozen businesses here. Decline of farming led residents to live on ancestral land and work in cities. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 19 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 24 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• Independence and Old Baylor Park — 25 mi
  A crossroads north of Brenham that was the richest town in Texas when it won Baylor University in 1845, refused the railroad, and lost the college to Waco and Belton in 1886.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 34 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• McGregor Cemetery (Scottish Presbyterian Cemetery) — 3.9 mi
• Nassau Plantation — 4.6 mi
• Charles Fordtran — 5.9 mi
• Bernard Scherrer — 6.4 mi