Castell Outlasted Its Sister Settlements

Castell began on the north bank of the Llano River in 1847, nine years before Llano County was organized. John O. Meusebach selected the site, and Count Emil von Kriewitz led German immigrants there from Fredericksburg. The settlement took its name from Count Carl Frederick Castell-Castell, an officer of the German Emigration Company.

Leiningen, Bettina, and Schoenburg were established in the same settlement push, but those communities did not last. Castell did. Its survival made the little river community a durable piece of the German colonization story west of Fredericksburg.

A German Methodist church established in 1856 also served as a school on weekdays. That joined the work of building a town to the work of keeping a language, a faith, and lessons going in a young county.

The town did not stay fixed on one bank. A post office opened on the south side of the river in 1872, and the community has centered there since. Castell's map still carries both chapters: an 1847 colony on the north bank and the later post-office community across the water.