La Grange

La Grange, Fayette County, Texas

La Grange, Fayette County, Texas

Downtown La Grange, the seat of Fayette County, Texas. Photograph by Renelibrary.
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Promotion: Nearby Map of Fayette County

La Grange, the county seat of Fayette County, is on the Colorado River and State Highways 71 and 159, U.S. Highway 77, and the Union Pacific Railroad in the central part of the county some sixty-three miles southeast of Austin. It is at the site where La Bahía Road crossed the Colorado River. Aylett C. Buckner settled in the vicinity about 1819, and in 1826 John Henry Moore built a twin blockhouse within what are now the city limits; he named it Moore's Fort. Area settlers sought shelter there from Indian attacks, and by 1831 a small community had developed around the fort. A town was platted in 1837, and when the Congress of the Republic of Texas established Fayette County that year, La Grange became its seat of government. The county had been named after the Marquis de Lafayette, and the county seat took its name from his chateau. A post office was established there in 1838, and that same year the Texas Congress passed a bill intended to place the capital of the Republic of Texas on a site contiguous with La Grange, but the bill was vetoed by Sam Houston. La Grange grew as a trade center for the area's developing plantation economy. Its first newspaper, the La Grange Intelligencer, began to publish in 1844, and in 1846 the La Grange Female Institute was established. The first Methodist and Presbyterian congregations in La Grange were organized in the 1840s. La Grange was incorporated in 1850, and by 1855 it had at least four schools, including the La Grange Academy and the La Grange Male and Female Seminary and Boarding School. The ethnic composition of La Grange began to change during the 1840s and 1850s, as increasing numbers of Germans and Czechs immigrated to Fayette County. The first Lutheran service in La Grange was conducted in 1851, and in 1859 the Casino Association of La Grange opened the area's first German Free School. In 1860 Heinrich Kreische, a German immigrant from Saxony, established in La Grange one of the state's first commercial breweries.

Though many of the German immigrants in the area were against slavery, the plantation economy of Fayette County influenced many La Grange residents to support southern rights as they understood them in the years leading up to the Civil War. In 1858, for example, a mass meeting was held in La Grange to protest the admission of Kansas to the Union as a free state. In early 1861, when the Civil War began, a number of militia companies were organized at La Grange to aid the Confederate cause. Some of the Germans in La Grange fled to Mexico or returned to Germany; still others formed the La Grange German Company, organized as a State Reserve unit in July 1861. Though La Grange was untouched by fighting during the Civil War, during Reconstruction the town was torn by conflict and disorder. Local peace was disrupted in May 1865 as returning Confederate veterans robbed local German businesses, provoked arguments and fights, and, on one occasion, threatened to burn down the town. La Grange was occupied by federal troops in 1866, and an agency of the Freedmen's Bureau was established there to protect the rights and welfare of the many freed slaves in the surrounding area. Friction between the federal authorities and ex-Confederates in the town led to a number of altercations that sometimes, as one source put it, "reached the proportions of a first-class riot." From August to December 1867 La Grange was ravaged by a deadly yellow fever epidemic that killed 240 people-about 20 percent of its population at the time. Some of the dead were buried in mass graves.

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John Leffler | © TSHA

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Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.

Belongs to

La Grange is part of or belongs to the following places:

Currently Exists

Yes

Place type

La Grange is classified as a Town

Associated Names

  • (Moore's Fort)

Location

Latitude: 29.91291740
Longitude: -96.87680500

Has Post Office

Yes

Is Incorporated

Yes

Population Count, 2021 View more »

4,423