La Grange: Named for a French General's Chateau

La Grange is one of the oldest settlements in Texas, with roots to a settlement Aylett Buckner established near here around eighteen nineteen and a blockhouse John Henry Moore constructed in eighteen twenty-six. By eighteen thirty-one a small community had developed. When the Congress of the Republic of Texas established Fayette County on December fourteenth, eighteen thirty-seven, La Grange became its county seat.

The county was named for the Marquis de Lafayette, and the town took its name from his chateau in France. Sam Houston vetoed a bill that would have placed the Republic's capital on a site adjacent to La Grange, a decision that altered the city's trajectory permanently. The community later became a center of German and Czech immigration in the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties, a heritage still visible in the county's architecture and culture.