The Czech Belt: Central Texas and the Immigrants Who Shaped It

Bell County sits at the eastern edge of the Hill Country, which is to say it sits at the eastern edge of where nineteenth-century Czech and German immigrants stopped moving west and decided this was far enough. The pattern started in the eighteen fifties. Josef Arnost Bergmann arrived in Texas in eighteen fifty and is described by historians as the father of Czech immigration to the state.

Organized groups followed, beginning in eighteen fifty-one, bringing families from Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia. They were escaping the failed revolutions of eighteen forty-eight, the political repressions that followed, and the grinding poverty of Central European farm life. The Czech settlements concentrated in Austin and Fayette Counties first, then spread into other Central Texas counties.

Praha, in Fayette County, was named for Prague. The Painted Churches, elaborate ornate Catholic sanctuaries built by immigrant congregations in small Central Texas towns, stand as the most visible monument to that migration. Kolache, the filled pastry, and klobasa, the sausage, spread from Czech kitchens into Texas culture so thoroughly that they are now simply considered Texas food.

German immigrants followed similar routes through the Hill Country, settling Fredericksburg, New Braunfels, and dozens of smaller communities. The cultural belt they and the Czechs established, running roughly from San Antonio through the Hill Country to Temple, shaped the food, the music, the architecture, and the politics of Central Texas in ways that persisted well into the twentieth century. By the time the railroad reached Killeen in eighteen eighty-two, that entire cultural landscape already surrounded it.