D'Hanis, Texas

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History

D’Hanis History 1857. “D’Hanis, distant some twenty-five miles from Castroville, presents, certainly, a most singular spectacle, upon the verge of the great American wilderness. It is like one of the meanest and smallest of European peasant hamlets. There are about twenty cottages and hovels, all built in much the same style, the walls being made of poles and logs placed together vertically, arid made tight with clay mortar, the floors of beaten earth, the windows without glass, the roofs built so as to overhang the four sides and deeply shade them, and covered with a thatch of fine brown grass. There is an odd little church, and the people are rigid Catholics, the priest instructing the children. This was a second colony of Mr. Castro, established in 1846, but he here appears to have done little else than point out the spot and assign the lands to the colonists. They suffered many hardships during the first year, depending partly on the government post for provisions, and for two years lived on game and weeds for the most part. Rattlesnakes were then common about the settlements, and were regularly hunted for as game.” - Olmstead’s Account in 1857, A Twentieth Century History of Southwest Texas; Chicago: Lewis Pub. Co., 1907, page 187