DUANE
Duane's take
The way this marker tells it, here's the story of Bernard Scherrer — and it's one worth sittin' still for. Bernard Scherrer was born in 1807, over in Switzerland, a country that — let's be honest — doesn't exactly scream Texas. But by the time he was twenty-two years old, something got into him.
He left his native Switzerland and set out on what the record calls extended travels. Now, that's a phrase that deserves a moment. Extended travels.
Not a quick jaunt, not a tour of the neighborhood. The man was movin', and he was in no particular hurry to stop. Wherever those travels took him, they eventually landed him in Texas in 1833.
Texas, mind you, that wasn't yet a republic, wasn't yet a state — just a wild stretch of contested ground where ambitious men came to test themselves. And Scherrer fit right in. He served in Burleson's regiment during the Texas Revolution.
After that service, he received a land grant in Colorado County. But Colorado County apparently didn't hold him either, because around 1838 he settled in Biegel settlement, over in Fayette County. That's where the story really takes root.
Fayette County suited Bernard Scherrer. He dug in. He served as justice of the peace.
He served as county commissioner. He farmed. He ran freighting operations.
The man was building something — a life layered with civic weight and daily labor, the kind of presence that a community leans on without always saying so. And then, in 1845, he married Gesine Eliza Margarete Koch. That name alone sounds like it belongs on a courthouse document or a church ledger — which, knowing Bernard Scherrer, it probably did.
He kept at it. The civic work, the farming, the freighting. And then the Civil War came along and interrupted everything, the way it interrupted everything for everyone it touched.
Scherrer left those duties behind and went to serve in the Confederate Army. Now here's the detail that gives the whole story its anchor. The cabin you're near right now — that's Scherrer's first residence in Texas.
His first. The place he came to when all those extended travels finally stopped. It was moved to this location in 1975, more than a century after the man himself walked through that door.
Born in 1807. Gone in 1892. Switzerland to Texas, by way of everywhere else.
The cabin's still here.
What the marker says
(1807 -1892) Bernard Scherrer left his native Switzerland at the age of 22 for extended travels before reaching Texas in 1833. After serving in Burleson's regiment during the Texas Revolution, he received a land grant in Colorado County but settled in Biegel settlement (Fayette County) about 1838. Here he served as justice of the peace, county commissioner, and in 1845 he married Gesine Eliza Margarete Koch. He left his civic, farming and freighting duties to serve in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. This cabin, Scherrer's first residence in Texas, was moved to this location in 1975.