Serbin

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Picture 1854. Five hundred and eighty-eight people step off whatever brought them here, into the Texas dirt of Lee County, and they are not German, not English, not anything the neighbors have a ready word for.

They are Wends — descendants of Serbs — and they have come to stay. Their leader is the Reverend John Kilian, an Evangelical Lutheran minister, and the Reverend is a man with a clear sense of who his people are. He names the settlement Serbin, right there, because the Wends were descendants of Serbs.

The marker says so, plain as day. Now, what grows up around that name is something worth sittin' with for a minute. This community runs in three languages — Wendish, German, and English — all at once, all in the same town.

You want a word for ambitious? Try trilingual before breakfast. And Serbin doesn't just survive, friends.

It thrives. By 1865 this place is humming, and it keeps on humming all the way to 1890. We're talkin' a grocery store, dry goods, jewelry, a drug store, a music store.

A wagon maker hammering away, a blacksmith at the forge, a saddler stitching leather. Three doctors. Two dentists.

A post office. Serbin sat right on the Smithville-to-Houston oxcart road, sending cotton and produce out into the world and hauling staples back in. That's not a settlement scratching at the caliche.

That's a town doing business. But here's where the story turns, and it turns quiet, which is somehow worse than turning loud. Around 1890, the railroads come through — and they don't come through Serbin.

They bypass the settlement by several miles. Several miles. Not a catastrophe you can point to, not a fire, not a flood.

Just iron rails laid down somewhere else, and trade following those rails like water following a slope. The decline begins about 1890, the marker says. And that's all it needs to say.

A trilingual town, five hundred and eighty-eight strong at the founding, thriving for a quarter century — and in the end, what undoes it isn't anything dramatic. It's the sound of a train whistle coming from somewhere else. Serbin, Lee County, Texas.

Still on the map. Still got the name the Reverend Kilian gave it.

What the marker says

Trilingual (Wendish-German-English) community founded 1854 by 588 Wends under leadership of the Rev. John Kilian. The Rev. Kilian (Evangelical Lutheran) named place Serbin because the Wends were descendants of Serbs. A thriving town 1865-1890; had grocery, dry goods, jewelry, drug and music stores; shops of wagon maker, blacksmith, saddler; post office, 3 doctors, 2 dentists. On Smithville-Houston oxcart road-- sending out cotton, other produce, and hauling in staples. Decline began about 1890 as railroads bypassed settlement by several miles. (1969)