Haby

Haby Settlement, named for François Joseph Haby II, stretched along a roadway (Haby Settlement Road) that ran beside the Medina River a mile southwest of the site of present Riomedina in Medina County. Nichalus Haby, one of the many Habys in the settlement, moved to Castroville in 1844 and was hired by Henri Castro to hunt wild game to feed the original colonists. Haby, who had thick, black, waist-length hair, served as a captain in the Mexican War and became a famous Indian fighter. The 1850 Medina County tax rolls showed three property owners in Haby Settlement. During the latter half of the 1800s the community had a church, a small store, two butcher shops, a saloon, and a school, which in 1896 had ten students and one teacher. By the late 1940s the settlement had been abandoned. In the late 1980s many of the settlement's rock homes, which incorporated Alsatian-style architecture, still stood, and "Die Quelle," one of the large artesian springs that originally prompted the Habys to settle there, was still flowing.