New Fountain

New Fountain is a rural community on Farm Road 2676 four miles northeast of Hondo in Medina County. In 1845 a number of original colonists in Henri Castro's colony settled on Verde Creek at Vandenburg. Within a year the local water supply was absorbed into the porous limestone creekbed; it resurfaced four miles downstream. Most of the colonists resettled near the new source of water and appropriately called their revived settlement New Fountain. Within a relatively short time, the Reverend Johann August Schaper, a German Methodist circuit rider, approached the New Fountain residents, and by 1858 they had organized a Methodist church. Known in the 1980s as the Ebenezer Church of New Fountain, it is distinctive in that it has served its congregation for more than 100 years and has been associated with a pocket of German Methodists in predominantly Catholic territory.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.