Vsetin

Vsetin is at the intersection of Farm Road 2314 and county roads 138 and 142, six miles northeast of Hallettsville in northeastern Lavaca County. The land in the area was originally granted by the Mexican government to Elenor Living in 1831. Until the 1880s it remained in relatively large blocks divided among only a few owners. During the 1880s many small ethnic communities, among them Vsetin, sprang up in Lavaca County for immigrants from Bohemia and Moravia. The community developed around the Evangelical Unity of the Czech-Moravian Brethren Church, an independent Protestant congregation associated with the Unity of the Brethren. The church was first built in 1894; it was rebuilt in 1954 and has two cemeteries. The larger cemetery dates from 1888; the smaller first recorded a burial in 1895. Throughout the first half of the 1900s, cotton was the primary crop. However, with the local decline in cotton during the 1950s, most of the area land reverted to pasture, with some in cultivation for corn and hay. Vsetin is primarily an ethnic and religious community, and most business is conducted in nearby Hallettsville.