In the 1840s many people left Germany to find freedom in the United States. When much of the choice land in and around Fredericksburg had been settled, the colonists began to drift north and westward, settling in Mason County along Beaver Creek and Art, and in the western end of Llano County along the Llano River at Castell, where they found water and physical conditions favorable to settlement. The small rural community of Castell, named for Count Von Castell, one of the German noblemen who as ...