The following articles, written by various individuals, first appeared in Fayette County: Past & Present.




Winchester, in northwestern Fayette County on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, was originally settled by John Ingram, who located in a section still known as Ingram's Prairie. The town proper was laid out by John Gramme in 1851 and is named for Winchester, Tenessee, birth place of one of the early settlers.

The town consisted of nine blocks to the west. In 1888 the Yoakum-Waco branch of the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad was built through Winchester. The town was then shifted towards the east, and fifty-two more blocks were laid out.

The town grew until it consisted of a precinct courthouse, a post office, a depot, a state bank, two doctors, two drug stores, two jails (white and negro), a hotel, a hardware store, two rooming houses, a retail liquor store, two saloons, a gambling house, two barber shops, two blacksmiths, a livery stable, a general machine and repair shop, a millinery and dress shop, two cotton gins, four cotton buyers, three meat markets, seven general merchandise stores, a grist mill, a lumber yard, five cattle and horse traders, a cattle shipping yard, four churches, a parochial school, two public schools (white and negro), a furniture store (which made furniture and sold caskets), a shoemaker, a theater, an opera house, and a public scale. Later three garages and gas stations opened.

Between 1870 and 1920 agriculture boomed. Cotton was a big business. In one year there were about four to six thousand bales of cotton shipped out of Winchester. In 1910 approximately twenty-four trains passed through Winchester in one day.

Horses and mules were also shipped in by train and sold in many directions for many miles. Cattle were shipped to market in the North.

There were a lot of rodeos held between 1890 and 1920. They were held on an open prairie about one half mile north of town, which is now owned by Martin Schultz.

The Houston-Bastrop-Austin road came through Winchester. Traveled by the stagecoaches, there was an overnight stop at Cunningham's Inn, located in Cunningham Prairie, on what is now known as the Paul Gobel farm. The Cunningham Cemetery is still in use, located on Mrs. Elgin Hart's property north of Martin Unger's place.

Nathan Thomas donated the first site for a public school building. It was located southwest of the cemetery across from Doctor Page's house. In 1900 the school became the "Odd Fellows' Lodge." It was a two story building where the Community Hall now stands. In 1937 Mrs. Zilss donated some money for a new school to be built. The "Odd Fellows' Lodge" was then remodeled into the school cafeteria. In the year 1948 the voters of Fayette County dissolved the school, and the children were bussed to La Grange. The school census of the year 1918-1919 recorded for Winchester 188 white and 193 negro children attending school, about one half of the white attending parochial school.

In 1871 Col. Nathan Thomas also gave land to be used for a cemetery. In 1906 a new Lutheran Church was built. Winchester then became a strong Lutheran community.

A fire burned down three business buildings in 1894. The cotton gin burned down in 1895, was rebuilt, and burned again in 1914. The Blacksmith shop and two other buildings burned down in 1909. In 1910 a hurricane demolished a Baptist and a Methodist Church. The people of Winchester then decided to build a new church that could be used by any denomination. They called it the "Union Church." Sunday School was started and was successful for many years.

Court was held once a month. Misdemeanor charges were heard here, and the jail was referred to as the "calaboose."

Alexander Ramsey, who had come to Winchester in 1853, was a very domineering man. He became justice of the peace in 1892 and served for many years. In 1895 he became postmaster and held this position until he retired in 1915. He was one of the organizers of the State Bank in 1910. He held three public positions at the same time. An important asset to Winchester was the train, mail and passenger service. Everyone depended on the "Rinke" for time. Clocks were set at train time. The train served the town until 1949.

The railroad built a spur into one of the gravel pits and much gravel was shipped out of Winchester by rail. Years later a gravel loading chute was built in town. Gravel was trucked to town and then loaded on the train for shipping.

A well was located on West Front Street. It was used to water the horses and mules when people came to town. It was used for many years; there is no record of when it was dug.

Winchester now consists of four churches, one general merchandise store, one gas station, two beer joints, and a post office. A few other old buildings still remain. Winchester is now mainly a farming community and a weekend home.




The Harris General Merchandise Store, which is the present name of the store, is located in Winchester, Texas, in northwestern Fayette County on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad. The owner of the store today is Mr. Calvin Henry Harris, grandson of the original owner, Mr. Carl Heinrich Schmidt. Carl Heinrich Schmidt came to Texas from Germany in 1890. In 1891 he married Miss Anna Schulze, and in 1892 he built the first store, which is now part of the home in which his daughter, Mrs. Hulda Ephraim lives.

Mr. Schmidt started as a shoemaker, and his wife baked cookies and sold them in the store. Mr. Schmidt also started selling sardines and sauerkraut in barrels. He also bought produce (chickens and turkeys) and shipped it to Houston for resale.

When the first store got too small, Mr. Schmidt built the second store in 1908, and in that store he sold wagons, buggies, and everything in general merchandise except coffins. After a while the second store became too small, so Mr. Schmidt had to build again. In 1913 the third store was built; it is the present store. It is a brick building that is thirty-six feet by one hundred feet, built by Mr. Schmidt's brother, William Schmidt.

In 1921 Carl Heinrich Schmidt died and Mr. Monroe Virgil Harris bought the store, in partnership with Mrs. Anna Schmidt. In 1923 Mr. Harris and his wife Hedwig (Schmidt) Harris, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Heinrich Schmidt, bought the whole store, and they owned it together for many years. ln 1973 Mr. Harris died, and his son Calvin Henry Harris took over.

The store has had four different names. It was called C. H. Schmidt, when Mr. Carl Heinrich owned it; then Schmidt and Harris, when Mrs. Anna Schmidt and M. V. Harris owned it. When Mr. Harris and wife Hedwig owned the store it was called the M. V. Harris Store, and now it is called the Harris General Merchandise Store.

Back when the store first got started the proprietors got their merchandise from different places, and trains would bring in carloads of sugar, flour, and coffee. They sold it by letting the people buy as much as they wanted to buy. Now the Harris Store buys its produce from Fred Kaspar, who gets it from San Antonio.

In 1945 a warehouse room was added to the store in which feed is stored. In the spring of the year fresh produce from the countryside is bought and sold. The store also buys cases of eggs on Saturday. In the Harris General Merchandise Store groceries, household appliances, yard tools, sewing products, feed, shoes, clothes, building supplies, livestock supplies, bed linens, towels, watches, toys, drug products, baby needs, and other general merchandise are all sold.

Harris General Merchandise Store is managed by Mr. Melvin Pietsch, and the bookkeeper is Mrs. M. V. Harris. The other people that work in the store are Miss Lorine Kieschnik, and Miss Anna Rosenhain. Harris General Merchandise Store is now sixty-two years old; it was originally started eighty-three years ago in 1892.




The Winchester Hotel, formerly the Ramsey Hotel, was the largest and the oldest hotel in Winchester. It was built, owned, and operated by Mr. and Mrs. Alex Ramsey. Mrs. Ramsey ran it most of the time, while Mr. Ramsey worked as postmaster. It was believed to have been built in the 1890's, by a man named Murphy. It had six rooms upstairs, six rooms downstairs, a kitchen and a dining room. When Mr. Ramsey passed away, Mrs. Ramsey continued to run the hotel. After Mrs. Ramsey died, a man named Ben Noack bought the hotel. His wife ran the hotel for a while. When they decided to move to a place they had bought from J. G. Trousdale, Sam F. Drake, Mrs. Mattie W. Giles, and P. Chapmen, Mr. Noack had the house torn down, moved, and rebuilt with the same lumber, exactly as it had been in town.

In 1924 Mr. Otto Kieschnik bought the house and the land. In about 1928 Mr. Kieschnik employed Fritz Rosenheim to make a porch on the north side of the house into a room. Mr. and Mrs. Kieschnik, until their deaths, lived there with their two sons and four daughters. Their youngest son, Walter, who bought the house and the land from the Kieschnik Estate in 1951, had it remodeled by a contractor, Mr. Robert Mitschke, in 1966. Portions of the house, still on the location chosen by Mr. Noack, are about eighty years old. It is generally the same house it was in the early 1890's, even though it has been changed some. At the present time, Mr. and Mrs. Kieschnik live there with one of their three daughters.




There were two jails in Winchester, one for the Negros, and one for the whites. The one located behind the courthouse was built in the early 1900's. Later the Negro jail was used as a county tool shed, because once a Negro broke out of the jail by burning a comer out of it. It was not fixed, so the county used it as a tool shed. After this, the Negros and the whites were put in the same jail. Most of the inhabitants of the jail were drunks who were incarcerated to sober up.

Winchester had no sheriffs, but had four constables: Mr. Will Hart, Mr. Jesse Moore, Mr. Paul Handrick, and Mr. Thurmond Parr. Mr. Will Hart had the most stories told about him. It is said that Mr. Hart would fill the jail with inebriates, and if the jail got too full he would take two or three of them home with him and chain them either to a chinaberry tree or a mimosa tree in the backyard. In the morning he would take the prisoners back to jail so they could sober up.

When it was torn down or when it fell down in the early 1940's, the jail was about forty years old.