Meet the Author

The “Adelsverein” trilogy can be purchased at Sophie’s Shop at the Sophienburg.

Author Celia Hayes will be the guest speaker at the Scholarship Brunch of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, Ferdinand Lindheimer Chapter, on Saturday, March 12. Brunch and book review are $20. Reservations may be made by calling Roberta Schmidt at (830) 626-2225 before Feb. 28.

By Myra Lee Adams Goff

Author Celia Hayes has written a historical novel called “Adelsverein”. It’s actually a trilogy (three books, one story). Novels are not my favorite form of literature, but this one is different. This is not a “looking at the world through rose-colored glasses” type of book, and as in all good fiction, one can learn much about human nature.

Members of the Steinmetz family are the central family throughout the books. Hayes has an understanding of the values of the old German settlers. The father, Christian Steinmetz, decides in Germany that he wants to go to Texas. He is a freethinker and doesn’t agree with the restrictions of the church or the aristocracy. The family is educated and talented. Although Mrs. Steinmetz has reservations about leaving her home, she is more swayed by the wishes of her husband.

The author takes us to the port at Bremen and the family’s departure in November of 1845. The description of the conditions inside the ship and what they endured are gripping:

“We can’t live like this, not for two months, or even two days”, says Mrs. Steinmetz. But the conditions just got worse and were described as “a long purgatory of darkness and misery.”

Soon the inevitable seasickness: “A great sheet of seawater cascaded down the companion way to the lower decks, mixing with the stink of vomit and the contents of the upset privy buckets washing back and forth across the floor”.

Oh my gosh! Have you ever been seasick? What choice does one have on a ship? No relief from the misery. They couldn’t go back. Should they jump over and drown or remain in misery?

After two months, Hayes takes us to another tragic period when so many were abandoned on the coast. John Meusebach becomes the central historic figure of the Adelsverein at this point. When the family finally arrives in New Braunfels, they decide to go on to Fredericksburg and it is in this area that the rest of the story takes place.

But before we go on, we are introduced to the first leader of the Adelsverein, Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels. The author takes us to San Antonio where Prince Carl meets Ranger Jack Hays, who pops in and out of the story throughout the trilogy. The Prince meets Hans (Johann) Rahm and tells him of his plan for colonization. Rahm describes the prince “as sleek and brushed as a pedigree horse on race day, arrogance setting in every line of his countenance.” Rahm tells the prince about a beautiful place where the springs come out of the land. Prince Carl brags that the Germans can make it better.

The fictional character Carl Becker, who later marries into the Steinmetz family, tells the prince why he shouldn’t go to the Llano and he left out no nauseating detail about the Indian problem. Becker calls the prince “a fool with money and powerful friends which makes him about the most dangerous kind there is.”

Book two tells us about frontier life in the Hill Country during the Civil War. The fear of “brother against brother” comes true within the family. There are detailed descriptions of persecution by Confederates of those who refused to take the loyalty oath especially in the Hill Country.

Book three takes the reader to a period after the Civil War.

Based on true stories of atrocities on settlers by Indians, factual episodes of scalping and kidnapping of women and children are all too frightening and gruesome.

By Myra Lee Adams Goff

Waggoners or Teamsters were important to early New Braunfels. They not only led the wagon trains of the early German settlers but they hauled freight to and from the frontier, especially the Gulf coast.

G. Fred Oheim, editor of the Zeitung’s Jahrbuch in 1943, named 340 teamsters who “transported merchandise to New Braunfels from Indianola, Lavaca, Victoria, Cuero, Kingsbury, Luling, Marion, Austin and San Antonio from 1860 to1877 for Ernst Sherff alone.”

Sherff was owner of a large merchandise business in New Braunfels that he purchased from Ferguson and Hessler in 1858. By that time, Waggoners were using mules to pull wagons. Sherff’s store later became Eiband and Fischer.

Oheim related that when there were no factories in Texas providing necessities of life and the state’s wealth consisted solely of produce off the land, transportation was an indispensable part of daily living.

Early Texas transportation consisted of ox-drawn wagons, then stagecoaches and finally railroads. One group started to build a railroad from San Antonio to Lavaca but the tracks were destroyed at Victoria during the Civil War.

In 1865-66, the U.S. Army placed that stretch in operation again. Before and after the Civil War and up until a hurricane wiped out Indianola in 1886, oxen and mule wagons hauled imported wares and food up to New Braunfels from the coast.

From the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, July 1955: The wagons had bodies shaped like sled runners drawn by four, five, or six oxen. “The Germans west of the Colorado had a better wagon and drove better mules. Like the desert caravans of old, they wound in long lines over the rolling plains.”

Poets like Fritz Goldbeck glamorized the Waggoner’s life. Mrs. Ernst Kapp in a letter written in 1850 and translated by Oscar Haas described the trip from Indianola to New Braunfels in glowing terms, like “green undulating prairies shimmering in the bright sun” and “from out of the distance slowly papering into view, long rows of heavy laden prairie schooners come rolling on”.

She describes wonderful food, and the men smoking short pipes engaged in conversation around the campfires. “Someone strikes up a song”. Then finally there is the sound of the whippoorwill.

Mrs. Kapp’s description sounds a lot more appealing than the other stories that I have read relating to the trek inland just five years earlier.

The first Waggoner of note in New Braunfels was George Ullrich who accompanied the first group of emigrants to New Braunfels and was named wagonmaster by Prince Carl. The Ullrich family was one of the few families that was already in Texas by the time the emigrants arrived.

Ullrich was born in Lindenau Meiningen in 1813. Family sources say he and Margaretha nee Decker were married in 1839 in New York City. Their first child was born in Frelsberg, Texas in 1842 and this is where they were living when Prince Carl was making arrangements to move the emigrants inland.

George Ullrich was consequently hired by the Adelsverein as the wagon master. He, along with his wife and 3-year-old child, guided the first group of emigrants from the coast to the interior. He subsequently guided the second group as well.

Oscar Haas has an interesting story in his History of New Braunfels and Comal County, Texas, 1844-1946. He states that “The story has it” that the first two women to cross the Guadalupe were Mrs. George Ullrich and Mrs. Frederick George Holekamp. Mrs. Ullrich crossed on the first wagon with her husband and Mrs. Holekamp crossed on horseback with Prince Carl.

The Ullrich family stayed in NB where he was elected a city alderman and sometime after 1850 was elected sheriff. Ullrich and his wife are both buried in the Adelsverein Cemetery.

George Ullrich, right, wagon master for the Adelsverein and his wife, Margaretha nee Decker Ullrich.

Related Articles

• February 6, 2007
  Many early immigrants didn’t last long, buried in Verein Cemetery
• April 3, 2007
  First settlers crossed the Guadalupe River on Good Friday
• March 18, 2008
  Founders Day will be marked on the Plaza this Good Friday
• May 27, 2008
  Poets provide accounts of early New Braunfels life
• January 26, 2010
  Rahm tells of beautiful spot between two rivers
• June 15, 2010
  Indianola important port in the 1840s