This article will be published in the March 26, 2013, edition of the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung.

By Myra Lee Adams Goff

Like so many young men, Ernst Gruene had heard the exciting stories of Texas, a Republic in its own right. He was ready to leave Germany and take his mother with him. Freedom was the driving force in his decision; freedom from demands of the aristocracy, freedom from conscription, and freedom from excessive taxation. Little did he know that in 100 years, he would have a settlement here in Comal County with his family name.

Gruene was engaged to a young woman, but she broke off the engagement when she heard of his Texas plans. He consulted a “marriage broker” who made an appointment with Antoinette Kloepper. They married and soon after in 1845, the couple, his mother, and two servants left for Texas. After his stepbrothers bought out his family interests, he had ample funds. He carried about $5,000 in gold coins sewed in his vest. When he was almost washed overboard (gold can be quite heavy) he gave half of the coins to Antoinette who sewed them in the hem of her skirt.

They arrived on the coast and migrated to New Braunfels on May 15, 1846. So begins the amazing story of Gruene, Texas.

Ernst and Antoinette Gruene settled in Comaltown on Rock St. (building still standing) where three children were born. He continued to buy land. In 1872 he bought the land east of the Guadalupe River called Goodwin. This is where his second son, Henry D. would build a home and start a business and this would become Gruene.

Cotton was the #1 cash crop at that time and H.D. advertised for sharecroppers interested in growing cotton. Twenty to 30 families moved onto his land and each was assigned from 100 to 200 acres. Small three or four room farm houses were built for tenants and a school provided.

The first mercantile store in the area was built where tenants could buy groceries, implements, and hardware supplies and could buy them less expensively and on credit until the harvest came in. With the mercantile store, a lumberyard was set up. Because of the success of the store, Gruene constructed a large two story building (now an antique store). It held a working bank, holding mortgages and farm financing.

Soon a cotton gin was constructed powered by water pressure from the Guadalupe River. (This first gin burned down in 1922. It is the site of the present Grist Mill Restaurant.)

The IGN Railroad built a freight and passenger depot about a mile west of the community

in the 1880s and MKT built another in 1901, allowing Gruene to export cotton and grain and import goods for his mercantile store. What is now known as the Gruene Mansion became the home of Mr. and Mrs. H.D. Gruene in 1872. It started as a one story residence and a second story was added in 1886.

A dance hall with saloon was built in 1878. That was Gruene Hall, the communities social center. H.D. Gruene became Goodwin’s first postmaster in 1890 operating out of the mercantile store. This store was on the original north & southbound stagecoach route. Gruene became a stopping point for the Tarbox Stagecoach Line.

The settlement changed its name from Goodwin to Gruene as the whole town rotated around the Gruene family. When H.D. retired in 1910 he turned over the management to his two sons, retaining that Gruene tradition. His daughter resided in Gruene and eventually his parents did also. At one time Gruene had visions of subdividing but the project never got off the ground and when he died in 1920, thoughts of the development came to a halt.

By 1924 a Chrysler agency opened its doors across the street from the big mercantile store, the site of the first store.

The boll weevil stripped the cotton crop and the tenants were hit hard and many moved away. After recovery of the cotton crop, the Great Depression hit. This brought on a decline in cotton production and an end to the tenant system. A result was the closing of the mercantile store. The two railroad stations closed and the depots were destroyed. Various businesses inhabited the buildings, but the one business that never closed during these tumultuous times was the dance hall and saloon.

Gruene has a very prestigious historic designation; it has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Gruene Historic District, the only National Register Historic District in Comal County. In addition there are several buildings with Texas Historical Commission designations: Gruene’s Hall, Gruene Mansion, Erhardt Neuse House (now Gruene Haus Country Store), Original Gruene Mercantile (now Gruene General Store) and the H.D. Gruene Mercantile (now Gruene Antique Company). There are also two THC subject markers titled Gruene Cotton Gin (outside of the Grist Mill Restaurant) and Gruene. Additionally, there are City of New Braunfels historic designations on several properties. Gruene is a prime example of “Historic Tourism”.

H.D. Gruene Mercantile built in 1904. Patricia S. Arnold, artist.

By Myra Lee Adams Goff

Before we say goodbye to the Civil War, let’s look at what the period immediately after the war known as Reconstruction, brought to Comal County. When the war was over in 1865, many did not return home, putting a terrible hardship on the families. Many survivors sustained lifelong injuries. For all, life was different than it had been before the war.

Comal County had been divided on the question of secession from the Union and although the vote was overwhelmingly for joining the Confederacy, it wasn’t without conflict. Shortages of necessities of life made life difficult. Confederate money, issued during the war, was now worthless.

Jacob Lindheimer, editor of the Zeitung, kept the paper going during and after the war even though the lack of paper forced him to use wallpaper and tissue paper. When citizens who didn’t agree with his opinions dumped his printing press into the Comal, he just fished it out and kept on printing. Then there was the matter of newspaper subscribers wanting to pay their subscriptions in Confederate money. Once Lindheimer and his sons, who were unable to buy food with this money, went out and slaughtered a beef and then advertised that he would be glad to pay the owner of the animal in Confederate money. The beef owner refused to take this money for the beef. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”, so they say.

Comal County issued its own money but it wasn’t honored either. The merchants came up with their own medium of exchange. It was called “due bills”, sort of like “charging”. Some larger companies like Runge & Sons of Indianola issued their own due bills.

All the industry that had developed in Comal County before the war was destroyed, not from combat, but from lack of raw materials. Some entrepreneurial types began driving cattle or hauling freight from the coast. NB was a feeder station for trail drives on the Chisholm Trail from San Antonio to Kansas. Ranching was quickly replacing the cotton industry. Industries like Landa Flour Mills prospered. Skilled German artisans like saddlemakers, blacksmiths and wheelwrights were in demand.

The New Braunfels Woolen Manufacturing Co. was organized in 1867 in a building formerly used for a brandy distillery located at Garden and Comal streets. It was converted into a woolen mill and later furnished yards of gray woolen cloth to A&M College for uniforms. The building became a steam laundry after the turn of the century and was razed in 1952. The present St. John’s Episcopal Church built in 1967 contains a wooden cross made from timbers of the old mill.

A new type of business association began with the formation of mutual insurance associations and cooperative gins. Neighbor had to help neighbor as they had done in the early days. Individuals owned the associations. If the breadwinner died during the war, the organization promised to pay a benefit to the survivors. Germania Farmers Association at Anhalt was one of those mutual companies organized for protection, and to promote agriculture. (See Sophienburg.com, Around the Archives, May 13, 2008.) Ranchers and farmers pooled their money and built their own gins. Most were non-profit but shared the proceeds according to the use they made of the facilities.

The insurance business in the United States was the brainchild of Benjamin Franklin. He came up with the idea in 1752 in Philadelphia to cover houses lost by fire. Houses were mostly made of wood and were very close together. Seven years later Franklin organized the first life insurance company. Religious authorities were outraged at putting a monetary value on human life but assented when they realized that it also protected widows and orphans. The whole insurance business expanded as the need evolved.

The Sons of Hermann was another mutual insurance company. In 1840 a handful of German men in New York City formed a brotherhood whose mission was to provide aid to each other, the sick, widows and orphans. The brotherhood was founded to combat the prejudice of the “Know-Nothing-Party”, an organization promoting prejudice against foreigners in the US. The European immigrants, particularly Germans, were recipients of prejudice. The Germans formed the Sons of Hermann insurance company in response to this prejudice. Hermann was a German folk hero who was a symbol of manhood.

Reconstruction was over with the entrance of the railroads in the 1880s. By the turn of the century, the Landa family had opened up picnic grounds at Landa Park. A new industry had begun based on the cultural assets of the community. Tourism was here to stay.

One of the oldest photos of Landa Park in 1912 after Harry Landa opened his park to the public.

By Myra Lee Adams Goff

When the Faust St. Bridge received the prestigious Texas Historic Civil Engineering Landmark Award recently, all attention was on the bridge itself. But the Faust St. Bridge was more to New Braunfels than that; it was the way that hundreds of NB citizens got to the textile mill.

The bridge was the first high-water bridge in Comal County. On April 5, 1887, when the County took bids for the bridge, it was not in the city limits. The King Iron Bridge Mfg. Co. of Cleveland, Ohio, got the contract and the total cost including land for right-of-way and engineering costs was $33,269.The bridge built along the Camino Real provided an access across the Guadalupe on State Hwy. 2 from San Antonio to Austin. (Source: Comal County minutes and Oscar Haas)

In 1921 the trustees of Planters and Merchants Mill of San Antonio bought the land on the other side of the Guadalupe River located in the Esnaurizar Eleven League Grant from Louis and Bertha Meyer. A charter was granted two years later for the construction of a mill. The trustees built the local textile mill for the manufacture of fine cotton ginghams. Eventually the Planters and Merchants Mill became the New Braunfels Textile Mill, then the Mission Valley Mills s and then the West Point Pepperell.

The interest in textile mills flourished after WWI when materials became more plentiful. During the war, all textiles were devoted to the war effort. Major S.M. Ransopher set up the mill and brought with him R. B. Vickers and Howard McKenna with experience from textile mills in New England to help him run the mill. Both Vickers and McKenna became lifetime citizens of NB.

In 1929 Planters and Merchants declared bankruptcy and closed for about a month. In receivership, it was operated by Col. Ralph Durkee. The mill reorganized in August of 1931 under the name of New Braunfels Textile Mills. The William Iselin Co. of New York plus local citizens purchased stock in the plant. One of the new directors, Harry Wagenfuehr, sold stock locally. Reopening the mill was a real boost to New Braunfels.

In 1977 Herb Skoog from Radio Station KGNB-KNBT and the Sophienburg Reflections programs interviewed well-known business man in town, Haney Elliott Knox, about the history of the textile mill. Most of you know that Elliott Knox Blvd., which used to be Hwy. 81, was named after him. Active politically, Knox was elected mayor of NB in 1967. He and McKenna both served as chairmen of the McKenna Memorial Hospital.

H.E. Knox came to New Braunfels right after graduating from Texas Tech University in 1935 with a degree in textile chemistry. Knox said the primary reason for Tech’s offering this degree was the large cotton and wool crops in Texas at the time. Walter Dillard was running the mill and Howard McKenna was plant superintendent. Knox began as a laborer in the dye house at $12 a week.

In those early ’30s, patterns of the materials were determined by artists or customers. Styles changed rapidly and there was always a spring and fall line. There were about 300 employees. Over the life of the mill, thousands of families had textile mill connections.

After WWII the mill was expanded. They even started a retail operation about 1946. Bluebonnet Ginghams was the trade name and principal product. The operation moved into the Dacron business about 1955. Polyester, nylon and cotton blend changed the original product to a blend. Another change was Sanforizing ,the mechanical process of shrinking goods, thereby getting rid of the pre-wash of the past.

Big customers were Montgomery Ward, Sears, and J.C. Penney. In 1932 H. Dittlinger Roller Mills began sacking their flour in Bluebonnet Gingham. The sacks were in many colors that could be made into all sorts of articles of clothing. Because of the high quality of the cotton, these pieces of clothing made good “hand-me-downs”.

The bridge and the mill are a history lesson in themselves. From the center of the Faust St. Bridge, look up river and see the dam leading to the mill. Above the dam, submerged by the higher water was the settlers’ crossing at the foot of Nacogdoches St. The dam changed the Guadalupe forever.

The textile mill dam during its construction. A.C. Moeller got the contract for the dam and the electric generator F building.

Google Maps: Faust Street Bridge

By Myra Lee Adams Goff

In 1867 when cotton was “king”, Andrew Jackson Hunter bought a tract of land in eastern Comal County for the purpose of raising cotton. He lived nearby on York Creek. In 1880 when the IGN Railroad came through that area, the small settlement was called Hunter. As you drive out past Gruene, you’re on Hunter Road and one of the oldest businesses in Hunter is Riley’s Tavern.

There were about 60 people in the settlement of Hunter when its namesake lived there. Businesses sprang up. About 10 years after the railroad came through, Gustavus A. Schleyer opened a general store, post office and saloon. There was a blacksmith, a church, a barbershop, meat market and school. The population soon grew to 200.

Andrew Jackson Hunter died in 1883 and his acreage and holdings were divided among his children. In 1894 Hunter’s daughter and son-in-law, Edward M. House, organized the Hunter Cotton Gin Co. and went into business with Harry Landa of New Braunfels. Six mule wagon teams hauled cottonseed from the Hunter Gin to the Landa Cotton Oil Mill on Landa Street. Eventually Landa bought out House’s interest in the gin and the House connection to the community of Hunter was no more.

Let’s look more into the background of Edward Mandel House. His father, Thomas William House, was a wealthy landowner from Houston who also owned sugar plantations and was eventually mayor of Houston.

As a young man, Edward House went to boarding school and was always interested in politics. He entered Cornell University and stayed there until his father became ill. He went home to Houston to take care of him. When his father died, House married Louise Hunter of Hunter, Texas. The couple honeymooned in Europe and then returned to Houston to supervise the extensive landholdings of the family.

In 1885 the couple moved to Austin to be nearer the cotton plantations. In Austin, House entered the political scene and helped several governors achieve the governorship. He wintered in New York and gradually moved to the east permanently. He became involved in national politics by participating in the presidential campaigns of Woodrow Wilson and later Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Hunter died in 1938. (Source: Handbook of Texas Online, Charles E. Neu)

But let’s get back to the small town of Hunter. When another railroad, the MKT, built a line through the area in 1901, the populations was still about 200. When the cotton industry declined, businesses began closing. By 1947 both railroad depots closed. The little one-room school was consolidated with the NBISD and the final blow was the closing of the post office in 1953.

Riley’s Tavern was alternately a house and tavern. It was at one time Galloway Saloon, and then the home of the Bernardino Sanchez family. Along the way, the house and tavern was rented to the Riley family and then finally sold to James Curtis Riley in 1942.

A tavern or saloon is a “beer joint” and Prohibition dealt it a mighty blow. In 1933 when prohibition ended, 17 year old J.C. Riley drove to Austin with his uncle in a Model T to get a permit for a liquor license. They arrived early and waited on the steps of the capitol for the doors to open. They were the very first in Texas to get a permit to get a liquor license.

Some of you may remember that Hays County was a “dry” county and all up and down the county line between Hays and “wet” Comal County were saloons. Riley’s Tavern was active. Once Hays voted “wet” in 1977, business was not as active.

When Riley died in 1991, his wife sold the saloon to Rick and Donna Wilson. Eleven years ago Riley’s Tavern was purchased by long-time Hays County resident, Joel Hofmann. His clientele are sometimes third generation customers. The tavern is open seven days a week and boasts a band every night.

Hofmann is working towards an application for a Texas Historical Commission marker for Hunter and Riley’s Tavern. Cotton is gone, the cotton gin is no more, the school is gone, the depots are gone, but Riley’s Tavern lives on. York Creek trickles along through Hunter.

Seventeen year old J.C. Riley and his uncle waited on the capitol steps for the doors to open. 1933. Artist: Patricia S. Arnold.

By Myra Lee Adams Goff

After writing the column about the digging of the Comal Canal by William Hunter Meriwether, much personal information has come to light about this man about whom we knew so little, but was so important to the development of New Braunfels. Refresh your memory in the sophienburg.com website for Sept. 6, 2011.

Through the Internet, Joy Alexander, who was responsible for the initial research about William Hunter Meriwether, made several connections with the Meriwether family. They were just as interested in what Meriwether did in NB, as we were in what he did before he came here.

Meriwether, (this is the correct spelling) nicknamed “Billy Fish” descended from families active in the American Revolution. The family hails from Albemarle County, Virginia. It was there that William Douglass Meriwether (father of William Hunter) bought 500 acres on the Rivanna River and constructed a large merchant mill and sawmill. He built a toll bridge and dam across the Rivanna. In 1840 the father and son greatly increased the business of the area by erecting the Charlottesville Factory for carding and weaving cotton and wool, sawing timber and grinding flour.  (Source: Rick Britton; “The Charlottesville Woolen Mills, Clothing a Nation”) The elder Meriwether died in 1845 and the business was sold.

Now look at what we know about William Hunter. He came to NB in 1846 and bought the area later known as Landa Park. He had married Frances Poindexter from a prominent family in 1821. Together they had two babies, both of whom either died at birth or as infants. There is no record of when Frances died except “before 1850”. She must have died or they may have divorced before he came to NB. In 1856, he married his cousin “Kate” Witing Meriwether from Virginia. She was 18 and he was 63.

An interesting story from the New York Weekly, Nov. 28, 1857:

A collision between the steamer Opelousas and the steamer Galveston. Opelousas came out of Berwick Bay and the Galveston out of Galveston, Texas. The Galveston struck the Opelousas midship causing her to sink in 20 minutes, losing several lives. The Galveston received little damage and all the passengers were saved. Listed on the ship list of the Opalousas were WH Meriwether and lady who gave his home as San Antonio. The freight was totally lost and had headed for the ports in Galveston and Indianola. From there it was destined to the Texas interior. About 300 barrels of pork, flour, corn, sugar, molasses, and coffee for Meriwether were headed for San Antonio, Victoria, Corpus Christi, Lavaca, Matagorda, and New Braunfels.

Now in 1859 Meriwether sold his holdings here in NB to Joseph Landa, and he and his wife moved to Shelby, Tennessee. In his will written May 15, 1861, he confessed to having much pain and leaving everything to his wife “Kate”. He died May 21, 1861, in Tennessee.

Now here’s an interesting side-story: The family does not know where he was buried, but in the Presbyterian Cemetery in Lynchburg, Va. there is a marble shaft 10 ft. high with the following inscription: “To my husband William Hunter Meriwether; Thou art gone, but not forgotten; At Rest”.  To the left and right of the stone are two small stones, one with a dove with “N.D. Meriwether, age 16 months”, and the other “J.M. Meriwether” with a rosebud on it. The mystery is “Who were these children? Perhaps the children that he had with his first wife. Did the second wife move them or him there?

Our William Hunter Meriwether and the famous Meriwether Lewis were first cousins, once removed. In other words, Thomas Meriwether was the grandfather of Meriwether Lewis and the g-grandfather of William Hunter Meriwether. Meriwether Lewis was commander of the Lewis and Clark Exploration of the Missouri and Colorado Rivers from 1804-06. He was appointed by Pres. Thomas Jefferson. A mystery surrounds his death in 1809. He was either killed or committed suicide in Natchez Trace, Tenn. on his way back from Louisiana to Washington.

In my home office I have a sign reading “Circa Trova” meaning “Seek and you will find”. Wow, did we ever!

Meriwether Lewis as head of the Lewis and Clark Exploration of the Missouri and Colorado Rivers, 1804-06. Patricia S. Arnold, artist.