By Myra Lee Adams Goff The year is 1849, just five years after the first emigrants arrived on the Texas coast. Hermann Seele has been invited to spend December 26th with Pastor L.C. Ervendberg, his wife Luise, their five children, and the 19 orphans left parentless by the devastating immigration

By Myra Lee Adams Goff The Sophienburg Museum and Archives are decorated for the holidays. The foyer features a doll tree and a Scherenschnitte tree. Two displays in the museum, the General Store and the Cabin have old toys. Christmas memories abound with all of us, but have you thought about

By Myra Lee Adams Goff Just imagine that you are strolling through an old German village with beautiful houses and stores surrounded by the snow-covered Alps. The Christmas season has begun and shoppers are rushing around in the Marktplatz. Sounds like fun? That’s exactly what you can experience at the

By Myra Lee Adams Goff Sometimes we find things stuck away in basements, attics, or sheds that look like they have value, but we don’t know why so we just hang on to them. That’s what happened to Karl Zipp, when about 25 years ago he came across a stack

By Myra Lee Adams Goff This column is now 16 months old and this story is the “wurst” story ever. For those of you who just got off the boat, “wurst” means sausage and sausage means Wurstfest! This Friday Wurstfest will begin its 40th year in the giant building called Wursthalle which according to

By Myra Lee Adams Goff Looking through a cookbook is a little like visiting with the cooks who wrote it. You start to remember past holidays, birthdays and just plain fun days. I visit my mother, my grandmother, and my aunts. My mother wrote notes next to her recipe collection

By Myra Lee Adams Goff Long before we had convenience stores in New Braunfels, we had the first drive-in grocery store in Texas right at the intersection of one of the busiest spots in town. It was Warnecke’s Drive In and it was located where the Union Street Station now is

By Myra Lee Adams Goff Next week will be the annual Comal County Fair which had its first event in 1894. When I was doing the research at the Sophienburg for the book It’s Fair Time for the Fair Association, there was one particular era in its development that intrigued me. It was the period

By Myra Lee Adams Goff Linking the past to the present, the New Braunfels Schuetzen Verein (shooting club) will hold its prize shoot on September 23rd, thefirst time in its new location off of Hwy 46 (next to Dietz’s Rifle Range).According to President Bill Wimberley, prizes are for the best

By Myra Lee Adams Goff The beautiful two-story New Braunfels Independent School District’s Administration Building on Mill St. brings back high school memories, especially in August. Shortly after Hermann Seele taught school here under the elm trees beneath the Sophienburg hill, the city took over the responsibility of educating its children. In 1853 the