Proclaim liberty throughout the land
By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — It was a comfortable warm evening, Valentine’s Day, 1976, in fact. I was one of a group of NBHS seniors sitting on the hoods of several cars parked in front of Ortiz’s Bar across from the Brauntex. We had been told that the Freedom Train was making its way from […]
New Braunfels’ Fourth of July celebrations, then and now
(This is a special edition of Around the Sophienburg for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.) By Tara V. Kohlenberg — Today, July 4, 2026, marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. America’s 250th birthday. New Braunfels has celebrated America’s birthday for 170 years. The celebrations have changed […]
Statues on Main Plaza honor soldiers’ service
By Myra Lee Adams Goff — The first July 4 celebration in New Braunfels took place in 1845, just four months after the first emigrants crossed the Guadalupe into what would be the “Neu Heimat” (New home). A lot has happened historically since that first Independence celebration. For one thing, two statues were placed on […]
Last call for liberty
By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — New Braunfels citizens have never been shy in expressing their opinions in print or in demonstration. No other subject was more hotly contested than the issue of prohibition. In December 1917, the 18th Amendment – the Prohibition Amendment – was passed. It banned the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating […]
River Road reverie
By Tara V. Kohlenberg — The Guadalupe River is always there. It is life-sustaining water. It rages. It slows to a trickle. It calls us to fish, to play, or to watch sunlight dance off its surface as it rolls on toward the coast. The river beckons us to gather at its edge to make […]
Fireworks and pharmacists
By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — The first ever 4th of July celebration was held in Philadelphia on July 4, 1777; it included an exhibition which began and ended with 13 rockets — one for each state of the new United States of America. New Braunfels’ first July 4th celebration was in 1846, after Texas had […]
New Braunfels history for a rainy day
By Simon V. Simek — Considering the rainy days we had last week after such a long dry spell, we thought it relevant to help tell the history of New Braunfels’ eternally erratic weather, and our long-standing feud with rushing water. Diving into the archives, we found some tremendous accounts of how our predecessors fared […]
2026 Myra Lee Adams Goff Scholarship Award
2026 Myra Lee Adams Goff Scholarship Award Essay – by Jaelynn Davidson The Texas Hill Country was a stunning and dangerous arena of cultural conflict in the mid-19th century. To the Texas nobility of the Adelsverein, it was a fantasy of a “New Germany”; to the German peasants who arrived on the shores of the […]
Remembering a time of war, air raid drills, victory gardens and sacrifice
I really haven’t lived through a major war, but my mom and dad did. I have heard their stories and they are very different because Mom lived on a ranch/farm north of Fredericksburg and Dad lived in New Braunfels. Myra Lee Adams Goff grew up with my dad and she described those times through the […]
True Crime Series: Murder of a First Founder
By Myra Lee Adams Goff — “Have you heard? Old Squire Moeschen is dead!” So begins Hermann Seele’s narrative of a murder here in New Braunfels in 1855. Seele spun this true, gruesome tale in his book, Die Cypress, which is available at Sophie’s Shop. Here’s the background: Christof Moeschen, born in 1806 in Thuringia, […]
