Tribute to Luise Ervendberg

By Myra Lee Adams Goff Hey you NB history buffs out there, can you name some early founders? OK- Prince Carl, von Coll, Zink, Ervendberg, Lindheimer, Koester, Seele. Good. Now name some of the early women. Stumped? That’s because there is so little written about them. Recently I ran across a tribute to Luise Ervendberg, […]

Genealogy

Genealogy A-Z Names FH # SURNAME Title Ref No A-08 AHRENS Descendents of Heinrich Conrad Ahrens GS0134 A-01 ALTGELT Reminiscence of Altgelt Family R0021.003 A-02 ALTWEIN Desc of Johann Gotthult Altwein & Wilhelmine Quant R0773.001 A-03 ALVES Friedrich Alves Family History R0338.001 A-07 ANDREWS Charles H. Andrews Descendants R0624.001 A-04 ARMKE Friedrich Armke Family Journal […]

Lindheimer’s Texas

Lindheimer’s Texas Lindheimer’s Texas highlights the contributions of Ferdinand J. Lindheimer, the Father of Texas Botany. This immigrant from Frankfurt, Germany, lived and collected in Central Texas and pioneered the sciences throughout Texas along with some lesser-known 19th C naturalists. In his book, Naturalists of the Frontier, Samuel Wood Geiser, chair of the Biology Department […]

Weather reports from New Braunfels

By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is pull up the weather app on my phone. I want to know temperature and precipitation possibilities in order to get dressed appropriately. Humans have always watched the weather. Where to settle, when to plant and harvest, what […]

Arriving Germans found native tribes in area they settled

By Myra Lee Adams Goff — Prince Carl in the diary of his sojourn to Texas writes about sleeping on the ground, using a pistol case as a pillow. Even before the emigrants arrived, he feared an Indian attack. He recalled a patriotic drinking song called “Deutschland Hoch.” Rewriting his own words to this song, […]

Early German immigrants faced tough times at Christmas

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 conditions beginning in 1846. The […]

Religious needs of the colonists

The articles of the Verein zum Schutz detscher Einwandrer in Texas (also known as the Society of Noblemen or the Adelsverein) required that the spiritual needs of the immigrants were to be met. The calendar and customs of church life were an important part of the Germanic culture. After their arrival and founding of New […]

The story of the orphan photo album

By Tara V. Kohlenberg — This past weekend I attended a reunion of my husband’s family. I don’t know everyone and I don’t know the family history, so I found myself gravitating to “the old ones.” They are the ones who know the names of the faces in photos from long ago, as well as […]

Four phases of education in rural Comal County

By Alton J. Rahe — Education was of paramount importance to the German immigrants. Basic education classes were started for their youth in the more populated areas soon after their arrival to Texas. However, this was not the case for rural settlers where more formal education was slower in coming. There are four phases of formal […]

This next Tuesday, March 21, is New Braunfels Founder’s Day

(Published in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung on March 19, 2017) Today, March 19, 2017, marks 172 years since Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels woke up to a snow storm in Texas. He was camping at the Guadalupe River getting ready to look over the land that he had just purchased for the Adelsverein emigration project. The […]