By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

On February 16, 1963, San Antonio Express and News staff writer Jerry Deal ran a story in the San Antonio Express and News about Laredo, Texas. This is an out take: “… the friendly city of Laredo is not only the oldest independent town established in Texas (1755) — it is one of the most famous. The only Texas city to have been under seven flags.”

Laredo’s seventh flag was the flag of the Republic of the Rio Grande. This republic, fighting against Mexico, lasted from January 1840 to November 1840.

For those not blessed enough to be born-and-raised in Texas, Texas has had the flags of six nations fly over it. An unknown author penned, “It has not been a simple plot that has unfolded to produce the Texas of today…(one) that brought a succession of six flags while sovereignty over Texas changed eight times….” (yes, we used to speak and write this way even without AI).

The sequence of the six flags follows: 1. Spain (1519-1685) and (1690-1821), 2. France (1685-1690), 3. Mexico (1821-1836), 4. Republic of Texas (1836-1845), 5. United States of America (1846-1861) and (1865 to present) and 6. Confederate States of America (1861-1865).

Upon reading the SA Express and News article, Oscar Haas, local NB historian and record-keeper, promptly informed New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce Manager Tom Purdum of a major oversight — New Braunfels had also had a seventh flag. He asked Mr. Purdum to address the egregious statement in the SA Express and gave him “ammunition” to fight with. Tom Purdum wasted no time in sending staff writer Jerry Deal a short concise letter three days later (Feb 19).

“This is in reference to your article on Laredo appearing in the Saturday Feb. 16 edition of the San Antonio Express. We wish to offer you a correction concerning your statement that Laredo is the only Texas city to have been under seven flags. If you will refer to an article appearing in the San Antonio Express Monday, July 2, 1962, entitled “New Braunfels Once Under Austrian Flag”, you will notice there are two cities boasting seven banners in their history. Also, New Braunfels is probably the only Texas city founded by a prince of a foreign power.”

Brilliant gentleman. Referencing the paper to its own published article — an article which states that Prince Carl of Braunfels raised the Austrian flag up on Sophienburg Hill on April 27, 1845. Why the Austrian flag? A German flag could not be found among the immigrants. Why? Because a unified Germany did not exist until 1848; before that, it was just a collection of independent states. My question is who brought an Austrian flag with them?

But Oscar knew even more about that ceremony. The black and yellow Austrian flag was hoisted by Prince Carl under cannon salutes with lots of pomp and circumstance, including a banquet for his friends. Seems the new immigrants had different ideas. Those in opposition to the reminder of a feudal system they had chosen to forget, met at the newly plotted-out Main Plaza at the same time to hoist a flag of their own — the flag of the Republic of Texas. They also formed their own citizen-based militia to protect the new settlement from possible Native American attacks. It didn’t take these new Texans long to feel the pull of this great state and the power of new freedoms.

Did Jerry Deal respond to Mr. Purdum’s letter? I didn’t find a response per say. I did find another article published a year later in the San Antonio Express on Monday, Feb 17, 1964. It is almost the same article about the history of Laredo, and its title, “Texas Seventh Flag Flew Briefly for Rio Republic” didn’t bode well for our miffed letter-writing townsmen. In fact, it seemed that the San Antonio Express ignored the letter. But, as I read through the article several times, I noticed that the words, “the only Texas city to have been under seven flags” had been omitted. I guess they did sort of get the point.

Now I know you will be saying, “But NB has only been here since 1845, so really only four flags have flown over it.” Yes, that is true, but if Laredo can claim seven flags, so can we. As part of Texas, the land we love living on has been under the flags of seven nations.

Thank you, Oscar and Tom, for standing up for our fair city of New Braunfels and letting the San Antonio Express, nay, the world know that we, too, have lived under seven flags. Proud to be a Neu Braunfelser! Proud to be TEXAN!

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives, #0009 Oscar Haas collection.

“Around the Sophienburg” is published every other weekend in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung.

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By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

This is the story of two mark­ers. One was put up at Co­mal Springs in 1968, and the other was placed out­side the yard of Franz and Mary Joyce Coreth on Hwy 46 (it now stands in front of Chick-fil-A). They both mark the lo­ca­tion of Mis­sion Nues­tra Señora de Guadalupe.

So the ques­tion is, why? Some back­ground on the mis­sion is needed to un­der­stand.

Very ba­si­cally, the es­tab­lish­ment of the mis­sions in Texas be­gan in the 1630s. Spain needed to hold the land, and they wanted to Chris­tian­ize the na­tive peo­ples. Fran­cis­can monks were tasked to set up and over­see mis­sions across Texas which would gather the mi­gra­tory tribes into per­ma­nent set­tle­ments with the hope of con­vert­ing them to Chris­tian­ity, as well as teach them agri­cul­tural tech­niques and trades.

Spain usu­ally sent sol­diers along with the Fran­cis­can mis­sion­ar­ies to es­tab­lish pre­sidios (forts) for the pro­tec­tion of the mis­sions and set­tle­ments. The pre­sidios and the mis­sions were hardly com­pat­i­ble, both with dif­fer­ing agen­das. Trou­ble be­tween the sol­diers and the Na­tive Amer­i­cans led to fric­tion be­tween the mis­sion­ar­ies and the sol­diers. The monks ab­horred the abuse and an­tag­o­nis­tic mea­sures the sol­diers used against the na­tive peo­ple they were try­ing to be­friend.

Our mis­sion, Nues­tra Señora de Guadalupe was born out of this strug­gle.

Three mis­sions were es­tab­lished on the San Xavier (San Gabriel) River in Milam County in the 1740s: San Fran­cisco Xavier de Hor­c­a­sitas (1747), San Ilde­fonzo (1748) and Nues­tra Señora de la Can­de­laria (1749). These were re­ferred to as the San Xavier mis­sions. The pre­sidio San Fran­cisco Xavier de Gigedo was set up to guard all three mis­sions.

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween these mis­sions and the neigh­bor­ing pre­sidio broke down over the mis­treat­ment of the Na­tive Amer­i­cans. The con­flict went on un­re­solved for sev­eral years, cul­mi­nat­ing in the mur­der of Friar Juan Jose Ganzábal and a civil­ian at the Can­dalaria Mis­sion in Feb­ru­ary 1752. Sol­diers, Na­tive Amer­i­cans and civil­ians were gath­ered and held for ques­tion­ing. Of­fi­cial pro­ceed­ings held at Pre­sidio San An­to­nio de Be­jar (the fort pro­tect­ing the San An­to­nio mis­sions) took place from May 13 to June 14, but reached no real judg­ment and with­out con­vic­tions or any­one pun­ished.

By 1753, the San Xavier mis­sions were full of fear and faced the added tragedy of drought which led to bad wa­ter and “pests” which brought sick­ness; the mis­sion­ar­ies were plead­ing to be re­lo­cated to the San Mar­cos springs. San Ilde­fonzo no longer had priests or Na­tive Amer­i­cans and Can­de­laria was left with only one friar. San Fran­cisco Xavier man­aged to hold onto 70 con­verted Na­tive Amer­i­cans and one friar. Even the pre­sidio cap­tain was re­quest­ing to move to the San Saba River.

In 1755, mis­sion­ar­ies and re­main­ing Na­tive Amer­i­cans fled with­out Church or Span­ish sanc­tion to the San Mar­cos River. Some of the na­tive peo­ple moved to the San An­to­nio de Valero mis­sion (Alamo): Co­cos, Xaraname, Te­jas, Bidai and Or­co­quiza tribes were among them. The May­eye peo­ple re­fused to go to San An­to­nio and stayed with the friar of San Fran­cisco Xavier at San Mar­cos. He re­quested and was given per­mis­sion to es­tab­lish a mis­sion on the Guadalupe River. He also re­quested and was given per­mis­sion to not have a pre­sidio but civil­ians “of good fam­ily” to help pro­tect the mis­sion.

In 1756, the mis­sion San Fran­cisco Xavier de Hor­c­a­sitas was re­lo­cated and reestab­lished in New Braun­fels as Mis­sion Nues­tra Señora de Guadalupe. The site cho­sen had been scouted out by sol­diers and priests from San An­to­nio and de­scribed in records:

There are sev­eral large springs flow­ing from a rocky hill nearby, and ad­van­tages for an ir­ri­ga­tion ditch on the west side of the river a short dis­tance from the springs; there is ex­cel­lent lands for crops, plen­ti­ful tim­ber, pas­ture lands, and the ridge north of the stream is thought to con­tain min­er­als.

The new mis­sion was vis­ited in 1757 and said to be com­prised of a small mis­sion build­ing (most likely of wood con­struc­tion) with two fri­ars, 41 Na­tive Amer­i­cans (May­eye) of which 27 were bap­tized, and sev­eral huts in which lived four civil­ian fam­i­lies.

At this point, in­for­ma­tion on Nues­tra Señora lit­er­ally van­ishes from records. All that is ref­er­enced is a re­quest of the fri­ars for the re­turn of San Fran­cisco Xavier’s equip­ment (6 bells and some uten­sils val­ued at $1804.50. The equip­ment even­tu­ally went to the new San Saba mis­sion. There is also a state­ment in 1762, that says at the time of the San Saba mis­sion’s de­struc­tion in March 1758, Mis­sion Nues­tra Señora de Guadalupe had al­ready been aban­doned due to its in­abil­ity to sus­tain it­self against mul­ti­ple en­e­mies.

Know­ing all of that, we can re­turn to the dilemma of two mark­ers. Based on the de­tailed de­scrip­tion of the site in 1756, it seems the short-lived mis­sion could have been down by the Co­mal Springs (1968 marker). And al­though the mis­sion name in­cludes “Guadalupe” we need to re­mem­ber that early Span­ish ex­plor­ers of­ten called the Co­mal, from the springs to the con­flu­ence, the Guadalupe. This seems to be a good fit.

The 1936 marker up on Texas Highway 46 claims Nues­tra Señora to be near or on Mis­sion Hill. Was it likely that they would es­tab­lish a set­tle­ment on the hill and travel through Pan­ther Canyon to Co­mal Springs? Would they have used the spring at Alt­gelt’s pond be­low Mis­sion Hill? Per­haps Mis­sion Hill held some sort of sig­nif­i­cance as the high­est point? Could it have been named be­cause of its just over a mile lo­ca­tion from the mis­sion down by Co­mal Springs? It seems a less likely lo­ca­tion.

Also, who gave the hill that name: Na­tive Amer­i­cans? Span­ish? Texas Rangers? The early Ger­man im­mi­grants called it by that name and there are two maps that rec­og­nize it as Mis­sion Hill from 1878. Af­ter scour­ing the So­phien­burg Archives and talk­ing to archivists at the Texas Gen­eral Land Of­fice and at the Span­ish Col­lec­tion of the Bexar County Archives, hard, prov­able ev­i­dence of the lit­tle mis­sion’s lo­ca­tion just has­n’t been found.

So, the mys­tery around Nues­tra Señora de Guadalupe will re­main — a mis­sion lost but not for­got­ten.

Sources: Roemer’s Texas in 1848 by Ferdinand Roemer; “Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century” by Herbert E. Bolton, “Proceedings Year of 1752” by Don Torivio de Vrrutia (Bexar County Archives); Handbook of Texas; Texas Almanac 1936; Texas Historical Commission; Texas General Land Office map collection; Sophienburg Museum & Archives map collection and Liebscher and Haas manuscript collections; https://www/texasalmanac.com/articles/the-spanish-mission-in-texas.

“Around the Sophienburg” is published every other weekend in the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung.

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