1850s Mill Street house being restored

By Myra Lee Adams Goff What’s happening to the old house at 230 W. Mill St? I found out. Jeff and Denise Mund have bought the old Georg Pfeuffer house and they are restoring it. Records show that this is the sixth time that there have been major additions and renovations. Ownership of the lot […]

Seele’s tale of murder gruesome

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” available at Sophie’s Shop. Here’s the background: Christof Moeschen, born in 1806 in Thuringia, came to Texas […]

So, what exactly is under Canyon Lake?

By Myra Lee Goff What is under about 100 feet of water in Canyon Lake? Or better still, what would still be there if the lake had not been constructed? I started looking and found out: ranch land, farm land, trees, cemeteries, Guadalupe River and the site of two very small communities, Hancock and Cranes […]

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 […]

History is everywhere

By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — This past March I was in Macedonia, Greece with my eldest daughter. No matter where we walked the ground was literally littered with history — bits of marble, colored tesserae from mosaics, tiny pieces of bronze and always, always pieces of pottery. History was everywhere. I remember going to elementary […]

Names of places tell a cultural story

By Keva Hoffmann Boardman – I discovered something interesting the other day. In a 1954 New Braunfels Herald column called, “The Melting Pot,” the writer, Gordon Rose, discusses the names of nearby localities known by both German/Anglo and Mexican citizens. The names these two cultures chose give us insight to how people thought about things. […]

Charcoal burners of the Guadalupe

By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — A year ago, I alluded to a book, Charcoal and Charcoal Burners, published in 1950, by Fritz and Emilie Toepperwein of Boerne. From around 1870 until 1919, the name Charcoal City was given to a region of land in the Guadalupe River Valley that extended from Sisterdale (Kendall County) on […]

Where exactly is Comaltown?

By Myra Lee Adams Goff — To know the history of New Braunfels is to know the history of Comaltown. This is somewhat true but not entirely. In 1845, there were two towns, separated only by the Comal River‘s original channel which basically runs from Landa Park Lake between the golf course and Schlitterbahn. Let’s […]

Hidden in plain sight

By Tara Voigt Kohlenberg — Almost everywhere we go in New Braunfels, there is history hidden in plain sight. Perhaps it is something we drive by daily, but when asked about it, can’t recall where it is. Perhaps it is a building that looks like any other built within the last twenty years, except it […]

Affordable housing in the 1850s

By Tara Voigt Kohlenberg — Judging by recent headlines, good, affordable housing in the Austin-San Antonio area is hard to come by, especially in New Braunfels. As is my usual, I was on a mission looking for something else when I ran across this excerpt from the Herald Zeitung. It is a portion of a […]