By Myra Lee Adams Goff

Hermann Spiess became the third Commissioner General of the Adelsverein, following Prince Carl and John Meusebach. Spiess had a more exciting life than the other two. Why don’t we know a lot about him? Why don’t we have a Spiess Street? For certain, he was on the Adelsverein’s slippery slope downward in Texas. There was only one more Commissioner General after him, L. Bene and then the whole Adelsverein folded.

Meusebach, as second Commissioner General, tried to resign several times to no avail. The Adelsverein wouldn’t let him. Finally, because of many failures of the original plan for Texas, the Adelsverein accepted Meusebach’s resignation and decided to give up on the whole Texas affair. But they still needed someone to close out their business affairs in Texas. Hermann Spiess was born in Offenbach-Hesse Darmstadt, Germany in 1818. The Adelsverein chose Spiess, who was familiar with Texas because he had traveled to Texas earlier in 1845 and ‘46 before returning back to Germany. It was at the time when he returned to Germany that he became acquainted with the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants (Adelsverein). In July of 1847 he traveled to Texas to become the third Commissioner General.

When Spiess arrived in New Braunfels, for the first 20 months, he lived in the boarding houses of Holekamp and Thomae. Soon in 1849 he bought land three miles above New Braunfels in the Waco Springs area on the west bank of the Guadalupe River. Here he set up a sawmill and cypress shingle mill near the area between Slumber Falls Camp and the first crossing. In 1852 he leased these mills to Elijah Hanis and Erwin Braune.

In 1849 Spiess, along with Rev. Louis Ervendberg and L. Bene, established the Western Texas Orphan Asylum near what is now Gruene. At this time his sister, Louise, was staying with him on an extended visit at Waco Springs.

Spiess’ wife Lena had quite an interesting background herself. She was captured by Comanches in Mexico. Dr. Ferdinand Herff supposedly removed a cataract from the eye of an Indian chief and he was given this six-year-old girl as a thank you gift. Spiess adopted the child to take care of her.

A story in the New Braunfels Herald on November 7, 1968, quotes Oscar Haas as finding a paper in the Spiess files noting that a group of settlers meeting with Comanches had two captive children, one being Lena. She was placed in the care of a housekeeper of the Coreth family. Quoting Lena, the article says she earned the love and sympathy of the women of the house. Spiess took Lena to live with him and his sister, Louise.

When Louise left to go back to Germany, Lena was taken to stay at the Ervendberg’s orphanage that was set up as a home for the orphaned children of the colony. The paper said Lena was happy there, improved her German and enjoyed the company of children her age. In 1852 she returned to Spiess’ home at Waco Springs where they married. Several accounts of this story had several different dates and ages for Lena. It’s not definite how old she was as different accounts give different dates.

This next story relating to Spiess upholds the statement “Truth is stranger than fiction”. Spiess was appointed Commissioner General and the brief period before he accepted this position, when there was no Commissioner General in New Braunfels, a man named Dr. Schubert took advantage of the situation and announced that he was now the Commissioner General. He had been appointed by Meusebach as the Colonial Director for Fredericksburg, but due to many complaints, was removed from that position by Meusebach. Schubert now made his way to Nassau Plantation in Fayette County, the farm that belonged to the Adelsverein. This property was purchased with the idea that it would be used to raise crops to sustain the emigrants in the colonies.

Schubert felt that he would become more powerful if he ruled from Nassau Plantation. He surrounded himself with men of questionable character and Spiess heard stories of wild parties and abuse of slaves going on at the farm. He decided to take back the farm that Schubert claimed he had leased. Spiess and several men attacked the occupants at night. They left New Braunfels and hid out on the outskirts of the farm. Schubert got wind of the coming attack and he and his men were prepared for a fight.

In the end, there was a shoot-out, two persons were killed, one on each side. On Spiess’ side, the one killed was the artist Caspar Rohrdorf and on the other was a friend of Dr. Schubert. Spiess and his crew had to leave without the success of taking back Nassau Plantation.

This was not the end of the story. Shortly thereafter, Spiess was accused of murder. He took flight and hid for months in the area of the upper Guadalupe. Finally when things calmed down in Fayette County, Spiess appeared in the court in LaGrange where he was tried and acquitted. Schubert’s true identity was revealed as Frederick Armand Strubberg and he was not a doctor, but a cigar maker instead. Some think that this revelation helped acquit Spiess. The Nassau plantation was eventually claimed by creditors and disposed of by court action. Schubert, or Strubberg, returned to Germany where he wrote novels about Texas and sold the artist Rohrbach’s paintings which he had confiscated.

Because of bad health, Hermann and Lena Spiess and seven children moved to Missouri and then to California. Spiess died in the 1880s and Lena about 1910.

New Braunfelser Margie Hitzfelder was born on the property that at one time belonged to Spiess and now belongs to Bob Pfeuffer. Her father, Hilmar Kraft, worked for Bob Gode who owned the property. Gode was Pfeuffer’s grandfather.

Nothing is left at Waco Springs indicating that Hermann Spiess had ever been there except cypress trees.

The post Hermann Spiess follows Meusebach as commissioner general appeared first on Sophies Shop.

Seldom do individuals have clubs or anything named after them. A person becomes famous because of something outstanding that they have done for the advancement of society. All you historians out there and those that have a passing interest in history know the name Ferdinand Jacob Lindheimer. This extremely interesting person has been the object of my curiosity for quite a while.

Lindheimer, known as the “Father of Texas Botany”, has 38 plants containing his name. Several organizations in New Braunfels have his name as their chapter names, and his picture is larger than life on a downtown mural. He is buried in the Comal Cemetery and his Texas Centennial headstone was given by the State of Texas. What did he actually do for the community? Let’s look first at his background:

Ferdinand Jacob Lindheimer was born the 21^st of May, 1801, in Frankfurt am Maine in Germany. He came from a wealthy family and was educated at the Prussian University at Bonn. At age 25 he left the university to teach at a boys’ school. At this school in 1832, a student riot occurred. At that time there was much dissatisfaction in the way German states were governed, especially among the young people. In this case, the government just closed down the school and the teachers were asked to leave the area. Lindheimer and other educated men decided to emigrate to the United States.

Eight men of high intellect and high education level migrated to a farm called Belleview Farm in Illinois. These men, including Lindheimer, soon tired of the life of idleness and headed south, bound for New Orleans with the idea of coming to Texas . He then boarded a ship and eventually landed on the Mexican coast at Vera Cruz where he started botanizing (collecting plants) in a big way. He stayed there for 18 months.

Lindheimer then involved himself in the Texas War of independence. He enlisted in April, 1836, and was discharged December 1837. His certificate of discharge describes him as a teacher, 5’8” tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. After this military stint, he bought a small farm outside of Houston, but in his own words, ‘was a failure at farming”. Farming and botanizing are two different things and he preferred botanizing.

In 1841 Lindheimer began his correspondence with well-known Illinois botanist Dr. George Englemann. This acquaintance became a lifetime of selling plants to Englemann, who as a professor and doctor, had the means to publish the information that Lindheimer sent to him. Lindheimer showed from the start that he had a keen ability to collect, describe in words and even illustrate plants. A letter to Englemann mentions a woman in Lindheimer’s life. She is not named. He calls a person named Ann his child. No evidence of a child has been found in records. There are no birth records. Could Ann be the woman?

Lindheimer met Prince Carl at Industry not far from Houston. He decided to join the Adelsverein. In that group was Rev. Louis Ervendberg and their friendship and interest in botany lasted their lifetimes.

The Adelsverein granted Lindheimer a large section of land for the services performed for that organization. Now he could botanize full time. The Lindheimer house that you see on Comal St. is on the site of the original log cabin. Maps show a large area around this area called the Botanical Garden. He married Eleanore Reinarz who according to writer Minetta Altgelt Goyne in her book “A Life among the Texas Flora”, was “sometimes difficult”. He was becoming a valuable member of the community “despite what seems to have been some eccentricities”.

In early fall of 1845 famed botanists Asa Gray and George Engelmann published results of Lindheimer’s 1843 and 1844 collections. There are 38 plants named after him and the one that we know best is “Lindheimeria texana” (or Lindheiumeria texensis), the Texas yellow star. It’s not difficult to see why this flower is so popular.

In 1850, Lindheimer became editor and eventually owner of Neu Braunfelser Zeitung. The first issue was on Nov. 12, 1852. The newspaper had difficult financial times the whole time he was editor. During the Civil War, he was influential in the secessionist movement. Although against slavery, he was an adamant “states righter” and did not want the federal government making decisions for the state. Comal County was the only predominantly German community that joined the Confederacy. The decision to secede from the union was a controversial one.

He retired from the newspaper in 1872. He is remembered for more than being the “Father of Texas Botany”. Always on the side of freedom, he was an advocate of education for all. He was on the committee pushing for the establishment of the NB Academy and for the Texas Legislature to levy taxes for the financial support of public schools.

When Ferdinand Lindheimer died in 1879, he was buried in the Comal Cemetery surrounded by family members and the flowers that he loved. Most of the information in this article came from Goyne’s book, “The Life among the Texas Flora” available in Sophie’s Shop at the Sophienburg. Goyne’s footnote explanations read almost like “the rest of the story”.

The post Lindheimer classified 38 new plants appeared first on Sophies Shop.

Are you one who thinks that John Meusebach led the group that founded Fredericksburg up Fredericksburg Road, out Highway 46 and then straight on to Fredericksburg? I know that’s what I thought, but it’s not true.

I ran across evidence that this more recent pathway from New Braunfels to Fredericksburg wasn’t the way the group traveled. I enlisted directional help in interpreting Dr. Ferdinand Roemer’s description of the early 1840s route from retired TxDOT archaeologist Al McGraw. Roemer states that there was only one possible road to Fredericksburg from New Braunfels due to the accessibility of water for the animals and because of geographic conditions for wagons.

The road ran in a southwesterly direction from NB toward Fredericksburg just past the Cibolo along the Old San Antonio Road. The route includes a portion of old Nacogdoches Road that is designated as a National Historic Trail of the Camino Real. At this point it takes a straight northwesterly course intersecting and then following an old Indian trail running northward from San Antonio called the Pinto Trail (Pinta). The route continues to the valley of the Salado and then to a higher elevation and several miles above this point to Meusebach’s Comanche Springs. One would then descend into the Guadalupe valley to the banks of the Guadalupe River near modern Sisterdale where wagons could cross. Finally, travel to a high, broad plateau and continue north to Fredericksburg.

The route has few rough places or steep inclines, and is free of swamp and muddy river crossings. Apparently the Adelsverein helped maintain this route, as Roemer notes that he met a crew of 20 Adelsverein men working on the road near the Salado.

After resigning from the Adelsverein, Meusebach settled at Comanche Springs (now in the vicinity of Camp Bullis), established a livestock operation and an inn. The date is thought to be before 1852. Later when the route to Fredericksburg changed to the north, Meusebach sold his land at Comanche Springs and moved to Loyal Valley on Cherry Springs near Fredericksburg.

Today if you would travel the same general route, you would take Hwy. 482 from NB, continue on the Nacogdoches Road towards San Antonio, go past Rolling Oaks Mall, turn west onto 1604 and then take IH10 towards Fredericksburg.

Texas early roads often followed Indian trails. Some people think that these trails were created by long 12 foot tent poles dragged behind horses as they moved their tents from one spot to another. When the Spanish explorers moved into Texas, they reported seeing large herds of wild animals roaming the trails. The Spanish brought horses of Arabian stock and mustangs were their descendants. With time, the Comanche in particular had mastered the mustang for traveling the trails. Later, the Caminos were roadways blazed by expeditions connecting towns and missions.

When Comal County was created in 1846, the Commissioners Court had the power to lay out new roads and discontinue old ones. The court appointed local overseers to supervise maintenance of the roads. It required all able-bodied males between 21 and 45 to perform road duties several days a year. Also all people convicted of misdemeanors and those who owed unpaid fines were compelled to work out the amount in roadwork.

Laurie Jasinski in her book “Hill Country Backroads”about the origin of Comal County roads, stated that the commissioners declared Seguin and San Antonio Sts. to be the first highway roads in the county. By the latter 1800s some established routes were Smithsons Valley-Boerne Rd., Cranes Mill Rd., Bear Creek Rd .,Boerne-San Antonio Rd., Purgatory Rd., and Mountain Valley Rd.

By the turn of the century, in the United States, two million miles of roads stretched across the country, but most were pitted rocky trails or soggy mud-holes. Jasinski found that in 1895, there were four autos registered in the US, and by 1899, three thousand.

In 1907, Harry Landa was one of the earliest auto owners. Change was taking place. As more autos were being purchased, local merchants converted the farmer wagon yards to parking lots. Hitching posts were removed.

Around 1910, crews improved city streets by a process of graveling called macadamizing, which was a process of packing down the roads with layers of progressively smaller rocks until the top layer consisted of crushed stones called screening, no larger than two inches in diameter. The roads caused so much dust that a sprinkling cart had to sprinkle down the roads every day.

View Larger Map

…

In the next column we will look at how touring cars contributed to the tourist industry and Joe Sanders helped that happen.

The post Time calls for change in roads appeared first on Sophies Shop.

A flurry of activity and preparation is engulfing organizations that involve themselves with Wurstfest activities. The ten- day celebration is from Nov. 2nd through the 11th. One organization, the Conservation Society, located on Churchill Drive, utilizes their grounds to hold a major fundraiser during Wurstfest. Carrying out the theme of early historic New Braunfels, they operate a German Kaffee Haus for lunch from 10:30a.m. to 2:00 p.m. from November the 7th through the 11th. The place is Forke Store.

This year’s lunch includes German potato soup, Koch Kase, Wurst, homemade desserts and features a sauerkraut cake. It actually does contain sauerkraut and the recipe comes from Mrs. Ben Faust who gave it to the Conservation Society. They, in turn, submitted it to the Sophienburg to be included in their book, “Guten Appetit”. I made this cake once and it’s delicious, but I no longer want to spend half a day baking it; I’ll get it at Conservation Plaza.

For those of you who are not familiar with Conservation Plaza, you should come and familiarize yourself with their grounds. Entrance is free and there is much to see. The Kaffee Haus is once again at Forke Store. New Braunfels has held many events in this building over the years. They estimate that the building is rented close to 200 times a year.

Forke Store was moved from the corner of Seguin Ave. and Jahn St. out to Conservation Plaza when the Becker family bought the property in the ‘60s. They gave the building to the Conservation Society. Arno Becker remembers a ten-foot wide trail from Seguin Ave. to the Comal River known as the “water lane”. It had been the property of the city and was used by early emigrants to walk down to the Comal to get water. This water lane ran across the property that Becker purchased and the city deeded the lane to the property owners. Somewhere under Bluebonnet Motors is that water lane. Sorry, you’ll have to turn on a faucet to get water.

The construction of Forke Store is interesting. The framework is of the “fachwerk” or half-timber style which means that the spaces are filled with bricks, stone or mud. When the emigrants arrived in 1845, they noticed that the building method that had been used in Germany would be well suited locally. The materials were all here – limestone for the foundation, cedar for beams, and sun-dried adobe bricks which could easily be made in Texas. Adobe would be poured into a wooden mold and even children could do this. A shingle roof was installed and siding was attached. The bricks were covered with mud plaster mixed with straw. Fine mud was smeared over and then painted.

The Forke building was moved in two parts and put back together with the original floor and ceiling. Doors and window sashes are also original. The store was a mercantile store and objects within the store reflect that. Old display counters are from Henne Hardware and the original handmade Forke walnut desk is displayed.

Originally the property belonged to Victor Bracht, author of “Texas in 1848”. He belonged to the nobility in Germany, was highly educated and trained for a mercantile career. In 1846 the German Emigration Company sent him to New Braunfels to look after the emigrants. He stayed a year, went back to Germany, and in 1848 returned to New Braunfels. That same year he married Sibilla Shaefer. One lot was given to him by the Adelsverein and he purchased another next to it for $35.00.The first store building and house next door was built in 1852. Bracht was a merchant at this location from 1846 to 1855 after which he moved to San Antonio. The first building described by Bracht was later used by Jacob Ludwig Forke as a “feather house” where feathers were sold by the pound.

From 1855 there were several owners and in 1865 Jacob and Caroline Forke bought the property from Joseph Landa. They ran the mercantile store and raised 10 children. In 1902, the property was left to their youngest son, Louis, who continued the business until he died in 1966. The Becker family purchased the property from the Forke estate and this is when Forke Store moved to Conservation Plaza. Becker Motor Company was sold to Bluebonnet Motors in 2002.

Thanks to the Becker family and the Conservation Society, Forke Store lives on.

The post Old Forke Store ready for Wurstfest appeared first on Sophies Shop.

When I think of Botanists in New Braunfels, I immediately think of Ferdinand Lindheimer. Lindheimer was given property on the Comal for his botanical garden. No doubt his accomplishments were many, but there were others in the field who contributed much to the beauty of our town. One in particular helped make NB the “garden spot” of Texas and that was Otto Martin Locke, Jr. He was a third generation New Braunfelser and a third generation horticulturist. He died in 1994 so some of you may remember him.

Here’s his family story:

Johann Joseph Locke, hailing from Prussia, arrived in NB in 1852 and in four years bought two 10- acre plots of land on the Comal Creek, what is now Town Creek and running to the Landa Street area. It eventually also covered the area from the RR tracks to the hill. Seeing a need for ornamental trees, as well as fruit-bearing trees, he put his knowledge of horticulture to use and began the first nursery in New Braunfels.

For 30 years the business thrived and then was taken over by Johann’s oldest son, Otto Martin Locke, Sr., who named the nursery “Comal Springs Nursery”. He was responsible for developing and producing fruit and pecan trees, vegetables and ornamental shrubs. Large orders were shipped by train. One order of 50,000 peach trees was sent to Mexico.

Many pecan trees around town were grown and grafted by Locke. I grew up knowing that the 10 pecan trees in our yard, the soft-shelled Daisey Pecan, were developed by Locke.

In 1906 Locke planted 50 to 60 thousand roses and developed the Bonita Arbor Vitae, which is a variety of evergreens. Other plants developed by him were Heidemeyer apple, Strington apple, Ferguson fig, Comal cling peaches, Dixie peach, November peach, Daisey pecan, Fall City tomato, Germania rose, Locke’s pride pear, Perfection pear, Old-favorite pomegranate, McCarthy plum, and Guadalupe dewberry. Locke was granted the first state permit for irrigating using state waters (Comal Creek).

The Otto Lockes trained their four boys in the nursery business in NB, Poteet, and San Antonio. The boys were Emil, Herman, Walter and Otto, Jr. It was this youngest boy who made the biggest impact on the whole town of New Braunfels.

Otto Martin Locke, Jr. and his wife, Etelka Rose Locke, acquired property between W. San Antonio St. and Hwy 81 S. in 1928, after the death of his father. They began the Otto Martin Locke Nursery that they operated until Otto’s death in 1994. At the time that Otto and Etelka moved to their new property, Herman and Thekla Locke and their son Howard, formed the Locke Nursery and Floral on part of the old property in the area of present streets: Lockner (Locke Nursery),Howard (Howard Locke),and Floral (obvious).

When Otto and Etelka Locke bought the property on W. San Antonio, it was a cotton field. Etelka was famous for her gardens, once planting 5,000 tulip bulbs in the 1940’s. (For pictures of theses tulips, log on to Sophienburg.com and click on column). She planted the garden around the Lindheimer House on Comal Ave. and the McKenna Memorial Hospital. Otto planted a chestnut oak for the Arbor Day ceremony at the Landa Park office. They used no pesticides on their ten acres, using only chameleons, lizards and snakes to eat the bugs.

Otto Locke’s love of animals as a child grew into a business. He became famous nationally and internationally as a major importer and exporter of exotic native animals and birds for zoos around the world. Inquiries came for birds, snakes, and armadillos. He traded his stock for monkeys, exotic snakes, lion cubs, alligators, crocodiles and even kangaroos. Animals were shipped to many countries and continents- England, Mexico, Germany, Singapore, Australia, Africa, Calcutta, and India. He supplied many snakes for Hollywood. Locke Nursery provided the closest thing to a zoo that New Braunfels had, for these animals were all on display. Children’s trips to the nursery were a real treat.

Looking toward the old nursery from I.H. 35 S., you see the remnants of the old sign, “Locke Nursery”, and thousands of overgrown trees, helping us remember a thriving business for 138 years. But…

“We’ll never smile at a crocodile again”.

The post Locke nurseries business of the past appeared first on Sophies Shop.

From Union St., turn onto Common and drive straight to the Guadalupe River. At the bridge and on the east side of the river, as far as you can see, look left and right. You are looking at Hortontown. Down river to the right of Hortontown was Neighborsville. These two areas are referred to by these names only historically. Beginning in 1846, when sickness was rampant on the coast and in New Braunfels, and emigrants were still arriving, Hortontown was settled to avoid going into the sickness- infested town. Neighborsville followed a few years later. Both areas were originally in Guadalupe County but were added to Comal County and also to the City of New Braunfels.

From the bridge, you will notice a gradual incline up to Loop 337. Turn right on the loop, and right before the railroad overpass, turn left on Church Hill Drive. Across the road from Conservation Plaza, a church was built in 1852. It was the St. Martin’s Evangelical Lutheran Church and next to it, in 1870, a school was built. The Church Hill School served the children of both Hortontown and Neighborsville.

Hortontown was named after Albert C. Horton who came to Texas from Alabama in 1835. He became an active supporter of the Texas Revolution. From 1836-38 he served as senator in the 1st and 2nd congress of the Republic of Texas. He became the first Lt. Gov. of the new state of Texas. Leopold Iwonski became the agent for Horton’s land grant.

The settlement of Neighborsville was laid out by Jacob de Cordoba who designated a lot for the establishment of the church and parochial school. In 1870 the church congregation decided to build a separate building for their school. And that school became the Church Hill School.

The Church Hill School was built of 18” thick hand- cut limestone blocks brought by wagon from a hill country quarry. The doors and floor are also original. The appointments are from other rural Comal County one-room schools.

Martha Rehler, Exec. Director of the Conservation Society, took me on a tour. There is nothing as empty as an empty classroom. Going into the abandoned school, that strange feeling returned. A classroom needs children.

There were wooden desks of all sizes with a hole in the top for an ink bottle. They still had those when I was in elementary school. Our fountain pens had a little bladder that had to be filled with ink. What a mess! In this old classroom the teacher sat in the back of the room by the door. I’m surprised she didn’t notice the initials carved in the older students’ desk, probably by a pocket knife which I’m told, was every boy’s toy. Slate boards were on each desk taking the place of paper. The large chalkboard (black, later green) had the lesson for the day in German script (Fraktur).

Other relics are a long table from the Ursaline Academy in San Antonio displaying photographs of groups of school children. Water was drawn out of a well or a cistern and put in a portable water fountain. There are two large bells. The smaller of the two at one time stood in front of the Guadalupe Hotel (Plaza) which was a stagecoach stop. The bell was used to welcome arrivals. The larger was a school bell to call students.

Rehler gave me a “Texas Public School’s Report Card from 1925 that parents had to fill out about their own child. It was for a 7th grade girl going into the 8th grade. I put myself in my mother’s shoes, evaluating her only chick on a scale of 1 to 100. Knowing that I was a “city girl” in New Braunfels, I would have failed miserably. I would have a “0” in canning, care of stock, care of poultry, cooking, gardening, general farm work, milking, providing fuel, sewing, and sweeping,. I would have done fairly well in dusting, washing dishes, obedience, neatness, reliability and special work. In my case, special work would have been socializing.

The St. Martin’s Church, originally adjoined to the old Church Hill School, was moved in 1968 next to the Hortontown Cemetery on Loop 337. The school remained and was eventually donated to the Conservation Society in 1975 to be used as a museum.

The post Church Hill School served Hortontown and Neighborsville appeared first on Sophies Shop.

Would you like to know what was on the property on which our present Comal County Courthouse sits? If so, read on.

When Nicholas Zink laid out the town of New Braunfels, with its main plaza and streets leading to it, he was given the town lot #32 by the Adelsverein for his efforts. Town lot #32 is the lot on which our present courthouse is built. Zink built a house on this lot in 1845. In 1847, the year that Zink and his first wife were divorced, he began selling his property in New Braunfels and eventually left altogether.

Zink sold lot #32 to Samuel Millet dated January 21st, 1847, who used the house as a hotel. Millet, in turn, sold the house in 1852 to Dan Wheeler and Wheeler sold it to Karl Floege in 1866. (Source: County Clerk’s office, book A, deeds p. 35) The family moved to a farm outside of Seguin.

Samuel Millet who was originally from Maine has a Texas Historical Marker at his gravesite in Guadalupe County. It states that he had come to Texas in 1827 and died in 1863. Records show his birth as 1801. He came to Texas as a member of Stephen F. Austin’s colony. During the Texas Revolution, he took part in the battle of San Jacinto.

In 1833, he married Clementina Bartlett and they had nine children. She was also with Austin’s colony and from Tennessee. She married her teacher, Samuel Millett, who was a graduate of Bowdoin College. Family tradition claims that Clementina at age 90 could recall early history of the Republic and those who were instrumental in its founding.

Harry Landa, in his memoirs “As I Remember” writes that his father, Joseph Landa, made this statement about the hotel: “Old lady Millett, mother of the well-known cattleman, Alonzo Millett, was operating a boarding house at the corner where the Comal County Courthouse now stands. The Landas boarded for a few months at Mrs. Millett’s establishment until they bought the adjoining property on the Plaza”.

Alonzo Millett, one of Samuel Millett’s sons, made a name for himself in the ranching business. In “The Traildrivers of Texas”, Alonzo Millett is described as spending his boyhood days in Bastrop County and Seguin where he attended school. When the Civil War broke out, he and his brothers volunteered in the Confederate army. Alonzo was only 16 and his twin brother, Leonidas, was killed. After the war, the surviving brothers returned to Texas and over the years that followed, gained wealth by accumulating ranches in several states. “Misfortune came and their wealth was swept away”.(Traildrivers…)  Alonzo persevered and when he died, he owned a large ranch in San Juan Valley, Colorado. He was killed by being thrown by a horse and then buried in San Antonio. Thirty-five miles south of San Antonio was a small settlement named “Millett” after Alonzo. Many local and Seguin Milletts are descendants of Alonzo Millett and his wife, Arlene Wilson Millett.

Now back to the present courthouse: Early on, Comal County conducted its business in rented rooms, then to a privately owned building on Seguin St. (Elks parking lot). In 1860 the first two-story courthouse was built on the corner occupied by Chase Bank. In 1999 the present courthouse celebrated its 100th birthday. (For more information about this courthouse, log on to Sophienburg.com, Jan. 20, 2009)

Our present courthouse was originally designed to sit in the middle of the Main Plaza with four easy accesses. When that plan fell through, the present location was chosen. The jail was added later, obscuring two entrances and another closed to add more office space. When this present restoration is complete, the original four entrances will once again be usable.

Nothing is left of the Millett Hotel, as the building was torn down shortly before the new courthouse was started. Behind the present courthouse where a parking area was located by the jail, a water well was discovered. The Texas Historic Commission evaluated the dry well and said that it pre-dated the Courthouse.  The well would have been in the right spot for use by the hotel. It was recently filled in with sand to protect its integrity and to prevent a cave-in. The last remnant of an era.

The post The last remnant of an era appeared first on Sophies Shop.

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 on which the house stands was conveyed to Johann Georg Pfeuffer in 1852 and it is assumed that the house was built shortly thereafter. It is one of the early houses in New Braunfels built with fachwerk walls, a custom brought from German architecture. One can see fachwerk construction in present day Germany. Casement windows with unique latches can be seen upstairs. Hand-hewn cedar beams throughout the house and wide cedar beams were used in the ceiling. The full basement contained the kitchen and has a brick floor. In the downstairs area are two original black walnut doors, a wood that was plentiful along the banks of the Guadalupe.

Johann Georg Pfeuffer was born in 1799 in Bavaria. He married Barbett (Barbara) Broschel in 1829 and six children were born to the couple.

Pfeuffer was a tanner and owned several tanneries in Germany. He was quite a prosperous businessman. The children were all educated and servants tended to their needs.

The family does not know why in 1845 Pfeuffer sold all his tanneries, uprooted his family, and signed up with the German Emigration Company to come to Texas. They were among the second group of emigrants and arrived in Galveston in November of 1845. From there the family took a schooner to Indianola.

A near tragedy occurred when they were put on an overloaded schooner. It sank in the bay outside of Indianola. The lives of the family were saved but most of their possessions were lost. Now they were virtually penniless and were stranded on the coast along with the hundreds of other emigrants. They didn’t arrive in New Braunfels until 1848. The 1850 Comal County census lists Georg as 51, Barbett as 44, Valentine as 18, Christopf as 16, Daniel as 12, Barbette as 9, and Anna Marie as 6. The oldest son, also named George, was 20 years old and wasn’t listed in this census. He was known to have moved to Corpus Christi at the time.

Sometime between 1852 and 1860, the elder Georg Pfeuffer began a tannery in the basement of his home on Mill St.( Source: “Texas and Texans”,1914 translation). Inquiring about the process of tanning, I asked Al Ludwig, the g-g grandson of Georg Pfeuffer and owner of Ludwig Leather Co. on Seguin Street. He said that the process was done by soaking the hide in tannin extracted from oak trees to produce leather that was soft and durable. The word Tanne is an old German word for oak or pine trees (hence the word Tannenbaum). How did this family survive with the tannery in the basement?

Family records state that Georg Pfeuffer was very opinionated about the politics of the day. He signed the petition in Comal County calling for secession. Four sons fought in the Civil War.

About that time the young Georg Pfeuffer returned to New Braunfels from Corpus. This Pfeuffer son became the most prominent in the family, as he was a Texas Senator and responsible for the capitol in Austin being constructed of Texas Granite. Later he became president of Texas A&M College. To read more about him, log on to Sophienburg.com Nov. 26, 2008.

Johann Georg Pfeuffer (Sr.) died in 1886. Thereafter the house was conveyed to the Baetge family. In 1942 Arthur Baetge as executor of the Baetge estate sold the house to Annie Lehman who, in turn, conveyed it to her son Leroy Lehman in 1954.

Leroy Lehman and his wife Agnes raised one son and four daughters in this home. Some changes were made to the home to accommodate their growing family. The August Koch map of 1881 shows the house without the side porch that the Lehmanns added. Ernest Lehman, son of the Leroy Lehmans, recently brought the original pillars to the Munds.

The City of New Braunfels designated the house as a historic landmark. All of us in New Braunfels benefit from restoration projects like the Munds have taken on.

The post 1850s Mill Street house being restored appeared first on Sophies Shop.

By Tara V. Kohlenberg —

We are fortunate to live in a community proud of its heritage, culture and architecture. Our historic districts and downtown are proof of that pride. It seems so very idyllic, people creating a community by the river, building homes and businesses. The town prospers and new brick buildings to replacing the first crude wooden structures so that they will last. Or do they?

Those that we still see close to Main Plaza seem to be surviving, but a number of lavish 19th- and early 20th-century homes were torn down to make way for business structures. Think Landa mansion or the Timmermann house. I think of them as “ghost homes,” because the memory of their haunting beauty is all that is left.

One such ghost home stood on the corner of W. San Antiono Street and Academy Avenue where it was first occupied by the Holz family. Nicholas Holz, at age 20, immigrated from Germany in 1852. He was a blacksmith and wheelwright by trade who did well over the years. His son, Adolph, joined him in N. Holz & Son Implement Co. and in 1908, they built a large two-story building at 474 W. San Antonio St. to sell farm implements, buggies, and wagons. In 1909, Nicholas retired from business and it was sold to Bartels, Sands & Co.

That same year, Adolph Holz engaged architect Carl von Seutter of San Antonio to design a magnificent home at 417 W. San Antonio St. Von Seutter was well known for designing the now-historic home for Otto Koehler, founder of the San Antonio Brewing Association which became Pearl Brewing Company.

The magnificent home was built by Christian Herry for $15,000 with a crew of about 15, including his sons. Louis Herry was the project superintendent. Son Otto was the masonry foreman and son Alfred was a plasterer. The house was a two-story brick with elements of both Greek Revival and Beaux Arts styles of architecture. The building’s symmetry was offset by gabled front and side-porch porticos. Large, ornate Corinthian columns supported double galleries with heavy balustrades, gracefully wrapping around the front and side of the house.

The opulence of the interior was testament to the owner’s wealth. The grand staircase and house trims were all dark wood. The entry hall floor was parquet laid out in 12-nch sheets. The living room walls had special designs created in plaster to look like large picture frames without the pictures. A mural in a tree pattern was painted on the dining room walls. At the back of the house was a solarium with black and white tiles with a view of a magnolia tree.

The tin roof was crafted to resemble Spanish tile. Beneath the house, a large basement held a washroom and a storage space for wood carried upstairs in a dumbwaiter. Behind the house was a carriage house/livery that eventually became a garage.

After the elder Holzs died in 1910 and 1915, Adolph turned his sales savvy to real estate development. He and his wife raised their four children while enjoying a healthy social life. He was neighbors with George Eiband and Wm. Clemens. Things seemed to go south, however, when multiple lawsuits over real estate compensation were filed against Adolph and wife, Hulda, in the early ‘20s. Multiple properties were sold on the courthouse steps to satisfy their debts, including the implement building at 474 and a storefront at 301 W. San Antonio (now Clay Casa) in 1921. The house was sold to Otto Timmermann Sr. for $19,500 (about $2.5 million today) in 1924 before she and Adolph moved to San Antonio. Hulda died in 1925 after a long illness. Adolph ended up working as a farm laborer in Atascosa County for a time before living out his life with daughter and son-in-law, Ella and Harry Kastener in Milltown.

The next resident of the house was Otto Timmermann Sr. He was the son of Heinrich “Henry” Timmermann, who immigrated in 1850. Mr. Timmermann and wife, Alma Stautzenberger, of Guadalupe County, were farmers. He was said to be the land baron of Geronimo Creek. Upon his retirement, they moved into the old Holz mansion.

Otto Sr. lived in the home about 14 years until his death in 1938. Mrs. Timmermann continued to live in the house on the first floor. After World War II, when returning soldiers took up most of the town’s apartments for rent, Mrs. Timmermann rented out the top floor as a separate apartment. The second floor had a small kitchen, a living room, bedrooms and one bathroom in the hall. One of the bedrooms had six windows. Boarders had to use the back stairs and door, never the main entrance.

Mrs. Timmermann died in 1960. In 1962, the estate sold her house to Rudy Seidel. He used it as a temporary warehouse for hi-fidelity consoles, radios, cameras and electronic flash equipment for Seidel Camera next door. The house was then sold to Howard Hoerster.

It was said that the house had fallen into disrepair, but as a little girl, I looked at that house every time we passed by on the way to my Oma’s house. The grand entryway out front was huge in my eyes. I really wanted to be able to go inside one day, but that was not to be. In January of 1964, the beautiful, old, stately mansion was torn down. I cried. At seven years old, even though I did not know anyone that lived there or how important the architect was, I knew it was a treasure lost and I cried.

Howard Hoerster owned Hoerster Tire & Supply, which was previously located at 270 W. San Antonio St. (now Gourmage). They tore down everything but the large magnolia tree that stood outside the solarium window. They filled in the basement, smoothed it over and built a brand new 6500 square foot brick tire store and service center. The building served thousands of automobiles over time as Hoerster, Goodyear Service Center and DeStefano Tire before being refitted as an office building a couple of years ago.

I have visited Europe and have seen for myself the way different communities hold on to their culture. They still live and work in places that are sometimes 1,000 years old. The structures are proudly maintained for the next generation. Even in areas where war has scarred the land, buildings show dedication to restoration. They are not torn down or drastically altered for the new and trendy. I hope that New Braunfels can embrace and support our historical organizations and commissions in trying to prevent our architectural treasures from becoming “ghosts” as New Braunfels continues to grow at breakneck speed.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

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

The post The Timmermann house: Memory of its haunting beauty is all that is left appeared first on Sophies Shop.

By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

Who invented the cotton gin?

Many of you learned the answer to this question in elementary school. If you said “Eli Whitney” you are correct, but like me, back then you really didn’t understand that the invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the American economy and made cotton a major industry.

Thanks to Whitney’s invention in 1793, cotton no longer had to be “ginned” by hand although cotton was still picked by hand well into the 1940s. There are 15–20 bolls on each cotton plant and 27–45 seeds in each boll. That’s a lot of seeds that need to be separated from the cotton fiber. The cotton gin mechanically separated the seeds and fiber by rolling the cotton through wooden rollers covered with metal hooks that caught at the fiber and pulled it through a mesh. Cotton seeds were too big to go through the mesh and fell into a hopper below. A person could hand-gin one pound of cotton in one day; Whitney’s technology processed 50 pounds of cotton in a day.

Cotton was first grown in Comal County by German immigrants in 1852. The non-slave-holding Mittendorf brothers planted and harvested cotton enough for nine bales. William H. Meriwhether had built a water-powered grist and sawmill using the Comal Springs in 1847. He later added a flour mill and cotton gin. Meriwhether ginned the Mittendorf boys’ cotton for 1½ cents per pound. Francis Moreau shipped the nine bales through Indianola to New Orleans for an additional 1½ cents per pound. The bales were graded “middling fair” and sold for 10½ cents per pound. Cotton proved a profitable undertaking for the Mittendorfs who got 7½ cents per pound for their efforts.

In 1857, F. B. Hoffmann set up the first horse-powered cotton gin in the county out at Four Mile Creek/Solms. Later in 1870, Hoffmann was also the first to convert his gin to steam power; he advertised that he could “gin 6 bales a day” with the new technology.

In 1863, Erhard Mittendorf built a gin near the Austin Hill Community, and in 1875, George Webber operated his cotton gin and oil mill in downtown New Braunfels just one block off Main Plaza on North Seguin Street. And you thought the silos of the Co-op looked rural.

By the 1880s and 1890s, cotton gins were features in many of the small communities and settlements that peppered Comal County. They were usually known by the owner’s name:

• H. D. Gruene – Goodwin
• Gus Reinarz (formerly Hoffmann’s) – Solms
• John Marbach – Bracken
• August G. Startz – Smithson Valley
• Reinarz & Marbach – Danville
• Charles Knibbe – Spring Branch
• Hunter Gin Co. – Hunter
• Fischer’s – Fischer’s Store
• Hermann Guenther – Sattler
• Frank Guenther – Hancock
• Ludwig Haag and Gustav Schmidt gins – Bulverde
• Farmers Union – Hortontown
• Oberkampf’s and Flugrath’s gins – Cranes Mill
• Reinarz & Knoke, Landa Milling and Faust & Co. gins – New Braunfels

This is a partial list, but it shows the importance of having area gins for the many farmers who grew cotton across the county.

Sadly, only a few of the cotton gin structures or ruins still exist today. However, a notable example is still visible at Eight Mile Creek/Comal Settlement off Old Nacogdoches Road. From the road you can see the beautiful brick Friesenhahn Cotton Gin and Corn Sheller building with its stately, very tall smoke stack which signified it was steam-powered. The gin was constructed by Andreas Friesenhahn in the early 1890s, but it was not the first gin constructed by Friesenhahns. An earlier gin was built by Andreas and his two brothers, Jacob and Nicholas, in the 1880s. This building included the first commercial corn sheller in the area as well. The gin was located on a site near the sharp corner of Old Nacogdoches Road just north of the old Kneupper Store. It burned down in 1899 causing Jacob and Nicholas to get out of the ginning business. FYI: Cotton is very flammable and can spontaneously combust. Trailers full of rain-wet cotton and stored piles of unginned cotton can ignite in the center and burn inside-out setting fire to other trailers and the cotton gin itself.

Andreas Friesenhahn continued on and built a new gin and corn sheller soon after the fire. This is the structure we can see today. He ran the business through the early 1900s and then deeded the gin, corn sheller, seed house and cotton yard to his three sons Gregor, Jacob and Ferdinand. They operated the place under the “Friesenhahn Brothers Gin” name. Gregor left the company in 1923. The cotton market nose-dived in the 1940s, and the gin closed. After the death of Jacob in 1946, Ferdinand’s wife Mathilda and son Roman bought the structure and continued to run the corn shelling operation until 1959.

In a 1986 oral history recording in the Sopheinburg Museum collections, Vivian Zipp, a native of the Solms/Comal Settlement area, reflected on the Friesenhahn Brothers Gin:

The Friesenhahn Brothers Cotton Gin and Corn Sheller was owned by Jacob, Gregor and Ferdinand Friesenhahn. It was located close to the Katy railroad. A spur line was laid from the main tracks to the cotton gin and corn sheller…you could see box cars loaded with shelled corn, ginned cotton bales and bales of corn shucks. The farmers would use the shucks to feed their cattle. They had a warehouse close to the spur where bales of corn shucks were stored when boxcars were filled or not available for shipping…. At the peak of the season [August through December] the wagons of cotton and wagons of corn were lined up from each direction — from the west on the San Antonio–Austin highway, from the east on the San Antonio-Austin highway and to the south on Friesenhahn Lane — with waiting wagons taking cotton to be ginned and corn to be shelled [There was no IH-35 back then, so the San Antonio–Austin Road went straight through the middle of Solms]. There were many nights that you could hear the cotton gin and corn sheller running into the wee hours of the morning until every farmer had unloaded. Sometimes as many as 50 wagons from each direction were waiting in line.

The Friesenhahn gin and corn sheller stands empty and quiet now. I love the big old yellowish brick building whose smoke stack still towers over the landscape. What stories can it tell of those first farming families who lived there for generations, working the land, gathering with friends, going to church and pitching in when disaster hit one of their friends or family? What can it tell us about the character of the people and times it shadowed in its heyday? Drive by, take a moment —and listen.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum: Neu Braunfelser Zeitung collection; Oscar Haas collection; Reflections Oral History collection; and “Comal Texas”, a research project of the Comal Settlement Association and Schertz Historical Preservation Committee.

The post Cotton gins in Comal County appeared first on Sophies Shop.