From distillery to woolen mill to laundry
By Myra Lee Adams Goff Two sisters, Debbie Elliott and Lynn Norvell, have built homes on the property that has been in their family over 100 years. The property is on the corner of Garden and Comal Sts. on the Comal River, next to the Garden Street Bridge. They are very much interested in people […]
Klappenbach House on Klappenbach Hill still stands
By Myra Lee Adams Goff Do you know where the Klappenbach House is located? From Landa St., turn onto Fredericksburg Rd. and go straight until you get to a hill, Klappenbach Hill. The house on the left is the Klappenbach property. The story of the Klappenbach family is indeed interesting. The story begins in Sorenbohm, […]
Comal, Guadalupe junction important
By Myra Lee Adams Goff When I was in the ninth grade, I had a group of friends who were Mariner Girl Scouts. New Braunfels rivers were the perfect spot for this scouting program. We had a friend who lived on the Guadalupe River and had a rowboat. We would take turns rowing the boat. […]
Denson-Dedeke’s dedication to historic preservation
By Tara V. Kohlenberg — Shopping for a wedding gift used to be something that I looked forward to. My most recent “gift shopping” experience involved scanning a QR code where I was then directed to a website to choose the appropriate item and clicking to send. Wow! So very anticlimactic. Where is the fun […]
Searching for clues
By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — Researching your family? Maybe you want to know about who lived in/owned your home? The Sophienburg Museum and Archives has resources to help you! Research, of any subject, is basically detective work — analyzing the available records, searching through assembled stories and examining photographs and maps. The Sophienburg has been […]
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 […]
The voice of Oscar Haas
By Tara V. Kohlenberg — Oscar Haas was well known as the historian and record-keeper of New Braunfels and Comal County. He documented a hundred years of our community’s progress through twenty years of newspaper articles and a published book. Now in its fourth printing, The History of New Braunfels and Comal County, Texas 1844-1946, […]
Indian Days House
By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — Legend, lore and local memories hover over this old house. The structure is one of the oldest permanent dwellings in Comal County. Old it is, and certainly old to be so far out of New Braunfels. The current address for the place is 7600 FM 2722. Back in the day […]
Serdinko’s story
By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — Request from Fargo, North Dakota: Do you know anything about a New Braunfels photographer named J. Serdinko? “Uhhh…yeah,” I thought to myself, “but not enough to answer this request!” The Sophienburg photograph collections contain several hundred thousand images; about 300 of those are impressed with Serdinko’s name. These take the […]
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. […]
