By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

I recently found a note in Oscar Haas’s archive collection, “Zeitung, Thursday, July 6, 1899. Use story some time concerning a jailbreak.” He never published the story.

I felt like he was “speaking from the grave” and I should look into it.

The first purpose-built Comal County Jail was a log structure constructed at the location of the current Elks Lodge’s parking lot on South Seguin Street. It was used until 1854, when a new jail was built at what is now 509 W. Mill St.

The earliest reported jailbreak in the New Braunfels Zeitung was from the Mill Street jail in February 1859. The prisoner, William D. Harris, had committed a brutal murder in Seguin. Eight days prior to the escape, the sheriff heard unusual sounds from the cell. Opening the door, he discovered that Harris had broken free of his chains and that an attempt had been made to break through the cell wall, from both the inside and the outside, with a crowbar and a file. Two men were put on constant guard outside the building. At 11 p.m. on the night of the breakout, about 15 men on horseback descended on the jail and broke the boards and one lock of the two oak doors. The chain and cuffs attached to prisoner Harris were broken off with a heavy hammer.

Don’t know if Harris was ever caught. That’s research for another time.

In 1866, a suspected horse thief and another prisoner attempted an escape by creating a hole in the cell wall. Fortunately, the sheriff arrived before the hole was big enough for the escapees. The two men were put in irons.

An extremely inventive jailbreak was attempted in July of 1874. Two prisoners used the bacon they had been given for supper to grease and set fire to the heavy oak planks of the door that separated their cells. One of the escapees got through and began working to make a hole in the outer jail wall. The second man began coughing from the smoke and got stuck in the burned opening. Prisoner One soon went back and pulled his comrade through. The process scraped quite a lot of skin from the man’s torso; he refused to help make the second hole in the outer wall. Daylight brought the sheriff and ended their creative jailbreak.

Eventually, the Mill Street jail proved inadequate both in size and reliability. In 1879, a new two-story cut-limestone jail was erected behind the 1860 Comal County Courthouse (located where the Chase Bank building is on Main Plaza). This jail was built with an iron roof and doors and cost the county about $10,000; it could hold 20-30 prisoners.

Crime must have been on the rise.

In a humorous, Andy Griffith-like moment, a prisoner escaped from the brand-new jail by simply walking out of his unlocked cell and through an unguarded front door. He was caught later across the bridge in Comaltown. The editors of the newspaper printed the question, “Why don’t we close the doors?”.

The year 1866 saw another jailbreak. James Alexander, incarcerated for the involuntary manslaughter of Walter Krause, simply disappeared from the jail. On the morning of the escape, he was heard playing his flute. When lunch was brought in to him, he was gone. The sheriff, who was in Seguin at the time of the jailbreak, located Alexander in San Antonio the next day. The newspaper never shared how the jailbreak was accomplished.

Now the 1899 story that motivated me to check out this subject. The Neu Braunfels Zeitung article is quite tongue-in-cheek.

Three prisoners escaped from “our break-in and escape-proof county prison” in the wee hours of the morning when the sheriff was away. The men had not been sentenced so were not locked in a cell. Having freedom to move in the corridor between the cells and the prison wall, they managed to fashion an axe with a piece of iron attached to a broken broom handle. With this implement, and the use of a water hose used to clean the cells, the three “very cleverly” used the water hose to soften the mortar and then scrape it away so that the stones of the wall could be pulled in or pushed out without much effort. The last paragraph is priceless:

“These guys really deserve recognition for their job. They probably didn’t want the free room and board from the County any longer… But rumor has it that the intelligent escapees, after celebrating July 4th outdoors, will want free quarters and will decide to break into the prison again. However, all precautionary measures have been taken to prevent this…”

I do love a journalist with a wicked sense of humor.

The 1879 limestone jail was replaced by an addition to the Comal County Court­house in 1931, although it wasn’t torn down until 1958. I found several references to jail­breaks from this newest jail. A rather spec­tac­ular one occurred in 1963. Two prisoners joined forces and escaped via a large steel trapdoor to the third-floor roof. The trap­door was chained to a steel ladder which was bolted to the concrete ceiling of the jail. The two prisoners worked the large steel bolts out of the concrete enough to slide the ladder and trapdoor over to give them space to escape. From the roof, they used an angled corner of the court­house to climb down the rock face to the roof of the first floor. There, they connected a rope made from two blankets and a jacket to the downspout of the gutter. Once on the ground they each went their own way. The other jail inmates said the breakout occurred around 9:45 p.m. The jail­break was not discovered until morning at 8:30 a.m. by a passer­by who saw the blankets fluttering on the building and informed the jailer. The alarm was sounded and by 9 a.m., one of the fugitives was rearrested at his home in Comaltown. The other, who had served time for murder, had been waiting to be trans­ferred to Mexico by immigrat­ion authorities. It is thought he may have made his way home on his own.

Thanks for the nudge, Mr. Haas. It really did need to be used in a story.

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

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By Tara V. Kohlenberg and Mark Rahe —

I love the buildings in New Braunfels. I especially like the ones in downtown New Braunfels and Comaltown. Built over a period of 150 years, each building tells a story in every little detail of each window, porch, and roofline. They are a snapshot of the historical development of New Braunfels. Of course, I have my favorites, but then there are those that just break my heart because they look so sad.

The white house on the corner of Seguin Avenue and Garden Street is the perfect example of a heartbreaker. It has tragically deteriorated before our eyes. Even in its current state, it is captivating. So, what’s the story with this forlorn looking beauty?

For starters, it is known as the Blumberg House, so named because it was built by F.G. Blumberg, businessman and former mayor of New Braunfels, for his bride Bettina Scholl. Built about 1900, the Blumberg House is a typical example of the Queen Anne style Victorian house, generally built between 1880 and 1910. With its steep roof form, the cutaway bay window and asymmetrical placement of the rounded, wrapped porch, the house presents as a classic example of the Queen Anne style, even though there were a number of odd additions made to the house sometime after 1922 that do not necessarily fit the style.

The roof styles changed slightly over the span of the Queen Anne period. The pitch of the hip roof was initially very steep about 1885, becoming only slightly less so around 1895, as seen in the Blumberg House. After 1905, the pitch became much less steep, making the gable roof the more predominant feature. The Blumberg House’s steeply hipped roof and lower forward facing dominant cross gable, is common to over half of all Queen Anne-type houses. In addition, the Blumberg House’s overwhelming hip roof is ornamented with a cool decorative bay window dormer, topped with a simple pediment roof.

Another characteristic of the Queen Anne style is decorative detailing. The fanciful style seems to abhor flat, boring surfaces; therefore, they overly decorated absolutely everything, including the porch with its decorative trim spindlework suspended around the top. The repetitive pattern of wood lathe-turned sticks are called spindles because the design resembles wooden sewing thread spindles or “spools” used at the time. While the Blumberg House spindles are each the same, the simple knob-like beads, when designed in staggering patterns can resemble the notes found on a sheet of music. Spindlework has also been referred to as “gingerbread,” or Eastlake-style detailing, named for the 19th century English furniture maker Charles Eastlake. The porch columns and balustrade are composed of beautifully detailed period-styled turned wood. Even the cutaways at the front bay window and brackets at each porch column contain intricate wooden fret-sawn patterns.

By the time the Blumberg House was under construction, the railway was well established in New Braunfels, making possible delivery of all sorts of goods, including construction materials, ordered through catalogs. Decorative house ornamentation like spindlework was mass-produced and sold in pattern books with names like Anna Marie, The Lisa, The Mary Elizabeth. It’s likely the spindlework and possibly other ornamentation and turned wood constructs on the Blumberg House were sourced in this way.

Queen Anne s

tyling actually uses many other decorative devices to break up flat surfaces. They either do it spatially by the addition of bays, towers, overhangs or wall projections, or texturally by the use of varied wall materials with differing patterns and textures. Though the house does not have the tower structure so often identified with this style, the dominant feature of the Blumberg House is the asymmetrically placed cutaway bay window “cut away” from the overhang above it. The bay window provides the same function as inclusion of a tower, adding an intentional randomness. Likewise, the broadness of the hip roof plane that dominates the front of the house is broken by the elegantly proportioned dormer window noted previously. As for a textural contribution, they added chamfer-cornered horizontal bands of wood shingles that look like fish scales on the gables of this particular house.

So, just who is this F.G. Blumberg who owned such a magnificent home on the main thoroughfare of New Braunfels? Ferdinand Gustav Blumberg was the last of 11 children born to German immigrant farmers in Schumannsville, Texas, in 1879. He worked hard to move up in the world and had a lot of different kinds of jobs. He was listed as a dry goods salesman when he married Bettina Scholl in 1900. That is when their beautiful home was built on Seguin Street (changed to Avenue in 1926). By 1910 he was in the wholesale malt liquor business. He served as a director of the Chamber of Commerce and director of New Braunfels State Bank. He was listed as president of that same bank in 1920. Ferdinand was elected mayor in 1922 and 1924. In 1926, his fortunes began to change. He lost re-election in April of 1926, suffered financial misfortunes later in that year, and finally filed for bankruptcy. The bank sold off what was known as the Blumberg Building (the two-story building on Main Plaza now housing New Braunfels Coffee across from the courthouse) to satisfy debts.

About that same time, F.G. Blumberg left town. The beautiful Blumberg House passed to his wife, Bettina, in October of 1926. He married Elvira Tolle on February 14, 1927. Unfortunately, the notice of his divorce from Bettina was published four days later. Ferdinand went on to be a credit manager for car dealerships in San Antonio and Corpus Christi areas before returning to New Braunfels in the late 1930s to retire. Ferdinand died in 1952. His second wife, Vira, lived until 1981 on Tolle Street. He never produced heirs.

First wife Bettina maintained her residence in the Blumberg House until 1948 when she it sold to O.A. Stratemann Sr. It was utilized by the Stratemann family, as far as we could discern, as a rental property until a few years ago. The home has fallen into disrepair and was recently sold. I hope that magnificent example of Queen Anne architecture will go on living in New Braunfels for another 100 years.

Sources: A Field Guide to American Houses (1984, 2013), Virginia Savage McAlester; Sophienburg Museum & Archives.

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By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

Decorations for Christmas are up at the Sophienburg Museum and Archives. This year we are highlighting 20th century Christmas décor of the 1920s–1960s. You will be wonderfully transported back to your childhood. We also discovered several large boxes with Christmas lights which led me to look into the history of Christmas tree lights.

Candles were the first lights used on Christmas trees. Using tiny Christmas lanterns in the 1870s, counterweighted holders in the 1890s and clip-on holders after 1900, people would light their trees with candles for a brief moment of wonder. Live flames and dry fir or cedar was a dangerous combination, so a bucket of sand or water was kept nearby for expected emergencies. A heavy rug was placed under the tree to catch dripping wax; the rug morphed into the modern-day Christmas tree skirt.

Thomas Edison invented the first practical light bulb in 1879. In 1882, his associate Edward Johnson used that technology to electrically light the Christmas tree in his home. It created quite a stir since the tree also used electricity to rotate and blink on and off.

An electrically lighted Christmas tree was displayed in the White House in 1895. This brilliant exhibit fueled the public’s growing fascination with electrically lighted trees. In response, the General Electric Co. (GE) offered, for the first time, sets of pre-wired carbon filament lights for Christmas trees in 1903. At a time when the average wage was 22 cents a day, a $12 box of 24 pre-wired lights was very pricey. In 1906, Germany and Austria introduced electric figural Christmas lights to the increasingly interested American consumer.

GE launched new Christmas light outfits using the Mazda bulb in 1916. The Mazda was a globe-shaped bulb with a tungsten filament. Other manufacturers of stringed lights paid to use GE’s new Mazda bulbs in their sets. GE replaced the globe-shaped bulb with a flame-shape or cone-shape light bulb in 1919 and it, then, became the industry standard up into the 1960s. By the 1920s, all American lighting manufacturers had converted to tungsten filament bulbs.

The Tri-Plug was invented in 1921 by Lester Haft and allowed several strings of lights to be connected; this was a game changer for the industry. The many companies jumping into the lighting game compelled the Underwriters’ Laboratories (UL) to publish quality standards in 1921, and by 1929, lighting sets carried the UL tag.

In 1924, GE and Westinghouse replaced the smooth cone-shaped lamps with smaller ribbed bulbs. The National Outfit Manufacturing Association (NOMA) was formed by 15 lighting companies; the trade association eventually merged into the NOMA Electric Corporation and became the largest Christmas lighting company in the world.

No Christmas lights were manufactured during 1941-1945 due to WWII although companies sold out their back stock. In 1946, NOMA introduced the Bubble Light, which became the world’s best-selling Christmas light set. Other companies followed with their own bubbling light designs. Cloth-covered lighting wires were also changed to vinyl, plastic and rubber coverings following the war.

Italy introduced Americans to the Fairy Light or miniature lights in 1950. First produced with the bulbs wired directly into the light string, these gradually became the familiar plastic base push-in lamps now in use. Twinkling Lamps, units built with a flasher bulb, first made their appearance in 1955, an innovation still widely popular today.

In 1959, the Aluminum Specialty Company first introduced the aluminum Christmas tree The Evergleam and marketed it as a permanent tree not an artificial tree. (I see what they did there.) Since aluminum is highly conductive, electric lights then on the market could not be used with these new trees and the only way to light them was with a spotlight or rotating color wheel. The aluminum tree craze lasted until 1965 when “A Charlie Brown Christmas” aired on CBS which likened the metal tree to out-and-out commercialism.

Massive importation of light sets from places like Japan and Hong Kong severely impacted and caused the collapse of many American lighting companies. By the 1970s, Americans were almost exclusively lighting their trees with imported miniature lights.

Thought you might enjoy this description of the mini lights most of us use.

Mini lites truly have a mind of their own. As soon as they are removed from the box when new, they cling together in a “hive”, resisting any attempt to free them. Shaking them annoys the mini lites very much. It makes them cling even tighter, until the only method of untangling is a pair of scissors. Should you be lucky enough to actually free them, the strands fall to the floor, immediately running for cover under your feet. (This is witnessed by the sound similar to cracking a walnut.) Once the lights are untangled, the cat becomes VERY interested in them. I believe it is the tuna flavored wire that they use. No matter, because before they can get to the tree, the cat will have chewed through the cord in 6 places. Well! You made it this far! The lights somehow make it to the tree. You of course pre-tested them, so they will work. What you fail to realize, is that the mini lites are not going to fail until they are on the tree. — Chris Cuff

You can visit the Sophienburg Museum Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m.-4.p.m. (Please note that the Sophienburg will be closed for Thanksgiving November 24-26, 2022.) Or, you can bring your little ones to see St. Nicholas on Monday, December 5 for $5 per family. Reservations are required for this event; call 830.629.1572.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum and Archives collections; www.oldchristmastreelights.com.

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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 form of carte de visite (small business card-size photos), cabinet cards (hardboard-backed photos larger than a postcard) and stereoviews (two-image cards for use with a stereoptican viewer).

Yes, Serdinko was a photographer in New Braunfels. But who WAS he?

John, or Ivan, Serdinko was born in Bohemia in 1849 and emigrated to Texas in the 1860s. He became a naturalized citizen in 1867. I found him, and his partner Alonzo Newell Calloway, setting up a photo studio in a tent in Columbus in 1875. By January 1879, Serdinko had set up shop in New Braunfels and in November of that year he married Ernestine Fernanda Reich, daughter of Julius Reich of Hortontown. The couple moved to Fredericksburg to set up a studio.

In July 1880, John and Ernestine were back in New Braunfels and opened a studio on Seguin Street across from the woolen manufacturing company. The quality of his work was highly praised in the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung.

Serdinko proved to be more than a good photographer; he was also an inventor. In February 1882, John received his first patent for “a portable darkroom for dry plate photography.” Serdinko was thinking of ways to improve and adapt his profession to the changing times.

In March of that same year, John and Ernestine put down roots and bought a house in New Braunfels. He purchased all new, up-to-date equipment and life for the couple looked bright. Tragedy struck in January 1883. The Serdinkos lost their 14-month-old son. That September, the studio moved closer to Main Plaza, two buildings down from the NB Zeitung office on Seguin Street.

John seemed to settle into life in NB and his studio did well. There had been photographers in New Braunfels as early as 1855, when a man set up a studio to produce daguerreotypes. You will find many photographers’ names on carte de visite and cabinet cards made in New Braunfels from the 1860s to the early 20th C: Carl Iwonsky (who was also a painter), William DeRyee, J.M. Slater, Doerr, Ranney, Winther, Jacobson, Jakobi & Parks, J.H. Chapman, Hoffmann, Schwarz and Klenke are a few.

Serdinko received a second patent, this time for a “rotary force pump,” in April 1885. He got a third patent in February 1886 for a “wind machine.” Like so many of the early citizens, he was a highly educated man with many interests, very much a man living up to the ideals of the Victorian Age and the industrialization it brought. With glowing reports that the quality of his work was “as good as anywhere in the States,” Serdinko purchased all new photographic equipment.

The Serdinkos were blessed with a second child, Rosa Lee, in 1887. John was mainly producing cabinet cards and selling them for $3.50 per dozen. He became a trustee in the newly formed fraternal organization, Knights of the Golden Rule (sort of a mutual aid society). Folks dropped by his studio to have both posed and candid photos taken. Serdinko photographed the first members of the Six and Sixty-six Card Club.

In November of 1887, trouble was brewing in the domestic life of the Serdinkos. Mrs. Serdinko had a sale which included household items, a windmill, pumps, and handwork, to be paid in cash. Ernestine then informed the public on March 1, 1888 that she was leaving NB in two weeks and was selling what was left of her furniture, picture frames and more. She also said she would finish all her photos at a very low price; she must have been doing some of the processing for her husband. She left and the studio on Seguin Street was rented to J.W. Writer who came from the studio of Serdinko’s friend, Alonzo N. Calloway, in San Antonio.

In April, John Serdinko returned from travelling to California and reopened a studio. When did he leave? Where did he go? I followed his trail west, and I found the reason for the North Dakota request. During 1887, Serdinko somehow met up with F. Jay Haynes of Fargo. Haynes was the official photographer of the Northern Pacific Railroad. He had his own railcar fitted out as living quarters and photography studio and is best known for his early views of Yellowstone National Park. There are several stereoviews, from the “Northwestern Pacific Views” series, depicting Native Americans and one view of Yellowstone that are published by Serdinko in Fargo. There are also cabinet cards with “Serdinko, New Braunfels” found in Fargo.

John may not have been the best husband, but he was shaping up to be an interesting man.

When the new IG&N railroad bridge across the Guadalupe River collapsed in 1891, John Serdinko was the photographer who chronicled the tragedy. In 1892, Serdinko designed and fabricated “an excellent telephone apparatus” which was installed to connect Henry Streuer’s Two Brothers Saloon on Main Plaza with the Streuer home in Comaltown. This was the first telephone in New Braunfels!

Serdinko sold his studio and took off for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago — – THE perfect place for an inventor and photographer. After his return to NB in October, John received his fourth patent for “an automatic telephone exchange system.” He then rented his home on Seguin Street and moved to San Antonio in 1894. Serdinko got a patent for his telephone in April 1895.

The photographic business was sold to L. J. Wilson in 1899. Serdinko is listed in the 1900 Census for Colorado County and in March of 1901, Ernestine filed for divorce in the District Court in San Antonio.

And this is where I lost the trail for John, or Ivan, Serdinko. I found the last tidbit of his life in Ernestina Serdinko nee Reich’s family tree, “He died 11/15/1919 in Austria.”

How this free-thinking, intelligent, wanderlustig photographer and inventor made it to Austria remains a mystery.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives: Reich family genealogy; New Braunfelser-Zeitung; New Braunfels Herald; Lens on theTexas Frontier, by Lawrence T. Jones III; Nesbitt Memorial Library, Colorado County History, Part 8, by Bill Stein; 1900 Census, Colorado County, Texas; https://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/TDNP/; https://dsloan.com; https://www.ha.com/; https://www.yellowstonestereoviews.com/

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Driving down Magazine Street the other day, I may have muttered some choice words when I bounced into a pothole that, I promise, a whole pig could have fit into. By the time I got to the Sophienburg, I was thinking hard about the streets in NB. Were they ever worse than they are now?

Oh. My. Yes.

Imagine a time when there were no motor vehicles, only wagons, carts and carriages ALL pulled along by horses, mules and oxen teams. There was a lot of _ _ _ _ on the roads.

To alleviate the amount of manure and urine and God only knows what else was laying on those dirt streets, they needed to be “sprinkled” with water daily. Sprinkling also improved health and living conditions by lessening the awful dust problem caused by street traffic. Shop owners on the main business streets were forever dusting and washing off produce, wares, floors and store counters.

A sprinkling wagon was a large and heavy vehicle designed to carry a tank that held up to 1000 gallons of water. A sprayer system was hung off the back that delivered water “more natural than a shower itself” according to the Fairchild sprinkler wagon patent in 1879.

The first sprinkler wagon in NB was built at the Comal Ironworks (near the old Comal Cottons mill) by Theodor Meckel in October 1893. Citizens paid Meckel a small fee to sprinkle the street in front of their home or business. The City also paid Meckel to sprinkle Main Plaza and the first block of W. San Antonio Street.

In 1905, the City paid Julius Buske a salary of $754.10 ($2.25 per hour) to haul gravel to fix potholes and to sprinkle the main streets. With continued growth came more dirt streets and dust — – more animal-powered vehicles and muck. A small poem was published in the Herald.

The sprinkler man in our town, he works with might and main,
To get the pavement sprinkled well before it starts to rain.

The local Womens Civic Improvement Club marched to the rescue by purchasing a new street sprinkler wagon for the city in 1914. The Mayor “expressed his high appreciation and thanks.” These women also championed the placement of public restrooms under the bandstand on Main Plaza. These women were good people.

By 1917, the city’s growth had made the dust/sanitation problem of gravel streets nearly impossible to maintain. Mr. Clemens suggested the new-fangled asphalting of Main Plaza and W. San Antonio to Academy Streets. The Uvalde Rock Asphalt Company was hired and completed the paving by February 1918, giving “the principle part of the city an up-to-date appearance.” FYI: A public notice was published warning everyone “not to burn trash or make fire for any purpose on the new asphalt street paving, as it will damage the paving.” Duh….

The City Council noted in 1918 that the City had paid $12,590.93 of the downtown paving bill and that 30 (named!) individuals had chipped in another $8,820.32 to extend the paving to the curbs on both sides of the streets. Incidently this public/private payment system remained in play up into the 1960s. The City would pay 1/3 of the cost of paving a street; that part was laid down the center. The other 2/3 of the cost was paid by the owners of the property on each side of the street; they were responsible for the pavement to the curb in front of their homes/businesses. Neighborhoods petitioned the City for paving, then had to get all the property owners to agree to the terms — not an easy thing to do.

A combination street sweeper and sprinkler was purchased in 1922, reflecting the dual nature of NB streets. Dust from unpaved side roads was being carried onto the asphalted main streets. F.F. Fischer ran the unit for 50 cents an hour.

In 1932, the demand from folks across the river in Comaltown was addressed by the renting of a motor-driven sprinkler truck. The truck accomplished in 5 hours what the horse-drawn sprinkler wagon could manage in 7. FYI: It required 22 hours to sprinkle all the unpaved streets in just downtown NB at this time.

Eventually, the city streets get paved and the dust problem is more or less solved, but that doesn’t really happen until the 1960s. That means I should remember gravel roads, but I don’t. By the time I was hitting the streets, it was pretty much all paved. All this has made me come to the conclusion that instead of muttering under my breath when I hit that pothole, I am going to joyfully praise the Lord that 1. I drive a car and 2. I drive on paved roads

Sources:

• Neu Braunfelser Zeitung, New Braunfels Herald, New Braunfel Herald Zeitung
• A Pictorial History of New Braunfels, by Myra Lee Adams Goff and Rosemary Leissner Gregory
• Wheels that Won the West Archives blog, David Sneed
• Meckel family history, Sophienburg Museum & Archives

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According to stories of the Old West, suspected criminals were shot or hung. No jail was necessary. Then as people became more civilized, there arose a doubt as to whether the person accused was actually guilty. Could we possibly say that “those were the good old days?” I think not. Should we have a trial before the punishment takes place? Holding a suspect in jail was certainly a better solution. A trial determining guilt or innocence would follow, but what to do with the so-called criminal until the trial?

From this need, the idea of a jail was born and in New Braunfels, this jail idea was necessary early on. For that matter, the first suspected criminal, a woman, was arrested and kept in the home of Sheriff Henry Gerwin. There were no buildings when New Braunfels was settled but eventually log huts were constructed. Gerwin’s prisoner’s infraction was not noted in the Comal County Commissioners Court minutes but the Comal County Commissioners agreed to pay Gerwin for keeping his prisoner for 45 days in his home. Must have been mighty cozy. The county had to rely on others who had empty rooms or empty structures sufficient to serve as a jail. New Braunfels Mayor Heuckel, in 1848, helped out by renting the commissioners a room in his home for ten months for $25 to serve as a jail.

In 1848, the County Commissioners asked the newly elected sheriff, Adam Maurer, to look for a place to be used as a jail. It would be subject to their approval. Now, this is interesting: About the same tine in 1848, the county asked the city if they would grant land to build both a courthouse and a jail. When the city offered no land, the commissioners advised the county clerk to tell the city that they intended to build a courthouse and a jail on the Main Plaza even though the property was owned by the city.

The city was asked to respond to the request and after not hearing from them, Commissioner Dr. Koester was asked to obtain a resolution from the city. This eventually happened, but not resulting in what the county expected. The city then offered two lots near the Comal Springs and suggested that if necessary, the county could sell the property in order to purchase property somewhere else, but NOT on Main Plaza.

Buying a lot and building a courthouse and jail was an expensive proposition and the county had only $400 and taxes were still forthcoming.

In July 1849, Theodore Sterzing offered his lot to the county for $600 which included two log buildings. This lot was town lot #85 fronting on Seguin Avenue. The lot is in the location of the parking lot for the Elk’s Lodge. The county records show that the offer was accepted, and the county moved in the larger of the two log buildings. The future plan was to build a log jail on the site 12 feet square using logs 9 inches thick. This building was eventually built and can claim its fame as the first jail in Comal County.

Eventually, the log jail became unsuitable and in 1854, a new jail was built at what is now 509 W. Mill Street. This jail served the county for 24 years.

Do you know the story of the Moesgen murder? Moesgen was a first founder of New Braunfels and he was murdered by his wife, daughter and son-in-law. If you own the book “Around the Sophienburg,” you can find the story on pages 236 and 237. The book is a “must read” to learn about the history of New Braunfels and Comal County. The family killed Moesgen in 1855. The story tells us that the three family members were hauled off to the sheriff’s home. The year shows that they were placed in the Mill Street jail. The court found the three guilty and imprisoned. One died in prison and two were paroled.

The Mill Street jail began to deteriorate, and plans were being made for a new jail to be built behind the 1860 courthouse (where the Chase Bank is located). The new jail was finished in 1879. The plans included iron cages to hold 20 or 30 prisoners. The two-story building was built of limestone rock with an iron roof. Fredrick Ernst Ruffini of Austin was chosen as the architect. The cost was $10,000 with a bid of $1000 for iron work. This building served as the jail from 1879 to 1931.

In 1898, the present courthouse was constructed and in 1931, the jail was added to the north side of the structure. The old jail that was in the Chase Bank parking lot, was torn down in 1958.

What happened to the old stones from the jail? It’s an interesting story. When Sts. Peter and Paul Church had an enlargement project in 1962, some of the stones were used from the old jail in their project. Both sides of the exterior of the church have some of the stones. When researcher John Coers was taking photos of the stones, he found carved initials. He thinks these were done by prisoners.

Another use of the stones from the old jail can be found at the outdoor patio and steps leading to the basement of the Prince Solms Inn on San Antonio Street. There are three notable stones at the top of the steps that have the words COMAL COUNTY PRIS.

The New Braunfels Conservation Society is in the possession of the cornerstone of the old jail with the architect, F.E. Ruffini inscribed on it and they also have a metal device that was thought to be used to pass food through to prisoners.

All of this information was researched by John Coers at the Sophienburg Museum and Archives. John is a member of the Comal County Historical Commission. He used maps, city minutes, county minutes and newspapers to aid his research. There is a wealth of information to aid researchers at the Sophienburg. Check it out.

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Occasionally, I need to look through the Sophienburg’s newspaper collection. The papers, on microfilm, date from 1852 to present day; it is an amazing resource. Often, an unrelated search sends me “down a bunny trail” (of course, I follow!). As I was researching pigeons a couple columns back, I came across Dr. Grube. His name was familiar to me because there are several artifacts in the Museum collections associated with him: a wood box overlaid with sliced deer horn, an engraved watch fob, a meerschaum cigar holder, and some cut-glass steins. So I began to wonder, who was this guy?

A name search in the news index revealed over 80 mentions for Dr. Otto R. Grube in the Neu Braunfelser Zeitung, from 1876-1902. The advertisements, small articles, and one sentence reports in Locales (Local news), gave me a sense of what the everyday life of this local physician was like. This good doctor was a busy, busy man.

The paper announced in November 1876, that Dr. Grube had taken over Dr. Lehde’s medical practice. The practice remained in Dr. Lehde’s home, but Otto made many house calls. During 1877, Dr. Grube rode his horse 10 miles south of New Braunfels to Santa Clara to cure the Helmke child of nervous fever, moved his office to the Voges home on Castell Street, and joined Dr. Claessan in performing an autopsy. The theft of Otto’s horse from in front of the Guadalupe Hotel (Schmitz) during a failed robbery attempt definitely made news in July. Later that fall, he joined the Turnverein (Athletic Club) and the Saengerverein (Singing Society). He was fitting into the New Braunfels “scene” quite nicely.

The Zeitung printed a thank you to Grube in February 1878 for his “special attention and services rendered” during Mrs. Roessing’s illness. That spring, advertisements reminded townsfolk that he was giving smallpox vaccinations during the lunch hour each day at Voelcker’s Drugstore. He is involved in the November murder investigation at the Breustedt Farm, 6 miles from downtown; called in to examine a woman’s body found in the well, he determined that her head had been beaten in with the “weapon” found near her. The murderer turned out to be the woman’s husband, a Polish man, who worked on the farm. (Talk about a bunny trail!) Grube removed Dr. Claessan’s finger in December — it had become infected during an earlier operation.

In 1879, Dr. Grube assisted several San Antonio physicians in a hernia operation; this was considered “major surgery”. Later that year, his neighbor’s dog was poisoned, he was appointed to the examiners board to hire English-speaking teachers, and he amputated Mrs. Seele’s foot after it was badly broken in a wagon accident.

He treated Mrs. Eiband’s lung disease until her death and got politically involved in 1880. He went to Galveston and Dallas as a delegate to the Democratic Convention. He also took ownership of a beautiful, hand-crafted coach made by “blacksmith Galle and wagon maker Mueller, with lacquer-work done by Streuer”. He and his friends survived a “mule and ambulance” accident on the way to a Saengerverein event and that summer he worked on the fair planning committee.

Advertisements in 1881, announced that Dr. Grube was a “family doctor.” He helped reestablish the local masonic lodge. That summer he and Mr. Voelcker began a soda water business. He treated Mr. Glenewinkle’s arm after a thrashing machine mishap and he served as coroner for the intentional morphine overdose of Lee Wilson at Ludwig’s boarding house.

1882 was a difficult year for Dr. Grube. First, he served as pallbearer for his good friend, Dr. Claessen. Next, he treated the wound of M. Starcke’s 12-year-old son after he was accidentally shot by his 14-year-old brother. In November, he travelled all the way to Laredo to treat Judge Pfeuffer’s son, George. (That’s one heck of a house call!). Then in 1883, Grube’s 12-year-old brother-in-law, John Dyer, was shot by Alfred Rheinlaender.

Personal tragedy struck again in March 1885, when Grube’s wife died suddenly at age 30; he buried her with her family in New Orleans. That summer, he treated Mrs. Waldschmidt after a terrible accident. While she was milking a cow, it tried to butt away her dog. She was knocked down instead and suffered a serious “wound” because she was pregnant. At the same time, Dr. Grube cared for the son of Mr. Hildebrand who had shot himself in the head with a shotgun. After the last few months it was not surprising to read in the newspaper that Grube gave his practice to Dr. Underhill and moved to New Orleans in November. The Zeitung reported that “the town would truly miss him.”

And then, in May 1895, Dr. Grube returned to New Braunfels. He set up his practice in Voelcker’s Drugstore and specialized in the diseases of women and children.

In 1896, Grube was reported to have tried a telephone connection between New Braunfels and Blanco. New Braunfels had been connected to San Antonio since January. He continued to give smallpox vaccinations and once again was elected to be a delegate to the Democratic Convention.

He bought shares in the Comal County Fair Association in 1899 and became the president of the Schuetzenverein (Shooting Club). Most importantly, Otto Grube married Emmy Weber in a December ceremony. He was 50; Emmy was 28.

1902 saw a rise in smallpox cases. Dr. Grube, the Comal County Health Officer, reported on the victims: Tausch’s daughter, 2 Catholic nuns, Kern’s son, 1 member of the Lueder family, 2 of Albrecht’s daughters, and 3 Mexican workers on the Kuehler Farm.

Dr. Otto R. Grube died July 8, 1902, of kidney failure, and was buried in Comal Cemetery. His second wife, Emmy, lived until November 23, 1956.

Now I wonder how much of my life — or yours — is recorded in the newspaper.

Sources:

• Neu Braunfelser Zeitung microfilm collection
• First Protestant Church records
• US Census reports
• The Portal to Texas History https://texashistory.unt.edu

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How many times have you said or thought, “I wish I could remember what my grandmother told me about that.” If you have letters or a diary from your family, you are one of the fortunate ones. Our history of New Braunfels is almost totally based on the writings of Prince Carl, Hermann Seele, Ferdinand Roemer, Ferdinand Lindheimer and all those who told us our history because they were here. From them we learned what the town looked like, what people were doing, what they ate, how they felt, and what they thought. Even from the Spanish period in Texas we are told about routes along the Camino Real through the Comal Springs and about the missions established along the routes and how the explorers lived.

We live in what is called the communication age but you have to wonder how much of our “communication” today will be left for future generations to discover where we were and who we were. Remember that when you hit “delete” on your computer or cell text. Wonder if there is some kind of “cyber diary” out there that will be tapped in the future or will it all just be transported into outer space?

In 2013, I wrote an article about the life of Ferdinand Lindheimer, however, recently I read again A Life Among the Texas Flora by Minetta Altgelt Goyne, and decided to write more about this exceptional man. The book is a compilation of letters from Lindheimer to botanist George Engelmann.

Dr. Goyne, a descendant from some old New Braunfels families (Altgelt and Coreth), was teaching at the University of Texas at Arlington and could translate the old German script. She also knew a lot about New Braunfels history, Lindheimer and the history of Germany, all contributing to her insightful analysis published alongside the letters. The original letters are housed at the Missouri Botanical Garden at St. Louis. In 1979, the president of the New Braunfels Conservation Society approached Dr. Goyne to translate the letters. Copies of the letters had been acquired from Carlos Lindheimer, great-grandnephew of Lindheimer and native of Argentina.

Lindheimer came to New Braunfels in 1845 with Prince Carl at the age of 43. He did not travel to Texas on the ships with the first contingency of immigrants. He was already here in Texas. He was born and raised near Frankfurt, came to the United States in 1834, entering at New York. He traveled to Belleville, Illinois to the Hilgard Farm where he joined friends that had already emigrated from Germany. One of the friends was George Engelmann. Engelmann had studied medicine in Germany and had a practice in St. Louis but continued his plant studies. Engelmann and Lindheimer had studied botany together in Germany.

In the fall of 1834, Lindheimer set out from Illinois to travel south. His destination was Texas but it was considered dangerous to travel south directly into Texas from the northern route. He decided to travel to Mexico and then enter Texas from the south. He took a steamboat from Illinois down the Mississippi and arrived in New Orleans. then took a schooner to Veracruz, Mexico. He traveled to a German colony not far from Veracruz that he considered one of the most beautiful areas on earth. The German colony grew and exported sugarcane, coffee and tobacco. Lindheimer stayed there for a period of time working and observing the plantation. At that point, he thought he wanted to be a farmer.

We know that he left Mexico and enlisted in the Army of Texas, arriving with his company at San Jacinto one day too late. He received an honorable discharge at Houston on December 5, 1837. Apparently his commanding officers allowed him to collect botanical specimens while his fellow soldiers were performing drills. In 1939, he purchased a ten-acre farm near Houston not far from White Oak Bayou.

The letters to Engelmann beginning in 1841, indicate that he was accumulating equipment for his first botanizing in Texas. In 1835, while in Mexico, Lindheimer wrote to Engelmann about his interest in plants. Now in Texas, he was going to be paid to collect plant specimens and ship them to Engelmann in St. Louis.

Engelmann later organized the St. Louis Academy of Science in 1856 and what is now called the Missouri Botanical Garden. The archives house Engelmann’s plant collections and papers which include the Lindheimer letters. Many of the plant specimens collected by Lindheimer were also be sent to the famous botanist Asa Gray and actually all over the world. The Texas plants had never been collected and catalogued so completely before this time.

In the early 1840s, Lindheimer collected plants in the Houston and Galveston area, making little use of his home and living in a tent. His equipment consisted of paper, plant pressing equipment, magnifying glasses and botany textbooks. Specimens were shipped to St. Louis in wooden crates. Engelmann and Gray paid Lindheimer eight dollars per 100 specimens.

In 1842, Lindheimer wrote to Engelmann from Houston concerning the “Texas Star” flower (Lindheimeria texensis), “Did you write my name among the stars with this little Asteroid? Did I serve botany in that way? Not by knowledge of it but rather by love of this sleeping, dreaming daughter of Flora.” He continues, “So, if I die childless, then I shall nevertheless leave a little immortal daughter, the Lindheimer texensis!”

In 1843 and 1844, we find Lindheimer collecting specimens in (Wild)Cat Springs, San Felipe, Brazoria, Liverpool, the Brazos basin, Industry and the Chocolate Bayou. Wildcat or Cat Springs was established in 1834 by Robert Justus and Rosalie Roeder Kleberg. The 1831 settlement of Industry where Lindheimer visited is considered the cradle of German settlements in Texas. There was a small influx of German emigrants during most of the Republic of Texas period until the last year, when the major immigration to Texas occurred with Prince Carl.

In January 1845, Lindheimer wrote to Engelmann from the Adelsverein’s camp at Aqua Dulce. Many of the German Texans that had settled in Texas prior to the arrival of Prince Carl, joined with the prince at the coast. Then on April 18, 1845, we find that Lindheimer is writing his letter from the new German settlement on the Comal Springs. Lindheimer writes of New Braunfels, “Flower upon flower, richer than the richest Persian carpet. Fragrances that sometimes remind one of violets, often of vanilla, flow around the wanderer.”

In New Braunfels, Lindheimer reserved a piece of land for his botanical garden of Texas plants, arboretum and agricultural experiments. Under the employ of the Adelsverein, he received this farm and a house. By Christmas, he was living in a cold, poor, open hut and spending so much time on survival that he is having difficulty collecting plants. This situation was remedied when he met Eleanor Reinarz. Lindheimer described her as upright, understanding, diligent, solid, refreshing, generous and chaste. She shared in his interests and helped with his plant collecting. He wrote that in a couple of weeks, his weatherproof house will be ready alleviating the problem of moldy specimens.

From this home-base, Lindheimer traveled to the surrounding areas of San Antonio, Seguin, Austin, San Saba and the Pedernales to collect plant specimens.

Gray and Engelmann issued Plantae Lindheimerianae, Part I in 1845 and Part II in 1850, with many publications to follow. In the early 1850s, Lindheimer’s interests became more local and he spent more time raising his family with wife, Eleanor. New Braunfels was in need of a newspaper and on November 12, 1852, the first issue of the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung was published with Lindheimer as editor. He continued botanizing to the end of his days. He died in 1879, and is buried in the Comal Cemetery. The first log home he built on Comal Avenue is no longer standing but his winterized home stands and is maintained amidst gardens by the New Braunfels Conservation Society.

Without a doubt, the letters establish why Lindheimer is considered the Father of Texas Botany.

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In the early days, when Seguin Ave. was considered the main street in New Braunfels, the first houses and businesses were constructed there. Possibly Seguin Ave. was so named because most people entered the town from guess where? Seguin. When the settlers first crossed the Guadalupe River in 1845, they traveled from Nacogdoches Road to Seguin Ave. and then on to the location where they would camp above the Comal Creek. Hermann Seele wrote about coming to the town on Seguin Ave. Early traveler and historian Friedrich Olmstead, commented that he found Seguin Ave. in New Braunfels three times wider than Broadway in New York.

Nicholas Zink, surveyor and engineer for the Adelsverein, set up our Main Plaza, and intersected it with Seguin Ave. and San Antonio St. By May of that first year of settlement in 1845, Zink had plotted the town lots and a drawing was held for each lot.
Let’s look at one of the old homes built on Seguin Ave. in 1870 or maybe as early as 1866. The house which still stands is located at 228 S. Seguin Ave. on lot #56 between the Faust Hotel and the Taco el Tapatio. This house has been the home or office of some very influential people and the house itself has received some very prestigious designations. In 1968 the Texas State Historical Survey Committee awarded a marker to this building. In 1999, it became a New Braunfels Historic Landmark and in the year 2000 the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The person responsible for having the house constructed was Carl Wilhelm August Groos, born in Prussia, Germany in 1830. He immigrated to Texas with his brothers and sisters and his widowed father in 1848. His two brothers, Friedrich and Gustav, became very important in his life. For two years Carl lived in Fayette County and then moved to Gillespie County where he lived with relatives.

In 1854 Carl joined his brothers Gustav and Friedrich in Eagle Pass. Brother, Friedrich had secured a contract in 1849 with the United States Government to send freight into Eagle Pass. He formed the F. Groos and Company.

During the Civil War in 1862 Carl was arrested by Confederate authorities and taken to San Antonio. A letter that had been addressed to him was found on the body of a Mexican killed near the border of Texas and Mexico. Carl was eventually released and returned to Eagle Pass. He then moved to Matamoros where the Groos Company had a branch office. The firm weathered the Civil War by freighting cotton to Mexico.

After the war, Carl moved to San Antonio where the F. Groos and Company was relocated. In 1870, Carl married Hulda Amalia Moreau. She was the daughter of Franz Moreau, who was a cotton broker in New Braunfels and a German consul. Shortly after their marriage, Carl had a home built on Seguin Ave. Family history notes that it was a wedding gift to Carl and Hulda. Hulda’s father, Franz Moreau lived at 190 S. Seguin Ave. His home was built in 1854 and is still standing and serves as an office complex. Between the Groos home and the Moreau home was a store that became known as Moreau and Groos. After the Civil War, the economy in New Braunfels was suffering but business was booming in San Antonio. In 1872, Carl and Hulda moved to San Antonio but kept the home at 228 S. Seguin Ave. for summer visits until 1879.

The history of the property goes like this: The first immigrant to draw lot #56 was George Kirchner. If Kirchner built some sort of house on that lot, it wouldn’t be surprising, because he could easily go to the German Protestant Church, where he was a member. Kirchner died very soon in 1846 and the administrator of Kirchner’s estate conveyed the lot to Jacob Winkler for $60. In 1857, Winkler sold the lot to August Forke who sold it in 1866 to Charles Bender and four years later it was sold to Carl Groos, the subject of this information.

When Carl bought lot # 56 on Seguin Avenue he also bought lot #72 directly behind this lot on Castell Ave. It is believed that he had the house built on lot # 56 in 1870. The adobe brick L shaped, Gothic Colonial house with its cypress floors was beautifully crafted. The front door contains ruby glass and the cement frame windows are of original rolled glass. In 1879 the house was sold to Groos’ sister, Emilie and her husband Johann Friedrick Giesecke, Mayor of New Braunfels. After that, Giesecke sold the house to Fritz Scholl who owned it until 1946, when it was purchased by Arlon and Faye Krueger. After Arlon Krueger’s death, the house ownership remained in the family and became home of the New Braunfels Art Center and then the business office of Ambassador Robert Krueger.

Here is more of the story that resulted in the transformation of F. Groos and Company to the Groos National Bank. Carl’s brother Friedrich, a graduate engineer and architect, had a United States Government contract which he procured in 1849 for sending freight into Eagle Pass. The freighting business was successful despite the danger operating in Indian Territory. Branch businesses were located in New Braunfels, San Antonio, and Matamoros, Mexico. Carl and Gustav joined Friedrich in a mercantile company in 1854. It was called F. Groos and Co. A primitive form of banking was necessary for the operation of a frontier store. Saved money was hidden in boxes, cotton bales, axels of wheels or just about any hiding place. This resulted in the brothers forming the Groos National Bank of San Antonio. This bank became a very successful financial institution in San Antonio. The banking business prospered so well that the freighting was discontinued. Carl became the first president of the firm and in 1879 built the first building in San Antonio devoted exclusively to banking at the corner of Commerce and Navarro.

What happened to the original builder of the house on Seguin Ave.? After Carl and his brothers became founding members of the Groos National Bank, Carl built a beautiful home in 1880 at 335 King William Street in the King William Historic District in San Antonio. He hired famous architect, Alfred Giles, to design the San Antonio home. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The house was eventually purchased by the San Antonio Council of the Girl Scouts of the USA who sold it to Charles Butt, founder of the grocery chain.

The King William Historic District, the state’s first historic district, was created in the late 1800s on the south bank of the San Antonio River. Prominent German merchants brought with them a distinct architectural style and created an elegant residential area of 25 blocks. For a real treat, log on to the King William Historic District and view these magnificent homes.

Carl Groos died in 1893 and is interred in San Antonio City Cemetery #1. His first home still remains on Seguin Ave. in New Braunfels, Texas.

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Recently I had an opportunity to practice my investigative reporting skills. I’m not adventurous enough to be a real investigative reporter but every once in a while something piques my curiosity and I’m off on an adventure. Reading a newspaper article by Oscar Haas that he wrote 45 years ago about Altgelt Pond got me started.

Never having heard of the pond before, I started looking and found very little. The story was very interesting but gave me sketchy clues about where this pond was located. Clue #1 was that it was four miles west of New Braunfels on the Dry Comal Creek. After several dry runs, my husband and I started over at the Plaza, went out Landa St., turned right before the overpass, turned left on Loop 337, heading toward the Dry Comal Creek area. Sure enough, large patches of trees on the right side of the loop led us to a little turn-in right after McCoys Lumber and Holiday Marine Boat Supplies. There was the River City Range and right there as you drive in on the left side of the short drive is Altgelt Pond. The pond has a chain-link fence around it but it is visible.

Johnny Rodriguez, a native of New Braunfels, owns the River City Range, a seven acre miniature golf course, two driving ranges, practice facility, batting cages, and sanded and lighted volleyball courts. There is a bar with several television sets, pool table, and ping pong table. Rodriguez bought the property five years ago.

Stories handed down by old-timers in the area tell of very big fish and that the pond was a favorite fishing spot. The pond has never dried up. Stories of the pond go back to the beginning of the settlement. Occasionally alligators were sighted in the Comal River and thought to be from the Dry Comal. Rodriguez said that even through the last drought in Comal County, the pool remained full. Other pools and tanks in the area dried up. It is estimated that the pool is at least 60 feet deep but was impossible to measure. Imagine the difficulty of measuring the depth of a spring-fed pool.

No one knows what name the pond had in the past. If it was named after the owners, it could have been Veramendi Pond, Prince Carl Pond, Meusebach Pond, Ernst Coreth Pond and finally Altgelt Pond. Probably the Native Americans had a name for it. According to Haas, there were several different names given to the pond, such as “Blue Hole” and “Bottomless Hole”. Early settlers called it “Der Teich”, meaning The Pond in German. This pond may be bottomless but it is not blue. It’s hard to imagine it as ever being described as blue. It’s green with algae and looks like it could be a great setting for one of the swamp movies. I imagine the snakes love it.

One of the first owners of the land on which the pond was located was John O. Meusebach, successor to Prince Carl as head of the Adelsverein in Texas. When Meusebach came to New Braunfels to take the place of Prince Carl, he came with a contract signed by Count Castell, president of the German Emigration Company. The contract stated that Meusebach would receive 500 acres of the company’s land of his choosing. In June, 1847, Meusebach chose a 280 acre plot where the pond was located.

Six months later he sold the tract to Count Ernst Coreth for $3,266 including a house, two cedar log cabins, farm implements, garden seeds, ploughed land, ditches and fences.

Meusebach married Miss Agnes Coreth, oldest daughter of Count Ernst and Countess Agnes Coreth on Sept. 26, 1852. For a brief time the Meusebachs lived at Hueco Springs and later founded Loyal Valley. Agnes Meusebach’s parents, Count and Countess Coreth, came with their six children to Texas in the fall of 1846 on the ship York, an emigrant sailing ship out of Antwerp. Five more children were born in Texas. The last child, Otilie, was born in 1858 and married Hermann Altgelt in 1879. The obituary of Mrs. Agnes Coreth states that the family after its arrival in Texas “went on to Fredericksburg, returned to NB and lived on a farm later known as the Altgelt Farm, which has the famous Altgelt Pond on it.” (Oscar Haas said that the pond was owned by E.R. Teinert in 1970.) It now belongs to Johnny Rodriguez.

Rochette Coreth, son of Franz Coreth and the grandson of Ernst and Agnes Coreth, told Oscar Haas a story about Altgelt Pond. He said that when his grandfather owned the land on which the pond was located, he used the pond for irrigation. There was a certain special kind of clay that he had hauled in by mule carts and placed the clay around the outside of the pond to build it up. He was able to use the flow of the pond for irrigation purposes. The water was then above the level of the surrounding fields and it was possible to use gravity flow to irrigate. The pond became the object of a riparian (water) rights suit. Haas said that a mill owner farther down the Comal Creek had been using the overflow of the pond to turn a waterwheel for his mill. When Coreth dammed it up, water no longer flowed to his mill. The mill owner, and Haas did not name the person, filed suit against Coreth and the suit eventually went to the Texas Supreme Court. The court ruled in favor of Coreth’s rights.

The whole area on which Altgelt Pond is located has its unusual features whether for agricultural purposes or industry. Some old prominent names connected with this land were Meusebach, Altgelt, Coreth, Ogden, Eikel and especially Dittlinger who was the founder of the settlement of Dittlinger in the early 1900s. He and I.A. Ogden began a rock-crushing business on a large scale that has grown to what it is today. Dittlinger created a settlement of houses,a school, a church, stores, and a dance hall for workers at “Las Calera”, or The Lime as it was called by the inhabitants.

The settlement of Dittlinger is no more, agriculture in the area is sparse, but Der Teich refuses to go away. Come to think of it, I might be able to start a new career in investigative journalism.

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