Don’t we all love the feeling of an old-fashioned Christmas? Once again, the Sophienburg has decorated for the Christmas season, but this year wins the prize.

The collection and exhibit ladies have put together a dollhouse display of 14 different dollhouses plus small doll collections.

Entering the foyer is a large dollhouse at one time belonging to the late Bill and Nan Dillon. The house is decorated with furniture representing the 1870s to present day. Furniture includes Bentwood chairs from the 1900s and handmade furniture. Immediately across from this house is a unique “garden home” from the 1800s. The table and chairs are set with a tiny tea set.

Also in the foyer, a nine-foot tree holds a collection of 90 plus small dolls from around the world. This collection was given to the Sophienburg years ago by the late Thekla Wright. She and her husband, Dr. Rennie Wright, collected these dolls in their vast travels.

Next is a three-storied Victorian style house built by Richard and Merlene Hitz for Allison Humphries, daughter of Mike and Linda Dietert.  This house with its furnishings dating from 1990 to 2000 can be viewed from the front and the back.

Enter the Museum where there is a replica of an early cabin showing an old fashioned pioneer home.  Christmas at the Waisenhaus (orphanage) of Rev. Louis and Luise Ervendberg has been recreated. For many years, the Timmermann sisters of Geronimo, who were descendants of the Ervendbergs, created this scene at Christmastime for many to see. Underneath the cedar tree decorated with candy and cookies is an elaborate Nativity at Bethlehem. The tree is surrounded by honeycomb rocks, which was a common practice in New Braunfels.

Inside the “Newspaper” display area is a folding paper dollhouse, a 1990 reproduction of an 1890 Victorian house belonging to archivist Keva Boardman. This dollhouse is easily moved from one place to another.

Perhaps the most unusual of all the displayed houses is in the museum’s “Pharmacy” section. It is a house made of a packing crate containing packages of coconut. After the packages were sold, the remaining crate revealed lithographs of the inside of a house. The crate, when stood on end, represented four rooms. Shelley Weidner owns the Coconut House, at one time belonging to twins Carmen (Lee) and Cosima (Langwell) Schnable.

In the “Saloon” is a model of the old Sophienburg Museum made by a student and in the “Barbershop” is a boy’s version of a dollhouse – a metal 1960s barn and silo from the Jerome Bodeman collection. Moving on to the “Doctor’s Office” you see a Dura-craft 1970s dollhouse made from a kit furnished with items from 1980s and ’90s.

In the 1960s, the trend in dollhouses was to make them of metal. One displayed belongs to Yvonne Rahe and one belongs to Meredeth Neiman. Plastic and metal furniture became popular at this time. In the “General Store” there is a plywood house made from a kit.

My dollhouse given to me in 1934 by my grandfather, builder A.C. Moeller, actually has electric lights (Christmas tree lights from the ’30s). The dollhouse was constructed by Richard Ikels, who was the cabinetmaker for him. Patterned in the bungalow style of the time, it contains arches separating the six rooms plus stucco walls and hardwood floors. The original wooden furniture remains in my memory only. Present furnishings were collected by Goff daughters and granddaughters.

Upon exiting the Museum, one sees a two-room 1920s house owned by Betty Stobaugh. The house was constructed by Betty’s father and all the furnishings were ordered from Germany.

Finally a wardrobe from the museum collection is filled with small dolls and next to it a feather tree holding a tiny baby doll collection.

The exhibit will be open all of December. The price is $5 per person; or you could come to The St. Nick celebration on Dec. 5 for $5 a family.

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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 collecting these kinds of resources for more than 92 years and our staff can assist you in your quest.

So how do we begin the process? At the Sophienburg, we usually start with a surname or a location. If you are researching a property, we look for clues in the phonebooks and city directories. Our telephone book collection goes back to 1906. That’s pretty early in the telephone age. New Braunfels had 7,008 citizens in the 1900 U.S. Census; only 101 phone numbers appear in the 1906 telephone book and many of these are business numbers.

To use a phonebook, you look things up by name or subject. A city directory adds to our chances of finding facts because it also lists by street. For instance, you can look up your home by its address. The directory, depending on the year, can tell you who lives there, what they do, what race they are, if they are renting or own, and other information. The city directory is a little like the census and phone book combined only it is published more than once every 10 years.

City directories were first printed for large cities in Europe in the 16th century. Philadelphia was the first US city to have a directory (1785), followed by New York. The early directories were published by independent publishers who relied on advertisements to fund them. Consequently, most of the listings are from tradesmen and businesses instead of people.

The Sophienburg’s earliest New Braunfels City Directory is 1931 followed by 1940 and 1952-53. Directories from the 1960s-1990s are also available. With the directories, we can trace who lived at a specific address and when residency changed. Each resident change gives us new names to follow for more information. We also find out who their neighbors were, and can sometimes trace the demographic changes in the neighborhood. More property information from the Comal County Clerk’s office is available online.

Following names is how we find out the stories that are associated with your family or your property. As an example, we are currently researching some ranch property for a family who have a log-built structure on their place. By using the resources available to both them and the Sophienburg, we can take their property all the way back to Republic of Texas days (1836-1846). We can find this information by using the Texas General Land Office records, also online. Their property is located on land granted to men who fought in the Texas Revolution. I have a New Braunfels First Founder in my family and on the TxGLO website I found scans of the original German immigrant land granted to my family — if only we still had it!

The Sophienburg has over 500 genealogies of New Braunfels and Comal County names. These are bound volumes of family genealogy that were generated by museum personnel and family members before Ancestry, Family Search and other databases. These volumes contain wonderful anecdotal information which is really what makes your ancestors come alive.

Along with the family histories, the Sophienburg Archives has an almost complete collection of the German-language newspaper Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung (1852-1957), the New Braunfels Herald (1895-1957) and the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung (1957 to present day). These are all on microfilm and can be referenced at the Sophienburg by appointment.

The German Zeitung was painstakingly indexed by volunteers prior to 2000. It can be searched by name or by subject. Of course, the articles will be in German. But that’s okay, because some of us can still read German and, if necessary, you can Google translate it. Newspaper articles will include birth, marriage and death information, as well as everyday occurrences in local, state, national and world news. We are unique in having an overlap in two languages — news is reported with different perspectives. The New Braunfels Herald and the Herald- Zeitung can also be accessed online at the New Braunfels Public Library’s digital newspaper archive.

The Sophienburg Photograph Collection has over half a million images of New Braunfels and the surrounding area. These images (prints, negatives and slides) span the history of New Braunfels and Comal County from the early 1860s to present day. The Photograph Collection illustrates people, homes, city streets, businesses, and farms. It immortalizes city and cultural events and celebrations like parades, festivals and weddings. The collection includes most of the negatives of the Seidel/Braunfels Studio which photographed city and citizens from the 1920s thru the 1970s. The collection is widely used by people searching for old family members, authors needing illustrations, homeowners wanting views of their property and businesses looking for images of New Braunfels in the old days. Copies can be purchased for use and display.

The Sophienburg’s Archive Collection includes early hand-drawn maps and later printed maps of the city, certain neighborhoods, and the county. We have several Sanborn Fire Insurance maps which wonderfully show the evolution of buildings and homes as they rise, are renovated and then replaced. These are my favorite because they include details of building construction, materials and even where the outhouses and wells were located. Other maps in the collection show topographical information which, when it rains again, will show why your street tends to flood after an inch or two.

The Sophienburg welcomes you to come and research in our spacious reading room. There will always be a friendly staff member available to help you find what you are looking for. Well, you might not find ALL you want to know. Research, like detective work, seldom finds all the answers to all our questions. However, it is really fun to try!

To do research, please contact The Sophienburg at 830-629-1572 during office hours (Tuesday–Saturday, 9 a.m,–4 p.m.) to make an appointment. Daily fee for the Archives is $25 and includes our helpful personnel and admission to the Exhibit Floor. If you need more time, your fee can easily be rolled into an individual membership that allows you unlimited entry to the archives for just $50 per year.

See you in the stacks!

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

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By Tara V. Kohlenberg —

While scouring an old Herald-Zeitung for some trivial unrelated detail, I came across a photo of an early 20th century view of downtown New Braunfels. It was taken from a postcard of West San Antonio Street. The corresponding article described the names and locations of the businesses that would have been seen in that photo, alongside the same information from the view in 1973. I was able to find the color version of the postcard at the Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

Today, we will do a little time-travel Tour of West San Antonio Street. Get your time-travel goggles on and try to keep up as we go block by block. Looking down West San Antonio from Main Plaza, the first building visible on the left side where the old Texas Commerce Bank stands, was the Robert Krause Building. Built in 1860, the red brick building with a covered porch housed the O.L. Pfannstiel Racket Store and the F.C. Hoffmann Jewelry Store, with both families living upstairs. It was razed in 1931 to build the art deco First National Bank.

Adjoining the first Robert Krause building was the Piggly Wiggly store, Keinburgs Restaurant then Ed Moeller’s Cafe and Pete Wagenfuehr’s barbershop. Together, the spaces became Krause’s Fashions in the ‘60s and ‘70s. That whole building was taken in by Texas Commerce Bank in their early 1980s expansion/remodel of First National Bank.

The corner of West San Antonio and Castell was the site of the Oberkampf Saloon and Beer Garden. Jacob Schmidt built a three-story building in 1922, housing the Jacob Schmidt Company on the ground floor until the ‘80s. It is now occupied by the Phoenix Saloon.

Across Castell, on the corner was S.V. Pfeuffer & Holm Department Store and the post office. Woolworth’s occupied the whole first floor of that building until sometime in the 80s. The building now houses the Downtown Antique Mall.

Next in line at 223 W. San Antonio, was Willie Ludwig Saloon which became JCPenney, now home to Scores. Next, at 233, was Charles Wells Bakery, which became Plumeyer’s Bakery and eventually Poll Parrot Shoes. Mode O’Day ladies’ fashions occupied the 239 W. San Antonio building in the ‘60s-’70s. Both of the buildings housing Poll Parrot and Mode O’Day are home to the Art League. Next to that was Peerless Pharmacy, which became today’s Dancing Pony. Keep in mind that the upstairs of all of these buildings were occupied by doctors, lawyers, and other offices.

Close to the middle of the block was the original grand Seekatz Opera House, which burned to the ground in 1941. The replacement building housed the Jacob Mendlowitz Company before being taken over by Paul Bruner’s in the 1970s. Bruner’s was noted for the large floor-to-ceiling display windows and a center island of display windows out front. Ron Snider remodeled the retail space into a venue, calling it the Seekatz Opera House in the ‘90s. It is now the home of Traveling Gypsy Antiques.

The little narrow building, Elizabeth James Salon, originally housed Seekatz Butcher Shop followed by New Braunfels Candy Kitchen in the ‘30s and Great Western Finance in the ‘60s-’70s. Heritage Supply occupies the 1918 red brick building which in past years was home to Braunfels Studio.

The current Lone Star Lounge was originally Rahe Grocery. Over the years it became the Depot Drink Stand and Ortiz’s Recreation Center and more recently The Cork Wine Bar. On the end, before the railroad tracks, there was originally something called Seekatz Candy Store which is where Staunch Rugged Clothing is located.

Beginning back at the Plaza to time travel down the right side of the street, where Moody Bank now stands, was a different (new) Krause Building. In the early 1900s, it housed the Streuer Brothers Saloon with a bowling alley in the back. After that, a slick new modern building was built to house the United Gas Company with lots of windows over black, glass-like panels. It was remodeled by Guaranty State Bank.

Next to that, was Streuer & Hoffmann Co. groceries, followed by William Tays Saddlery and harness Shop. In 1910, R.B. Richter built a two-story brick building to house Richter’s Drug Store with the family quarters upstairs. A narrow part of the ground floor was parsed out for Imperial Barber Shop which maintained that spot until at least the late ‘70s. Every teen girl of the ‘70s will remember that the vacated drug store space became the Hang-Up apparel store. It is now Remax Realty. R.B. Richter built a smaller two-story building next door in 1920. It housed Shellaby’s for 20 years and is now occupied by Capital Title.

The current Callaghan’s Pub is a collection of buildings. Originally the Gruene Building sat on the corner of Castell housing the Baetge Saloon. When two newer one-story buildings were built, the Jacob Mendlowitz Company occupied them with a small shop parsed out for Rachelle’s Fashions.

Across Castell, the original Voelker Drug Store, became Shoeland, Ray Allen’s Mens Wear, Chollett’s and then Red Stag. The adjacent new rooftop bar, Cowboys and Cadillacs, sits on a long history of tenants including Ludewig Furniture, Stehling Brothers, Paul Bruner’s, Anthony’s and Seguin Beauty.

Elite Barber Shop spot was at one time the site of Buske Restaurant. In the ‘60s it was occupied by Goepf Jewelers and then Johnson Barber Shop. The Scoop Street slot was occupied by Plaza Meat Market at the turn of the century. The latest building on that site has hosted M&M Jewelers and James Avery Jewelry.

Before it was Moonshine and Ale, it was Fritz Schumann Butcher Shop, H. V. Schumann Drug, and in the ‘60s and ‘70s, Connie’s Shoes.

The 1893 Louis Henne building has always housed Henne Hardware. Sadly, after more than 130 years, it is no longer a hardware store. Across the alley is the original Henne Tin Shop, the stucco building previously the home of Kneupper’s Music in the ‘30s, Kickin’ K and now Le Petite Sweet. Gourmage occupies what was Goepf Jewelers in the 30s, and possibly where Hoerster Goodyear Tire was pre-1968. Both of those buildings housed H&H Sales (fabric) and is where Ducky’s started out.

The old First National Bank building later became City Bakery, Ye Olde Music Shoppe and eventually Mayo Investments. The Brauntex Theatre was built in 1942 on the site of the old John Faust Company.

Our city changes constantly, but we have managed to hold on to our downtown culture. I have only hit on the highlights of the past 115 years. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I am sure that no matter your age, you will recognize a few of these places on West San Antonio Street. Perhaps it will jar a memory loose, like cherry phosphates at Peerless Pharmacy or new Easter shoes at Poll Parrot.

Source: Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

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

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By Tara V. Kohlenberg —

In recent days, we have all watched heart-breaking images flash across our screens as Russia exerts its power over Ukraine. News of such events has stirred up childhood memories of my classmates and I scrambling under our metal school desks during bomb drills of the Cold War Era in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

What?! So, in case you have blocked it from memory or are not old enough to know what a Cold War is, let me catch you up. The Cold War was a period of time that began just after World War II and lasted nearly fifty years. Tension rose between the United States and Soviet Union as both countries tried to spread their ideological influence over the world. The threat of nuclear warfare was very present and left its mark on America.

Let’s back up here. So, during WWII, the Russians were on our side helping to defeat Germany, Hitler, and his National Socialist Party. But two years later, Russians become the enemy? Yes, flexing their muscles in politics, in James Bond movies and even in the cartoons. Remember the Russian-like villains Boris and Natasha of Rocky & Bullwinkle who forever attempted to “catch Moose and Squirrel”? — even children were told that the Russians should not be trusted.

In 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device, signaling a new and terrifying phase in the Cold War; umm, that they had what we had and that they could use it on us. By the early 1950s, schools across the United States were training students to dive under their desks and cover their heads. Fears over the escalating arms race prompted President Harry S. Truman’s Federal Civil Defense Administration program to develop the “Duck-and-Cover” school drills and to educate the public about what ordinary people could do to protect themselves. I remember the drills, not so much the name of it.

Every club and organization in New Braunfels had a Civil Defense chairman: the American Legion, PTA groups, Rotary, Lions. etc., to distribute safety preparedness literature and get the word out. Workshops and meetings were held to help educate each family as to how to protect and sustain themselves in the event of an enemy attack. Schools sent home safety plan flyers as to how children would get home to their parents and where to meet them in emergency situations.

In the early 1960s, the U.S.-Soviet arms race really heated up. The disastrous 1961 U.S.-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba failed miserably. Instead of overthrowing Castro, it resulted in stronger ties between Cuba and the USSR putting Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba and the nuclear threat directly in our back yard. The Cuban Missile Crisis was thirteen days of confrontation in the fall of 1962 between the US and Russia that was a true near miss. New Braunfels School District dismissed school early and published the evacuation plans on the front page of the Herald during the ’62 Cuban Missile Crisis.

After that, the country, and New Braunfels, ramped up to protect not just against a bomb, but “The Bomb”. There were bomb shelters in public buildings, like the old City Hall on Seguin Avenue, and a fallout shelter under the police chief’s house. My dad worked for New Braunfels Lumber on the west corner of Castell and Coll (now HMT Engineering). The lumber yard had a personal bomb shelter for sale sitting out in their yard for anyone who could dig a hole deep enough to put it in.

In 1962, New Braunfels received one of 90 packaged hospitals in Texas for use following enemy action or major natural disaster. It was supplied by the office of Civil and Defense Mobilization. The packaged hospitals were outgrowths of the mobile army hospitals used during the Korean War (like on “M*A*S*H”). Most of them were located at least 15 miles from assumed strategic target areas like San Antonio. They were expected to provide at least half of the hospital beds following a major emergency. Let that sink in. Assumed Strategic Target Areas. That means that San Antonio military installations (Kelly Air Force Base, Randolph AFB, Lackland AFB, Fort Sam Houston Army Post, Camp Bullis) and Austin’s Bergstrom AFB, which was actually part of the Strategic Air Command, were strategic targets!! … and New Braunfels would either be the help on the periphery OR collateral damage. Yikes!!

Not only were people worried about protecting people, people were also worried about protecting their stuff. With the world condition being what it was, a group of San Antonio businessmen recognized the need to provide secure vital records storage in case of a nuclear attack. In 1962, they formed Emergency Records Storage, Inc. and built a nuclear-age underground storage facility located in the hill country outside of New Braunfels. It was said to be the only bomb-proof underground vault in a 10-state area which met rigid government specifications. For a fee, the company stored duplicate records in the form of microfilm, magnetic tape, regular hard copies and eventually floppy discs for banks and governmental entities in the event of an attack or disaster. For more than three decades, the records company did a brisk business serving people from Texas and surrounding states. As with most anything, technology grew past the need in the 90s when banks and companies began backing up records on their own computers. Less and less was stored in the vault as the years passed, and the corporation finally dissolved in 2015.

Growing up in New Braunfels during the ‘50s and ‘60s was wonderful even if the world was a scary place. Outside of the “bomb drills” and cartoon references, I was blissfully unaware of most of these things. Growing up now, in a very technologically savvy time, our children may not be. I hope they are as lucky.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives; New Braunfels Public Library; New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung.

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Remember the wonderful Sears or JC Penney Christmas catalogues that used to arrive in the mail each September? School had barely begun, the weather still hot enough to wear shorts, but I spent hours looking at the beautiful Christmas dresses. However, my Christmas dresses never came from a catalogue. When they weren’t sewn by my mother, they came from the Cater Frocks Company retail store.

The Cater Frock Company was a children’s dress manufacturer in New Braunfels. Mr. B.J. Cater and his wife, Guyrene, of Temple, moved to New Braunfels in 1936. According to the New Braunfels Herald, B.J. Cater and Company, Manufacturers of Women’s and Children’s Dresses, began operations in early 1937 on the second floor of the Forshage Building located at 472 W. San Antonio St. (now retail and upstairs apartment building next door to newest Miller & Miller building). They began with four seamstresses, adding 16 more within the first few months, to meet the demand for goods being shipped as far as New Orleans, Houston and towns in North Texas. B.J. Cater was the sales representative and his wife supervised the design and sewing. Soon the company had outgrown the downtown site.

By 1941, the phone book listed them as Cater Frock Company with an address of “Landa Park”. Mr. Cater leased space from the city of New Braunfels and moved the operation into an old Landa warehouse (now the old rec center).

During WWII, everything was rationed, including textiles. New Braunfels Textile Mills (later Mission Valley Mills) had a limit of five yards of fabric per day per person. It is said that each Cater Frock employee was sent to the mill daily to obtain their five-yard allotment of ginghams to be able to maintain production.

In 1946, Cater Frock was sold to a new ownership group – a men’s clothing factory representative, a lawyer and a housewife. Tobin Nathan, a men’s clothing factory representative, saw a clothing factory advertised for sale in the Houston Chronicle. He was surprised to find that the business made little girls’ dresses because women’s fashions used the term ‘apparel’, not ‘clothing’. In October of 1946, after several trips to New Braunfels with his attorney, Nathan bought the business. Nathan’s attorney, Irvin Boarnet, was in fact his son-in-law. The two, along with his daughter, became partners. The Boarnets made the original ‘long commute’, working weekdays in New Braunfels to learn the business from the Caters and traveling back to Houston on weekends. In January 1947, Mr. Boarnet, his wife Loyce, and their children, Bernie and Lou Ann, moved to New Braunfels.

Irvin Boarnet oversaw the manufacturing plant, literally, as his office was on the mezzanine above the cutting and sewing floor. Loyce was in charge of the designs for the first five years. Although she could sew, she had no training in design and pattern making. They eventually hired a couple of part time designers, including Lauris Priesmeyer. In 1954, they employed their first full time designer with a degree in Clothing and Costume Design. June Keith Voigt, my mom, was the first of many graduates they recruited from the Texas State College for Women (now TWU).

As production grew, it became necessary to expand into the neighboring building (front part of Wurstfest building that houses Spass Haus), allowing for the addition of more designers from TSCW, including Edna Fundis Bremer, Sarah (Sally) Jones Wetz, and Mary Jo Stratton Zipp. The new building housed a state-of-the-art design room with a veritable smorgasbord of tactile delight: walls lined with fabric swatches, buttons, lace and trims. It also housed the two ‘sample’ seamstresses, the billing office and my favorite part, the factory sample sales room.

The production and shipping departments were in the main factory building. The Boarnets had begun with 30 employees. By 1960, they ran two shifts of about 30 seamstresses, along with cutters and pressers that prepped for shipping. Of the 135 employees at that time, only four were men. They even hired a woman sales representative for Dallas, which was unusual at that time. Garments were made in a production line, no one person made a whole garment, only their assigned pieces… like zippers, button holes, sleeves, etc.

A number of women worked for Cater Frock for more than 20 years. Some started sewing as young as 15 and 16 years old and have fond memories of the ‘family’ atmosphere and the camaraderie of the workers, sharing lunches and dinners together. Some of the seamstresses were Linda Zuniga, Estefana Molina, Oralia Castillo, Virginia Castillo, and supervisors Janie Gonzales and Rosalie Brandt. These women worked tirelessly to leave a legacy of beautiful little girls’ dresses for “Little Miss America” in sizes 1-3 toddlers, 4-6x girls and even introduced a ‘Petite Elegance’ line that was a pre-teen/junior size ahead of their time. Cater Frock dresses were sold in better children’s specialty shops from East Coast to West Coast and all through the South. They also made the royal blue velveteen uniforms of the New Braunfels Royal Bluettes Pep Squad of the 1960s.

Bernie Boarnet joined the successful apparel company as vice-president of production in 1963 after completing his industrial and mechanical engineering degrees from Texas A&M University and a two-year tour of duty with the U.S. Army. At that time, Cater Frock produced about 4000 garments per week, used 200,000 yards of fabric a year, at least half of which came directly from the local Mission Valley Mills. The rest came from New York. By 1967, Cater Frock Company was noted as one of the top nine employers/industries in Comal County along with Dittlinger Roller Mills Co., Ol’ Bossy, Inc., Hadlock & Fox Mfg. Co., Servtex Materials Co., Comette Hosiery Mills, U.S. Gypsum Co., and Mission Valley Mills.

In 1969, Cater Frock Company merged with Santone Industries of San Antonio. Billing and design departments were moved to San Antonio, but the plant remained in New Braunfels. The company sold again to IBJ Corporation of Dallas in 1972. As a division of Jarrell, Inc. (or Lizann), women’s dresses continued to be sewn and sent to Dallas from the Landa Park buildings until the early 1990s.

Sources:

• New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung
• Sophienburg Archives
• “Reflections” oral history recordings
• Boarnet family

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Are you confused about which historical anniversary to celebrate or that you have celebrated? Is it for New Braunfels? Is it for Texas? Is it for the United States? Did we celebrate one year, 25 years, 50 years, 75 years, 100 years (centennial), 150 years (sesquicentennial) or 200 years? We have celebrated so many historical events that it’s starting to really get confusing. And now plans are underway to celebrate the 175^th year of New Braunfels’ founding.

The founding fathers (and mothers) celebrated the first American Fourth of July in 1846, a little over a year after arriving in New Braunfels. Then they celebrated the New Braunfels 25^th etc., etc., etc. In the early 1990s, about 50 New Braunfelsers even traveled to Braunfels, Germany, to help our sister city celebrate its 750^th birthday. I was fortunate enough to be able to go to that big bash. We were treated to a happy time. The Germans love “Texas Charlie” as they called Prince Carl. The long parade featured every era you can imagine. The entry that stuck out in my mind was the era of the Black Plague. Why? They had carts filled with bandaged plague victims and it was gruesome. I suppose we had a similar situation here (cholera, not plague), but as far as I know, this era has never been a parade entry.

The Texas Centennial of the Declaration of Independence From Mexico

Now clear your mind of all confusing past celebrations and concentrate on one celebration – the 1936 Texas Centennial of the Declaration of Independence from Mexico. Texas will recognize on March 2^nd, the date of Texas independence and becoming a Republic. Although the Centennial was officially celebrated statewide in 1936, the celebration began in 1935 and continued in 1937 and 1938 in New Braunfels.

The state did this 100-year celebration in a big way. The Texas Legislature and the U.S. Congress contributed $3,000,000 toward the project. Dallas was chosen as the center of the celebration. Every county in Texas received a granite marker with the date of the county’s establishment and the source of its name. Our county marker is on US 81 in front of Canyon Middle School.

Houston, San Antonio, Ft. Worth and Galveston put on large pageants. The Ft. Worth pageant called “The Winning of the West,” was by far the most visited, even more than the Dallas Exposition dedicated to the Centennial. In addition, museums like the Panhandle Museum at Canyon, the Texas Museum in Austin, the Big Bend Museum in Alpine, the Corpus Christi Centennial Museum, the West Texas Museum at Lubbock, the Alamo Museum and the Gonzales Museum, were established.

The celebration in Dallas occupying 50 buildings, was advertised as the first world’s fair held in the southwest. Throughout the state there were programs of significant historic events, battle scenes and pioneer re-enactments being performed a century after Texas won its freedom from Mexican rule and established the Republic of Texas. In 1846, Texas became the 28^th state of the United States. Texas is the only state that existed as an independent republic and one that was recognized by foreign countries.

Six Flags Over Texas is more than an amusement park. The six flags on Texas soil were France, Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate States and finally, the United States.

Centennial Celebration in New Braunfels

New Braunfels historical markers for the Centennial, besides the county granite marker, include the Mission Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe on SH 46 in front of HEB, that commemorates the Franciscan Mission from 1757, that was established to bring religion to the local Native Tribes. Another marker is dedicated to John Torrey for the establishment of mills on the Comal River. It is at the foot of Mill Street where the tube chute is located. Two markers are dedicated to Ferdinand Lindheimer. One is at his home on Comal Avenue and the other is at his gravesite in the Comal Cemetery. He is recognized as the Father of Texas Botany. One of the exhibits at the Centennial in Dallas was of the 500 plus wildflowers in Texas. Another marker is located at the home of George Wilkins Kendall, located on Waco Springs Loop Road near SH 46. He was a well-respected journalist, founder of the New Orleans Picayune, correspondent on the Santa Fe Expedition and Mexican war correspondent. Located on Landa Park Drive is a pink granite New Braunfels marker dedicated to the city’s founding. It has a bronze relief of the Sophienburg log cabin and tells the story of Prince Carl. It was erected by the State of Texas with federal funds to commemorate one hundred years of Texas Independence. By far the most well-known monument in Landa Park is dedicated to the German pioneers of Texas. The New Braunfels Herald announced: “New Braunfels has been selected as the site of the proposed monument (to Germans) for which the State Centennial Committee has appropriated the sum of $2,999. The rest of the funds were through contributions locally and collections had been reported in other parts of the state by the San Antonio committee of the Federation of German-American Societies, which is sponsoring the movement.” Refer to Sophienburg.com, May 15, 2007, for further information.

Besides markers, what else was being planned? The newspaper was full of activities to put New Braunfels “on the map.” The opening of Landa Park was a highlight of the time and the Cole Circus with Clyde Beatty. Beatty was known as the world’s most daring animal trainer. There were 20 big and little elephants, including Jumbo the 2^nd, the only African elephant in a circus in the country.

The Katy Railroads offered weekend bargain fares like $5.16 for a round trip to the Centennial Exposition in Dallas, and $4.93 to the Frontier Centennial in Ft. Worth, and for an extra 89¢ you could be picked up at the train station and transported by street car to the grounds of the exposition. What a deal! School children were given the advantage of the state-wide rate reduction on all railroads as well as special rates for the Centennial. The November Herald announced that 56 school children attended the Centennial and have returned from a two-day trip to Dallas.

Speaking of railroads, that very year the president of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s train rolled through New Braunfels on the MKT tracks on June 12, 1936. Nearly a third of Texas’ population saw and heard the president on his Texas Centennial tour. He visited Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Ft. Worth. The train “passed through” New Braunfels in the middle of the night, but no stop. Supposedly, many people were standing by the tracks to see the president, but they were disappointed. All I can say is that FDR did not know how important New Braunfels was.

The NBHS Class of 1936 was known as the Centennial Class. There is a photo of this class in the Sophienburg.com column of August 21, 2007. I interpreted it as a costume party but now I know they were cowboys and pioneers. There were 54 seniors taught by 15 teachers that year and it was the largest class ever to graduate from NBHS up to that time. There were so many of them, that the graduation was held in the Seele Parish House because it had a stage that would accommodate all the graduates. In keeping with the Centennial Celebration, the class contacted several prominent Texans at the time to participate in the graduation.

On March 2^nd, take time to reflect on how important the Republic of Texas was in attracting the German settlers to Texas that led to the establishment of our great city. It would lead to other important dates and milestones that we celebrate today.

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The Sophienburg Museum celebrates the Christmas season by presenting an exhibit of dollhouses, old toys and dolls, all reminiscent of our Christmas Past. Dollhouses appeared on the scene all over the world hundreds of years ago. In their beginning, they were not toys; they were much too expensive to allow children to play with. Dollhouses were actually works of art, just like paintings, sculptures and any other art form.

They were at one time, present in royal palaces and homes of rich aristocrats. Precisely constructed details obviously called for high prices that only the rich could afford. Very old examples of dollhouses can be now found in museums and antique stores. Now when you think about it, it’s probably because the dollhouses weren’t toys, that they survived.

Few toys survive the agony of childhood. My Shirley Temple doll never looked the same after I cut off all her curls. Of course, she never made the display cases.

Nuremberg, Germany and Paris, France, were best known for dollhouse production. Often, they were gifts of the groom to his bride. Now get this, these gifts were to replicate the home from which she came. It was supposed to keep her from being homesick. Don’t laugh. That may work, because children and adults alike, when playing with a dollhouse, imagine that they are there. Children put little people in the house and they become the characters that they create.

According to collectors, the most famous of all dollhouses is now in Windsor Palace. It is the Queen Mary’s House given to the queen by her subjects for helping them during a war. Carpets, furniture and wall paper are exact copies of items used during the reign of Queen Mary. Some unusual items in the house are a collection of 300 miniature books by famous authors and a gramophone that plays, “God Save the Queen.” The cellar is stocked with are real bottles of wine and the kitchen and bath have hot and cold running water. Famous houses like these are often on display in museums.

I have to admit that the Sophienburg is not exactly Windsor Palace, but let’s get to what we have to show in the Museum. After entering the foyer, there is the Bill and Nan Dillen house given by this very generous couple in New Braunfels, years ago. They are both deceased, but their generous gifts to New Braunfels live on. This very large house was used as a display for their antique doll furniture. Each room in the three-story house represents a different style of furnishings. The first floor shows furnishings of the 1870s, using furniture of wood with original blue silk upholstery. The klismos-style chairs are based on an antique Greek model popular with early German furniture makers. Also, present in the library is furniture made of cast iron used for both miniature and real furniture in Germany.

The second floor, features more functional furniture from about 1919, emphasizing usefulness and craftsmanship. The third-floor attic has recycled furniture, from around

1935. People would often make dollhouse furniture from discarded items found around the house. Cigar boxes, tin cans and clothespins were repurposed into useful “arts and crafty” items. This house is a magnificent beginning for the rest of the display.

Go into the Museum and there are two after the turn-of-century houses, the Stobaugh-Reeves house and the Roby-Hall House. The Stobaugh-Reeves House was constructed in the 1920s by the grandfather of Janet Reeves for her mother, Betty Zauel Stobaugh. Much of the furnishings were purchased in Germany. The old-fashioned stove is really a work of art. My grandmother had a stove that looked very much like this iron creation. On the dining room table, there are tiny pewter dishes. In the bedroom is the tiniest chamber pot that I have ever seen. We all know the function of the chamber pot. And aren’t we glad that they are a thing of the past.

Historical events did not allow for the production of dollhouses between World War I and World War II. After World War II, doll houses were increasingly mass produced, thereby making them less expensive and more available to the public. They became the toy of choice for little girls. I am very proud to share my 1934 dollhouse with the exhibit. It was built for me by my grandfather, A.C. Moeller. He was a builder of many buildings in downtown New Braunfels as well as houses all over town. I can recognize houses built by him because he built using the craftsmen style. My house is that style so I am well-acquainted with it.

My two-story doll house represents the 1930s era in many ways. Complete with hardwood floors and electric lights, the six-room dollhouse now contains more recently made furniture, as all of the original furnishing were made of wood and deteriorated. I couldn’t move the doll house outside because it was too big, but I could move the furniture. I would set up villages under the shrubs and now I store the furnishings only in my brain. The indoor bathroom is one of the most interesting with its claw-footed bathtub. The original tub was “built in” and so this claw-footed model goes back in time to the 1900s.

Most of the other houses in the museum are incorporated into the individual displays. We skip to the 1960s, when handmade went to factory-made. In the 1980s and 90s, tin and plastic became the material of choice and dollhouses now come in kits. Disney characters have moved into the houses.

Throughout the museum there are other collections. The indoor cabin in the museum is all decked out with old dolls, toys and a fine collection of antique children’s rocking chairs.

Once again, the Sophienburg will celebrate St. Nicolas Eve on Monday, December 5^th. This will be your opportunity to visit the Museum at the same time and for the same price. The price is $5.00 a family. Due to space, there will be two shows only, one at 6:00 and one at 7:30 p.m. You need to call the museum at 830-629-1572 to make a reservation for your family visit. St. Nicholas will make a visit, teach some German, sing songs and then have treats afterwards. Only 35 children will be allowed for each of the two programs, so make your reservation soon. Hope to see you there.

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