By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

On February 27, 1977, Herb Skoog recorded the 21st interview of the Sophienburg Museum’s “Reflections” oral history program. Herb interviewed Jerome Nowotny. It is one of the best episodes in the series — a real humdinger.

Jerome Nowotny is perhaps best remembered for his enormous “Beer Bottles of the World” collection. 6,000-plus bottles are on permanent display on the Wurstfest grounds inside the Spass Haus. In his oral history interview, Jerome revealed that his passion for collecting beer bottles began when he was a child growing up during Prohibition. I’ll share a bit of his reminiscing:

… There were so many wonderful places to buy illegal homemade beer. They were called bootlegging joints. New Braunfels was very famous for good bootleg joints. People from Houston, San Antonio … they came from everywhere to get this good New Braunfels beer…

Albert Nowotny was Jerome’s dad. Albert ran a business known as “The House the Jack Built” on W. San Antonio Street. It was a restaurant, gas station and Indian relics museum with a tourist camp of cottages out back. The business began in 1927 and added a concrete building in 1930. It flourished through the 1940s, then became Zoeller’s Funeral Home in 1953. In 1981, the building became the Comal County Juvenile Residential Supervision and Treatment Center. Just a few weeks ago, the building was demolished to make way for a new building on the Connections Individual and Family Services campus. (See https://sophienburg.wpenginepowered.com/the-house-that-jack-built/).

The House the Jack Built sold near-beer during Prohibition. Near-beer had only ½ of one percent alcohol. Jerome explained to Herb Skoog that breweries still made real beer and then “distilled it, warmed it up” to evaporate the alcohol. Only near-beer could be legally sold.

… When people came to our place for hamburgers, they would often ask, “Where can we get good beer?” There were so many places it wasn’t difficult to find one if you knew … but you could drive all over town and never find a place if you didn’t know, because every yard had a ligustrum hedge …

Many yards in New Braunfels were bordered by ligustrum hedges instead of wooden fences. It was common practice to set up your bootlegging operation behind the hedge in the back yard. As a child, Jerome’s father would periodically send Jerome to one of the known bootleg places to get real beer for the customers. He always had to go to different ones so that “the Revenuers” wouldn’t catch on and friends get in trouble. Customers tipped Jerome $5 to go on these procurement expeditions. Jerome jokingly said that some people said he was “a pimp for the bootleggers.”

The 18th Amendment made it illegal to SELL alcoholic beverages from 1920-1933. As a citizen, you could brew up to 200 gallons of beer a year to use for personal consumption. You could NOT SELL beer to anyone else. Legally, you needed to have a doctor’s prescription to purchase any kind of alcohol to use “for medicinal purposes.”

Comal Brewery was the only beer brewery still in business by the time of Prohibition (the building is now the New Braunfels Smokehouse Ice Plant facilities). Comal Brewery made real beer and then turned it into near-beer; however, over time, the alcohol content began inching its way back up to real beer. At that point, “the Revenuers” (government agents who collected taxes and enforced laws against illegal alcohol manufacture) raided the place and destroyed all the brewing equipment:

… ”The Revenuers” came in and chopped up all the big copper kettles and everything…that was the end of it. Then it became an ice factory …

I am envisioning a whole “Andy Griffith” episode. I can only imagine how distraught the citizens of New Braunfels were.

Mr. Skoog asked Jerome if there were other folks in New Braunfels who got caught and sent to jail for bootlegging. The answer was “yes”, but they both agreed it was still too early to drop any names — several well-known bootleggers were still living! In New Braunfels, those men who did a spell in jail for bootlegging were not looked upon as hardened criminals.

The discussion on bootlegging is just one part of this great interview. Jerome also told wonderful stories about collecting the almost 14,000 beer bottles that made up his collection. Jerome also shared fascinating memories about his time as a comic actor in Hollywood!

If you want to hear all of Jerome’s interview, you can visit the Sophienburg Museum & Archives to hear or purchase this oral history; there are over 2,000 recordings of other New Braunfels citizens to choose from. You can also go to the New Braunfels Public Library and check out “Reflections” interviews to listen to.

FYI: Jerome Nowotny passed on in 1992 at the age of 77. Sadly, for many of us locals, Herb Skoog passed away recently on February 3, at the age of 93. Herb and his velvety voice will be truly missed.

Sources: Sophienburg Archives, “Reflections” oral history program #21 — Jerome Nowotny.

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

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By Tara V. Kohlenberg —

New Braunfels historians have told us that the first immigrants arrived with very little in the way of belongings. And, unlike today’s new arrivals in New Braunfels, our founding ancestors had a lot to do before settling into a house. They had to secure materials (chop trees for lumber, make mud bricks, cut stone) to be able to build their own places to live. We are very fortunate to live in a place where so many of those early homes still exist. One of my favorites stands on a lot at 212 W. Austin Street in Comaltown, exactly where it has stood for over 150 years.

The story? It begins with people making life-changing decisions to build a new life, sell everything, move across the Atlantic Ocean and settle on the Fisher Miller Grant in the Republic of Texas. Like many, that is exactly what Johann Georg Moeller did.

Georg Moeller left Bremen aboard the ship Weser, arranged by Henry Fisher for the San Saba Colonization Company, in May of 1844. Once he arrived in Galveston in July 1844, he learned that the Fisher & Miller land grant had never materialized. He was stuck along with several others from his hometown of Michelsrombach, Hesse. Moeller did eventually end up in New Braunfels in late 1845.

Meanwhile, on similar track, Johann Peter Hoffmann boarded the Garrone, arranged by the Adelsverein, with his wife and children. They arrived in Galveston in December of 1844 and finally reached New Braunfels with the First Founders. Mr. Hoffmann died shortly thereafter, leaving Elizabeth Hoffmann to fend for herself and her two children, Charlotta and Alex. (Soap operas got nothing on true history!).

So fast forward to 1848, when Georg Moeller and widow Elizabeth Hoffmann married. Their instant family of four eventually totaled seven with the addition of twin sons, Franz and Johann, in 1849 and Louis in 1852.

The Moellers settled in Comaltown. At one time, they owned/farmed most of the Landa Estates area. Georg Moeller began building my favorite limestone house in 1859. He built it all by himself. The beautiful two-story is constructed of hand-cut hard limestone that was quarried locally. All the walls are constructed of hard limestone, cut into squares and rectangles with stone lintels across the top of each window.

The wood beams and roof rafters are of hand-hewn cedar logs and the floors are hand-hewn cypress planks. Although the outside walls are perfectly square and the floors and ceilings are perfectly level, there are no two rooms the same size, no two walls the same thickness and no two rooms with the same size floorboards. The walls range from 8 to 18 inches in thickness. The original house had two staircases: one leading to the basement, the other to the second floor. Each wood tread of the steps going upstairs is smoothly fitted into grooves in the supporting side boards. No nails were used. The stairs to the basement are solid rock. It is truly amazing that no cement was used to put the stones together. In some places, it is said to be plain black dirt mixed with straw; and in others, a mortar made of sand and lime was used.

The limestone house, begun in 1859, took 6 years to build. The family lived in a modest home where Our Lady of Perpetual Help is now located while their limestone home was being built. It was finally completed in 1866. Sadly, Johann Georg Moeller died in 1867, just weeks after the family moved into the new home.

In 1881, ownership of the house changed. Okay, this is where it gets sticky. Pay attention to the “OE” and “UE” here. The home was sold by the Johann Georg M”oe”ller family to Johannes M”ue”ller, known as “Mueller-Hanas” in 1881. He owned a freight company. Mueller-Hanas was a very interesting guy, but I will save that for another day. He raised his family in the home. Johannes Mueller died in 1908 followed by his wife in 1909. Oddly enough, Emma, daughter of Johannes Mueller, married Henry Moeller, the grandson of Johann Georg Moeller.

In 1910, the home was sold to Mr. & Mrs. Albert Nowotny. Their son Jerome, who was born in the home, bought it in 1947. He eventually built a very successful tourist attraction/restaurant around it — Bavarian Village. By coincidence, Jerome Nowotny’s son, Lionel, married Mary Lou Mueller, a great-granddaughter of Johannes Mueller, second owner of the house. The Moeller House is now owned by Schlitterbahn Waterparks/Cedar Fair.

There were many descendants of the Moellers in the area and many were builders. Most of the structures are still standing as they are very well built like the Moeller House. The following is a list just to name a few: Garden Street Bridge, Mission Valley Mill Dam, Old Fire Station, Richter Buildings, Wagenfuehr House, Celebrations, Comal Flower Shop, The Black Whale Saloon, Lamar School, Seele Parish House, Johnson Furniture, Main Plaza Gazebo, Gerlich Home (Borchers Office), Fischer House (next to the Civic Center), Corner Coffee Shop, Old New Braunfels High School, Citizens Ice House (Conway’s), numerous curbs and sidewalks, and hundreds of homes in the area and surrounding counties. They truly lived well-built lives.

The Moeller House became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1970; however, at some point the marker was removed. A new marker was sponsored by a Johann Georg Moeller descendant, Myra Lee Adams Goff.

The Moeller House Marker Rededication ceremony will take place Sunday, March 3, 4:00 p.m. at 212 W. Austin Street. The public is invited.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives; Comal County Historical Commission.

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By Myra Lee Adams Goff —

Prince Carl in the diary of his sojourn to Texas writes about sleeping on the ground, using a pistol case as a pillow. Even before the emigrants arrived, he feared an Indian attack. He recalled a patriotic drinking song called “Deutschland Hoch.” Rewriting his own words to this song, he envisioned the German emigrants heroically defeating the Indians. This never happened.

When the emigrants arrived in New Braunfels they were led to an area on the Comal Creek bluff (location of Sts. Peter and Paul Church). Here the Prince had a trench dug facing the prairie and cannon and gabions were set up to protect the emigrants from Indian attack. Twenty-two young men were chosen to guard and help secure the area.

Hermann Seele believed that the Indians were never a serious threat, but more of a nuisance. Soon the Indians were mingling freely within the settlement. This from Seele: “I saw the Prince light a cigar for one of the Indian women. He did this as graciously as if he were presenting a rose to a princess.”

Who were these Indian tribes in the New Braunfels area? They were the Tonkawa, the Lipan, the Waco, and occasionally the Karankawa, Kickapoo, Coahuiltican, and Comanche. By far the most prevalent in the area was the Tonkawa.

The Tonkawa was a nomadic tribe of hunters and gatherers. Evidence of their presence can be traced back 11,000 years. They possessed great athletic prowess, walking great distances, running with great speed, and enduring hunger for long periods of time. Their shelter was of small conical framework poles covered with branches, brush, and hairless horsehides. Their food consisted of deer and all the wildlife still in our area, but they seemed to prefer decayed meat. A story that took place at the Weisenhaus (orphanage) was one in which the Ervendbergs prepared a meal for the Indians, which they devoured. Immediately afterwards they went down to a field where they devoured a semi-decomposed carcass of a horse.

The Tonkawas decorated their bodies with tattoos and paintings. At the museum we have small “paint pots” consisting of rocks with indentations in which paints made of red cinnabar and yellow sandstone and mixed with animal fat were concocted.

Tonkawas practiced “ritual cannibalism”, which means that they engaged in eating the bodies of their enemies in order to get strength from their flesh. Hermann Seele encountered one such cannibalistic orgy on his trek to New Braunfels where they had fried and boiled flesh of one of the Tonkowa enemies — a Waco warrior.

The only tragic Indian incident relating to the settlers occurred when two of Prince Carl’s soldiers were returning from a scouting trip to Austin and were attacked, killed and scalped.

In later years when changes were made to the surface of the land (roads, utilities), artifacts began emerging. Albert Nowotny, a local amateur archeologist, in 1929 made several artifact collections and removed eight aboriginal burials unearthed when sewers and power lines were installed. Nowotny owned a restaurant (Teen Connection building) called The House That Jack Built and his collection was on display there. The Sophienburg has quite a few collections of flint tips and arrowheads, including Oscar Haas’s, in the museum.

Several archeological surveys have been made in the Comal Springs area including Landa Park and the area west of Fredericksburg Road. Beginning at the base of the Balcones Escarpment, traveling south on Fredericksburg Road, then west on Landa Street, and then north on Parkview, this 50-acre tract was originally owned by George Klappenbach whose home still stands at the edge of the escarpment (now owned by Tim and Lizabeth Barker).

The beautiful springs and the accessibility of water made the Comal Springs area a natural for Indian gatherings and so do we today gather at the same spot. Wonder what artifacts will be found there eons from now!

This story originally appeared in the Herald-Zeitung on April 29, 2008.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives; Around the Sophienburg by Myra Lee Goff.

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By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

I have heard some murmurings in town lately about a place called The House that Jack Built. As often happens at the Sophienburg, I had already done some research into this business. Let me share some facts and a couple stories that I discovered along the journey.

In February of 1927, Albert Nowotny began working on improving his cold drink/confectioners stand located at 1413 West San Antonio Street. Over the next couple of years, he enlarged the nice wood-framed confectionary to accommodate his collection of Native American artifacts as a little museum. Behind that, he constructed a tourist camp which included little cottages facing a central court and a modern bath house and restroom for tourists to use. A tourist court was a fairly new idea that came with the proliferation of automobiles and building of the highway system.

Nowotny’s business was good and in 1930, the little attractive wood-framed confectionary gave way to a new “fireproof” structure. The carpenter on the job was Jack Gill, so the name of the business became The House that Jack Built. The House that Jack Built was designed to mimic the Pueblo-style architecture found in New Mexico and Arizona which better suited Nowotny’s burgeoning Native American collections. The new multi-level building featured a stucco exterior with exposed, extended roof beams and natural pole ladders between the levels for authentic detailing.

The interior had a unique, multi-colored broken tile-and-concrete patterned floor. Cases lining the walls were filled with Native American artifacts collected by Nowotny in the New Braunfels area as well as other examples from the American Southwest, Mexico and even head-hunter axes from the Philippines. Displayed were large quantities of painted pottery, stone tools and points, and shell and bone jewelry.

The “free” museum also contained “a part of Chief Geronimo’s poisoned arrows and water jug.” Amongst the many antique pistols, guns, swords and daggers from the Texas-Mexican War, the Spanish-American War and the Civil War, were “Jesse James’ pistols, a dueling sword lost in 1541 belonging to Coronado and bullets fired by Zachary Taylor into the walls of Mission Obispado at Monterrey on his way to Mexico City.”

Stuffed animals peered from the corners and case tops. Trophy heads and horns hung above on the walls vying for attention amongst beautifully-colored, hand-woven Indian blankets. Nowotny also sold Native American and Mexican artifacts, jewelry and blankets as well as tourist trinkets made in Japan. At one point in time, according to Ogden Coleman, there was even a live bear on a chain!

The confectionary/café featured Mexican food, fried chicken dinners, hamburgers and sandwiches which were served at tables scattered in the center of the large room amidst the historic collections.

Albert Nowotny’s sons helped to run The House that Jack Built. Jerome described an interesting prohibition-era story in his oral history recording at the Sophienburg.

Local newspaperman, Fred Oheim once said, “… that the making of beer at home was legal. You could make up to 200 gallons of wine per family and a certain amount of beer per year, but, it required a federal license. Selling beer, wine, etc. to other folks was illegal … the Revenuers would come and put you in jail for selling not producing it.”

Businesses, also, could not sell alcoholic beverages, but during Prohibition, tourists would stop at The House that Jack Built for a hamburger and ask where they could get real beer. According to Jerome Nowotny, there were “many, many, many men” in New Braunfels that made and sold beer. The stills were usually hidden by hedges of Ligustrum which were commonly used around town in place of wood fences.

Albert would tell son Jerome, “Gehen mit die Leute, nicht der Herr.” (Go with the people, not with God.) He then gave Jerome an address for a local “small businessman”. Jerome would escort the tourists to that location where they would buy beer and then usually tip him $5 — very good money in those days. Albert never sent him to the same place twice in a row in order to make sure all “small businessmen” got a fair chance for a sale and to protect them by “spreading the risk, so-to-speak, of the illegal operators.”

In the 1940s, Percy and Norma Rose Richter rented and operated The House that Jack Built. My dad, Carroll Hoffmann, worked there as a busboy. It was no longer a museum but a very popular café and bar. It did, however, have a totem pole out in front of the building. Open 11 am to 11 pm, the café often ran out of food on Saturdays. My dad would ride his bike to work from Academy Street in the morning and Mr. Richter would put his bike in the back of the truck and take him home at night. Dad had to be there early to mop the colorful floor. He would always check for change beneath the tables and in the coin return slots of the little jukebox selection boxes on the tables. Does every little boy do this?

The building was altered again before my Dad’s time. The second-floor rooms had been enlarged into a banquet hall and the front half fenced in to create an outdoor terrace. Newspaper advertisements announce dance bands and society articles record parties that took place at The House that Jack Built. My dad said it was tricky for the waitresses to get food and drink up the stairs. He remembers that NB Highschool Head Coach Weldon Bynum took the ’48-’49 football team up there to eat steaks one night. Apparently even back then, football players were BMOC.

After the Richters, the café was run briefly as the Langston Café. In 1953, Felix and Harry Zoeller purchased the building and it became Zoeller Funeral Home until 1978. Harry Zoeller said that the unique tile floor was one of Nowotny’s selling points for the building. The Comal County Juvenile Residential Supervision and Treatment Center (Teen Connection) bought the building in 1981. The House that Jack Built/Zoeller Funeral Home presently houses Connections.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives; “Reflections” oral History program #21; NB Herald archive; Heritage Exhibit notes; personal interviews.

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By Keva Hoffmann Boardman –

If you’ve ever looked at the mural “Lure of the Springs” on the Parks and Rec building in Landa Park, you will find it includes a mammoth. The Sophienburg has several prehistoric artifacts and one of them is a mammoth tooth. Cool. I wondered where it was found, who found it and when. Time for a mammoth quest!

Many of our early German founders were highly educated; they had attended university and studied a wide range of sciences. Dr. Samuel Geisser, professor of biology at SMU, did an extensive survey of early Texas naturalists in the 1930s which includes a large number of our founders.

Quite a few of these men had scientific study collections that they shared with the local community and even the world (think of Lindheimer whose herbaria made it back to Europe). Others had “curiosity” collections — – collections of Native American stone points or pretty seashells or weird bugs or maybe even of hairballs or two-headed goats in jars of formaldehyde. You and I make collections like this (maybe not of two-headed goats) and so it was that prehistoric bones, when discovered, made their way into the collections of people in NB.

How did they find them? In a lot of cases, mammoth and other mammal remains were unearthed during the digging of wells. Several men were known as Brunnenmacher or Brunnengräber or well-diggers prior to 1900: H. Guenther, J.H. Petri and R. Sands. They dug wells for $1.50 per foot of depth and guaranteed they would find you water or your money back. Many backyards in the downtown area have these remarkable wells. We have old fire insurance maps in the museum’s collections that show their locations.

The first published account of prehistoric bones was in June 1856. While digging a well “on Lister’s lot”, an almost complete skeleton of a mammoth was unearthed. The shinbones alone were 43 inches long and 17 inches thick. The vertebrae were roughly 15”x13”. Tusks were 9 feet in length. The animal was discovered at a depth of 18 feet in sandy light grey clay. It was supposedly sent to the Smithsonian Institution (there is a snide remark about the Texas Legislature not taking measures to secure its own treasures) but I haven’t verified that. It seems this really fantastic find was also written up by an English periodical, The Geologist, in 1861. Look at NB making international news!

In 1941, biologist Dr.Geisser had local historian Oscar Haas try to trace down some more information on this outstanding early find. Haas contacted C. A. Jahn and received this answer:

“The early residents of N.Brfls did get water for household purposes from the Comal or Springs entering the Comal river. This was inconvenient and most every family did try to find water by digging a well or having a well dug on their premises. There were men who made it their business to dig wells about 35 ft deep five feet in diameter walled with lime rock. By digging these wells they unearthed a large head of a fossil mammal. They also found in other parts of the city limits large bones of some monster, the head and bones were found in a sandy loam strata. The head about three feet long by two &1/2 feet wide, about two feet thick was for several years lying near the entrance door of August Forcke’s Drug Store. The head and bones when exposed to the air peeled off what has finally become of them I do not know”

Mr. Jahn would have been 5 years old at the time of the big find. His answer is interesting because it fits in with later fossil discoveries. His “large head of a fossil mammal” might refer to the bones of a huge prehistoric animal found at a depth of 30 feet by men digging a well for Balwin Behring in Jan 1873. The find of “large bones of some monster” could have been the 1890 discovery on Heinrich Kellermann Sr.’s farm on the east side of the Guadalupe of a type of “dinosaur lizard which was a plant eater and lived in water most of the time.” The tooth was brought to the NB Zeitung office and according to their research, they determined it came from a 30-foot animal.

I really like that this “monster” find was displayed in front of Forcke’s Drug Store for everyone to marvel at. I can just see the bleach-white bones of the behemoth peeling under the hot Texas sun. I also wonder if bits and pieces of the skeletal remains didn’t find their way secretly into the homes of other New Braunfelsers.

In July 1866, a tooth was found while digging a well on Mr. George Schmitt’s lot at a depth of 34 feet just above blue clay or marl. When an eight-pound mammoth tooth was found in Sippel’s gravel quarry in 1895, Otto Heilig put it in his “curiosity” collection and invited the public to come take a look. In June 1905, Jack Horne and friends were picnicking on the banks of the Guadalupe River near “the Elsner place” and found parts of an enormous skull protruding from the riverbank.

Here’s a find location you will know. In July 1915, Peter Nowotny, Jr., “had a sink dug at the Prinz Solms Hotel” and at a depth of 25 feet was found the three-foot thighbone of a mastodon. In 1920, Louis Staats brought a very large mastodon tooth into town that workers had dug up on Post Road near Watson School. The newspaper men got a little silly and reported, “Toothache in such a tooth must have been immense. We are glad that our wisdom teeth are not that big or that the dentist has to fill them with gold.”

Teeth and bones of adult and infant mammoths were found by A.M. Fiedler in late November 1920 in a gravel excavation near Landa Park. Dr. Fiedler found many fossils and bones which he kept in his quite extensive geological collections displayed at his home and at his office at the Comal County Courthouse. He regularly shared these with boy scouts, high school science students and interested groups. A part of his collection remains at Texas Lutheran University.

By the way, the Sophienburg’s mammoth tooth was dug out of the bank of the Comal Creek by Albert Nowotny. He donated it to the museum when we opened in 1933.

Sources: Neu Braunfelser Zeitung and NB Herald collections – Sophienburg Museum & Archives; The Houston Weekly Telegraph, July 30, 1856; The Geologist, 1861, “On a Fossil Elephant in Texas”, George E. Roberts ed. By S.J. Mackie, London; Field and Laboratory, “Collectors of Pleistocene Vertebrates in Early Texas, by S.W. Geiser, Vol 13(2): 53-60; Oscar Haas collection – Sophienburg Museum & Archives.

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