A house at 457 W. San Antonio St. will open shortly as a Bed and Breakfast. The house is referred to by old-time New Braunfelsers as the Karbach House. But it didn’t start out as the Karbach House. The house was built for George and Hulda Eiband in 1906.

Family tradition says that the house had an interesting background. Hulda was the sister of Emmie Seele Faust, both of whom were daughters of Hermann Seele. The sisters supposedly had a friendly competition going between them. Townspeople in those days were aware of this competition because talk flies in a small town.

Emmie Seele married John Faust in 1905 and they built the Victorian home in the 300 block of W. San Antonio St, complete with wooden columns and wooden wraparound porch. It was a showplace. When Hulda Seele married George Eiband, she wanted a bigger house but definitely not a Victorian. Hulda’s house would be bigger and would be built in the new style of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, with high ceilings, brick columns, terrazzo porch, straight lines, lots of glass windows and 12 ft. ceilings. One thing is certain – both houses are substantial enough to remain standing. After Hulda Eiband’s death, George Eiband died in 1936, with no heirs, leaving the house to his brothers.

Soon after George’s death, the home was sold to Dr. Hylmar Karbach and wife Katherine Taylor Karbach in 1938. They bought the home from the Eiband estate.

The house now became a child-centered home. The Karbach children were 10-year-old Hylmar Jr., six-year-old Kathleen and four-year-old Jo. Carole was born two years after the family moved into the house.

Hylmar Karbach Sr. descended from pioneer families here in New Braunfels. His father and mother, Julius and Hedwig Karbach owned a general store in Maxwell, Texas. This is where Hylmar was born and after a move to Lockhart, he graduated from Lockhart High School. Acquaintances in Lockhart say that as a teenager Hylmar “pushed the limit”. Having a motorcycle he once rode his bike up the front steps of the Courthouse, drove through the building and out the back steps.

He was then off to the University of Texas and then the U.T. Medical School in Galveston. It was here that he met S.M.U graduate Katherine Taylor who was chief dietician at the Med. School. Hylmar did his internship in San Francisco and he sent for Katherine to join him and she did.

About 1925 the couple moved to New Braunfels and he went into medical partnership with Dr. A.J. Hinman. Their combined offices were above the Peerless Drug Store, where the present Dancing Pony store is now located.

And then came World War II. Hylmar joined the U.S. Navy as a Lt. Commander and later became a Commander. In the Pacific he was on the ship, USS Briscoe. Incidentally, the family named the family dog “Briscoe”. In 1946, he was anchored in Tokyo Bay when the peace treaty was signed. This was the highlight of his naval career.

All through the war, the family stayed in New Braunfels. After the war, Dr. Karbach resumed his practice in New Braunfels and he died in 1959.

No doubt, the house helped hold the family together during and after the war. Many memories were made in this house for the Karbach family. Daughter Kathleen Karbach Kinney remembers the fun times in the large house. The children’s bedrooms and a gigantic playroom were upstairs. She remembers how at Christmastime a tree would mysteriously appear upstairs and brother Hylmar would convince his sisters that he heard Santa Claus on the roof. A wide staircase led from the top story to the rest of the house below with its spacious living room, dining room and sunroom.

Another favorite memory was how Dr. Karbach, although he wasn’t a veterinarian, would treat wounded and sick animals that he found along the way. On two different occasions Kathleen raised a skunk in the large basement of the house. All went well until Kathleen and her friend Ellie Luckett took the skunk down the rapids at Camp Warnecke. It was just too much for the skunk.

Since Kathleen and I were in school together, all the way from Kindergarten to high school, I also have some memories of the house and the activities there take me back to a gigantic slumber party for what seemed to me, hundreds of girls. We never “slumbered”. We walked downtown in our “baby doll” pajamas (yes, that’s what they were called) to the Plaza where we sang and danced in the gazebo. We walked on the railroad track back to the Karbach house. We must have been 14 or 15 years old. “Those were the days, my friend; we thought they’d never end”. But they did.

Another memory was of a handful of seventh grade girls calling themselves the “Eight Date Baits”. The “eight” part fits but the “date baits” part was only wishful thinking. We decided that the boys in our class had no manners. We sent postcard invitations to the boys that we thought needed the most rehabilitation. We invited them to a party at the Karbach House where we intended to tie them up and read a book of manners to them. We decided to keep our intentions a secret, but like all secrets, the word got out and the boys didn’t show up. They had to grow up without our help.

The Karbach House, with its New Braunfels Historic Landmark Property designation, is welcoming new owners. The house will, no doubt, provide experiences for those who stay there. It’s that kind of house. The Bed and Breakfast should be open soon.

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Have you ever watched animals communicate with each other? No words, just bark, growl and whine. They get their point across. If they didn’t, they would have invented words. That’s what humans did. Some still bark, growl, and whine, but these sounds are usually accompanied by words.

Early human communication consisted of a system called “tell-a-woman”. Now, don’t get mad at me, ladies, because there was also “tell-a-man” and by the number of saloons in early New Braunfels, I’m guessing that men won out. This ancient form of communication was around long before the telegraph, telephone and tell-a-SKYPE, where you see the person anywhere in the world.

Depending on where you lived and who you associated with, different languages developed. Time went on and there was a need to communicate with people far away.

Someone (or two) developed a system of communicating from hill to hill. Smoke signals. It was too far to yell or growl from one place to another. The English developed the semaphore, a signaling device using flags or lights. On top of the hill was built a contraption with shutters where men could flash signals from one tower to another tower. A message could be relayed as far as 85 miles. This system was obsolete by the middle of the 19^th century with the invention of the telegraph. Several systems were invented before the invention of the telegraph.

Samuel F.B. Morse is given most of the credit for inventing the telegraph. This may not be entirely true but Morse did prove that signals could be transmitted by wire. Several inventions led up to the invention of the electric telegraph all over the world. The Morse Code, a series of dots and dashes, was used. Western Union built its first transcontinental line in 1861 following the railroad tracks.

Morse received funds from Congress to install a line between Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. His idea was to bury wires. This idea failed so he had the idea to hang wires from trees and this also failed. Finally he had the idea to hang the wires from poles. In 1844 Morse stationed himself in the Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol in Washington D.C. He sent the famous message “What hath God wrought” to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore. Vail got the message.

By 1846 a new business, the Associated Press, took full advantage of the telegraph to send messages to newspaper offices. What a boom for rapid communication! The national election results of 1848 were sent via wire to newspapers for the first time.

Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address was transmitted over telegraph wires to all “loyal states”. Obviously Confederates didn’t get the speech. Lincoln was supposedly fascinated by the technology of the telegraph and would spend hours, even overnight, in the War Department building, keeping track of what was going on during the Civil War. Messages were easily sent to newspapers across the United States but it seemed impossible to send a message by wire to Europe.

An American businessman named Cyrus Field organized a new company called the New York Newfoundland and London Telegraph Co. Field began laying 2,500 miles of cable from Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula. After several failed attempts of the use of the wire, Queen Victoria in England successfully sent a letter of congratulations to newly elected president, James Buchanan, on the advent of his election.

By the end of the 19^th century, most of the world was connected by the telegraph.

What was happening in New Braunfels as far as communication? When the emigrants first came to the Republic of Texas, the fastest and slowest form of communication was by mail. It took about three months for letters to arrive from Germany on a ship and then had to be transported overland.

Letters and penny postcards were delivered to stations by stagecoach. The stagecoach stopped at the Schmitz Hotel located on Main Plaza. Throughout the Civil War (ending in 1865), news about the war reached New Braunfels by stagecoach. Then there was the Pony Express. In 1880 the International and Great Northern Railroad came to New Braunfels and mail was sent by rail.

At a special meeting of the NB City Council on May 12, 1865, the mayor gave permission to the Western Union to fix the places for posts with the agent in such a manner that the free passage and use of the streets of the city would not be obstructed. The operator that worked the telegraph had to learn Morse Code. When the message arrived over the wire, it was written down and then hand-delivered to the person it was meant for. In1871 the telegraph office moved from the Schmitz Hotel to August Schmitz’s home on 267 Mill St. It is confusing, but unknown, the relationship of August to Schmitz Hotel owner Jacob Schmitz. In 1876 Charles Schmitz took his father’s place as telegraph operator at the Mill St. home. In 1879 the telegraph office was moved back to the hotel and then moved to the train depot in 1887.

Eventually the telegraph and telephone offices merged. City Council passed an ordinance Dec. 10,1895, granting Southwestern Telephone and Telegraph permission to erect and maintain on the streets, alleys and public ways, poles, fixtures and wires necessary to supply NB citizens with communication by telephone.

The house at 267 E. Mill St. still stands today at the same address where August Schmitz once operated the early telegraph office. The land on which this house sits was originally conveyed to Francis Gilbeau by the German Emigration Company in 1847. The third owner was August Schmitz, the telegraph operator. Until recently the property belonged to the Fuhrmann-Ludwig family and last year the property was bought by Danny and Anna Lisa Tamez. The building actually has two complete rental units. The fachwerk walls are still standing, as are the original floors. The story is that the bricks that line the walls were put together with mud and water from the Comal River a block away. They also bought the Ludwig house directly behind the E. Mill St. property facing E. Bridge St. which they have also restored.

The early home housing the telegraph office and the Ludwig house on Bridge St. downtown have been restored for vacationers to be able to enjoy a little bit of the past in the present. Danny and Anna Lisa Tamez also own the Gruene Estate on Rock Street. This 15-acre B&B was built in 1857 and is the original homestead of Ernst and Antoinette Gruene.

Since change is inevitable, what changes will take place in communication in the future? Will we be communicating only mentally as science fiction suggests?

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Recently in the “Smithsonian” magazine, consumer sensor expert, Kevin Ashton, talked about successful innovator skills. His observation was that they possessed tenacity. “The difference between successful innovators and everyone else is that innovators keep failing until they don’t.” He also said “For most of history, creation was seen as a consequence of common people doing ordinary work.” I believe New Braunfels is full of such individuals and that Richard Gerlich was one of them.

Richard Gerlich

Richard Gerlich was born in Prussia in 1852. He grew up in Germany and married Augusta Puppe in 1875. In 1878 they came to the United States. They did not come with the first wave of immigrants with the Adelsverein, but came separately, landing in New Orleans eager to make their way to Texas. He appears on the 1880 Comal County Census list as a 28 year-old, along with his 28 year-old wife, his 26 year-old sister, Alma and his children, Emil (4) and Gertrude(2).

Richard’s occupation is listed as a carpenter and wheelwright, which is a repairer of wheels. He became a naturalized citizen in 1882. By 1883 he had purchased a two-acre lot #168 from owner Heinrich Hoeke who had originally been granted the lot from the German Emigration Company. Gerlich immediately built his house at 505 W. San Antonio St. This wooden frame house remains intact with later additions to the rear. It is this house that is now a Bed and Breakfast owned by the Conservation Society. The standing seam tin roof and windows are original. Next to this house Gerlich built his shop where he would establish a business, now the site of Wagenfuehr’s Buckhorn Barber Shop Museum.

Meanwhile the family increased adding Linda, Walter and Augusta. The oldest child, Emil died. Richard’s sister Alma, who accompanied the family to New Braunfels, set up a millinery shop on San Antonio St. (possibly where the Miller & Miller parking lot now stands). Here she taught young girls hand sewing and machine sewing skills.

Aside from his business of being a “Jack of all trades, master of ALL”, Richard busied himself with other activities. He gave swimming lessons in the Comal Creek to boys and girls. The importance of swimming skills in NB cannot be underrated. Coming from Germany, swimming was not a skill learned naturally by boys and girls as it is here. Old records of NB show that many people, especially children, drowned in the early days. New Braunfels was surrounded by water. Gerlich would separate swimming lessons for boys and girls. Family tradition says that Gerlich’s method of instruction was to tie a rope around the child’s waist, throw them in the water and pull the rope toward shore. This technique in my early days was called “sink or swim.” Whatever it’s called, it worked.

At the shop, Gerlich sold produce from the adjoining two-acre farm such as corn, all sorts of vegetables and cotton seed. He was also a wagon builder, but working with wood was his specialty. Historian Oscar Haas described a one-cylinder steam engine which powered his (Gerlich’s) jigsaw: “He had a jigsaw and did a lot of gingerbread (cutout wood for decoration) on your porch and gables… and he had to fire that engine with wood.

“He had a little mustache and smoked cigars…When he was firing the stove to produce steam, he’d forget about drawing on the cigar.” Haas said he switched to a gasoline engine and then later to electricity after 1892 when the Landa Power Company made electricity more available.

Gerlich had the ingenuity to make up patterns for the gingerbread trim and to meet the taste of the more modern world. When he pulled down his “Richard Gerlich Wheelwright” sign he replaced it with “Richard Gerlich Gunsmith”. He repaired clocks, sewing machine, bicycles, toys and just about anything that was broken. He died in 1930 and his wife died in 1933 and both are buried in the Comal Cemetery.

Walter Gerlich

Richard’s son Walter grew up in the house on San Antonio St. and worked with his father in the shop. He eventually opened his own bicycle repair and gun shop there. He was definitely mechanically inclined like his father. An opportunity arose that he could not resist; a representative of the Ford Motor Company offered him a dealership and he accepted. The offer had been made to Eiband & Fischer, but they declined because they did not want to get into the new automobile business. Gerlich did.

The Ford Company would send him the parts (probably by train) and he would assemble them into a Ford automobile. Needing more room to work in, Gerlich bought the property on which he would establish Gerlich Auto Company on the corner of Academy and San Antonio Sts. from Albert Penshorn who had a blacksmith shop there. Penshorn sold the shop to W.H. Gerlich for $24,000 in 1920. He built his building with a large basement and an elevator. Large boxes arrived with car parts and were delivered to the elevator and taken to the basement. After assembly, the finished product was put on the elevator and taken up to the show room for sale. Henne Hardware had a similar setup with elevator, only they put together wagons on the second floor and brought the finished product down. I believe it was not accidental that both these businesses were close to the railroad tracks. Large items arrived by train because there were no large delivery trucks.

Walter Gerlich had married Laura Bielstein and they had two children, Norman and Marguerite. The untimely death of Laura in 1914 left Walter with two young children.

The Gerlich home at that time was on Academy St. Six years later in 1920, Walter was married to Valeska Babel. Their daughter Madelyn was born in 1923. A new home on the corner of Seguin and Garden Sts. was built for them by my grandfather, A.C. Moeller. The ten room home was complete with basement and wine cellar. It is now the law office of Marion J. Borchers.

Walter died in October, 1933, and four months later daughter Wallie Henrietta was born, never having known her father. Valeska Gerlich became the sole owner of a thriving business. The final chapter of Gerlich Auto Company was sale of the property to Ben Krueger in 1944 and the building now belongs to Joe Keen who restored it and replaced the name Gerlich at the top.

I believe that the quality of tenacity in Richard Gerlich as he fixed the little toys, bicycles, and clocks, was passed on to his son. Walter Gerlich used this same tenacity to put together automobiles.

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Let’s talk bread – white bread, rye bread, pumpernickel and even a variety of different yeast breads that are sweet. All these goodies come out of the oldest continuous bakery in town, Naegelin’s Bakery.

Zuschlag

In early, early, early New Braunfels, the bread that was purchased was a real treat and the bakery was one of the first businesses in New Braunfels. Just like the love of beer, the Germans brought their love of bread with them. Prince Carl knew this, so he appointed an official baker for the Adelsverein immigrants. That baker was named Heinrich Zuschlag who had been a professional baker in Germany. Forty-four year-old Zuschlag and his fourteen year-old son, Conrad, emigrated to Texas and signed on with the Adelsverein to be bakers. They sailed on the brig Ferdinand, accompanied the first settlers from the coast inland and then drew town lot #115 out of a hat.

This lot #115 is located on the corner of Seguin St. and Mill St. It is the location of the old NB City Hall before it moved to Castell St. After it was the City Hall, the Sophienburg Archives had their collections there. Hermann Seele, when he first set foot on Seguin St., along with Dr.Wm.Remer, remarked, “We caught sight of a stoutly built man whose sleeves were rolled up above the elbows.” Seele went on to say that the man was kneading dough with his muscular arms while his son, a 15 year-old armed with a long shovel, kept the large fire burning by stirring the coals. It was Zuschlag’s bakery. Later Seele says that he bought bread at Dr. Koester’s bakery, operated by Zuschlag.

Dr. Ferdinand Roemer, another early walker of Seguin St. in 1846, noticed the Koester building had three shingles hanging out front. They read: Dr. Koester, Apothecary and Bakery. Roemer was curious about the combination of professions, but apparently Koester was the distributor of the bread by Zuschlag who actually baked it at the other end of Seguin St.

In 1850 Zuschlag is listed as a baker and so is his son. This home/ bakery was purchased by John and Henry Goldenbagen in 1865. The Naegelin story starts here.

Naegelin

Edward Naegelin, Sr. was brought to Texas by his parents from Hirschen, Alsace in 1846 when he was two years old. The family is not listed in the Comal County Census for 1850 or 1860. We know that at age 19, he fought in the Civil War and records show that after the war, he and a friend started a bakery in San Antonio. The partnership was unsuccessful and dissolved. Naegelin then came to New Braunfels in 1868. He rented the building from Goldenbagen who had purchased the building from Zuschlag. Naegelin said, “I came to New Braunfels with a sack of flour and a dollar”.

He must have made that flour and that dollar go a long way. In the 1868 Herald Zeitung there is an advertisement about this bakery located in the Goldenbagen house, which Naegelin rented.

In 1870 he moved his bakery to the site of the present Naegelin Bakery. At first he rented the building and then he bought the building in 1874 and the business has been at this site ever since. Naegelin was assisted by his wife, Francisca Seekatz Naegelin.

According to Sophienburg records, bread was delivered locally by a horse-drawn wagon. Regular deliveries were left on the porch of the customer. The driver would ring a bell notifying the customer of their arrival. The Sophienburg Museum has a display of some of the early Naegelin tools of the trade. The large cypress mixing bowl was hand-hewn by Naegelin. Many of the original utensils, were mostly made by Henne Hardware for the Naegelins, and the first display case, plus other small bakery pans are on display at the museum.

When Edward “Edo” Naegelin died in 1923, the business was taken over by his son, Edward, Jr. and his wife, Laura Kessler. They remodeled the building in 1935 and their son, Clinton, became the manager, and later owner. Edward, Jr. and Laura Naegelin continued to live upstairs over the bakery.

Laura Naegelin was well-known in New Braunfels. She was known for her frankness, especially to customers who were not from “her home town.” She was partial to her local customers. Most locals today can tell you “words of wisdom” from the mouth of Laura Naegelin. In 1963 the New Braunfels Herald requested a photo of Laura for a story they were doing on the bakery. She refused, saying that she hadn’t had a picture taken in 50 years, and she wasn’t about to start now. In spite of her “words of wisdom,” the product was so good that the business flourished. Clinton sold the bakery in 1980 to the Granzin family who still own it.

The Klein House

Right next to the Naegelin’s Bakery sits a small, old cottage that is one of the oldest buildings in New Braunfels. It’s known as the Klein House.

Early immigrant Stephan Klein drew the lot in 1845 and built his home on this lot. The fachtwerk cross timber house is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. Klein heirs sold the house in 1858. Eventually after several owners, the house was sold by the last owner, Carl Floege to Edward Naegelin in 1877. The house was occupied by the Naegelin family and is now a Bed and Breakfast owned by the Granzins.

Stephan Klein came to Texas on the ship Hershel. He was present for the original drawing of lots. Klein was perhaps the oldest immigrant to receive a lot in the new colony. He was 59 years old, born in 1875 in Roxheim Bad-Kreuzhaen. He married Margaretha Hoffmann and was listed as a vine dresser (one who trims and cultivates grapevines) and carpenter in Germany.

Early documents gave a complete description of the physical qualities of the immigrants. According to his papers, he was 5’ 7” tall, of medium stature, blond hair with white streaks and blond eyelashes. He had a round face and chin and a blind left eye. (Source: Everett Fey, archivist for the Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church)

Granzin

In 1980 the Naegelin family gave up ownership of the bakery to another family with a bakery background. Wilburn Granzin and his sons had been involved in the bakery business in San Antonio for over 20 years. The Granzin family is very proud of the long history here in New Braunfels and the bakery is known all over Texas. Many of the recipes that they use are original.

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