Snake tales

Keva Hoffmann Boardman — Texas is the perfect environment for many creatures. One of them is snakes, and here in central Texas we have poisonous ones: copperheads, coral snakes, cottonmouths (water moccasins) and rattlesnakes. Early Comal Countians were very familiar with our slithering neighbors. The NB Zeitung records many encounters

Continue reading

Prohibition unpopular in New Braunfels

The sharing of history comes in many formats including murals, oral storytelling, books, newspapers and sometimes social media. Recently a photo of the New Braunfels Brewing Company was posted on the “Remember in New Braunfels, TX when…” Facebook page questioning where that building was. The answer is the New Braunfels

Continue reading

The story of the orphan photo album

By Tara V. Kohlenberg — This past weekend I attended a reunion of my husband’s family. I don’t know everyone and I don’t know the family history, so I found myself gravitating to “the old ones.” They are the ones who know the names of the faces in photos from

Continue reading

Goff Scholarship winner shares history

By Tara V. Kohlenberg — Every child passing through the Texas Public Education System receives an introduction to history. I say an introduction, because they may not remember all of it, but they are definitely shown it. Elementary students begin learning about their own community history in third grade, eventually

Continue reading

Dressing Little Miss America

By Tara V. Kohlenberg — 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

Continue reading

The Friedrich brothers (Part 1)

By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — I should have known that receiving a scanned copy of a pencil sketch of “The Meusebach-Comanche Treaty” would send me down yet another historical “bunny trail.” The sketch was signed in block letters — “FRIEDRICH 1847” — and depicts hundreds of Commanche, horses, Meusebach, U.S. Indian

Continue reading

Still chugging after all these years …

Keva Hoffmann Boardman – A research request regarding an old stage at the Landa Park dance slab led me to ferreting out what the Works Projects Administration (WPA) projects were in Comal County in the 1930s. I wasn’t at all surprised when I found myself looking into the Landa Park

Continue reading

When cotton was king

By Myra Lee Adams Goff  — The fall of the worldwide stock market, known as the Great Depression in 1929, was not of major concern to New Braunfelsers. Being an agrarian area, the county was more affected by a serious drought that had occurred in the early 1920s up to

Continue reading

4th of July Parade That Wasn’t

By Tara V. Kohlenberg — That place we call HOME, New Braunfels, has long been a “go to” place for summer vacations. It seems especially so for the holidays, like the upcoming July 4th. Each year the excitement grows as Main Plaza is draped in her patriotic finery and the stars

Continue reading

Famous in a small town

By Tara V. Kohlenberg — In small town America, getting your name, or better yet your picture, in the paper is one way to ensure your fame. “Famous in a Small Town,” words by Miranda Lambert in a chart-topping country song, touts the little things that bring fame, including cheering

Continue reading