The year was 1846, a year after Hermann Seele arrived in Texas. It was the time of year that we, in Texas, understand – July and August. The heat continued to increase and thunder storms made the Guadalupe River rise. A ferry boat at the confluence of the Comal and Guadalupe Rivers had washed away. It was again repaired.

Horrifying scene

Seele crossed the river to the place where the immigrants had been held up from crossing over the flooding Guadalupe. A most horrible scene was observed. Some chests and boxes of the immigrants had been brought over with great effort. Baggage and household goods were laying everywhere waiting with the immigrants to cross the swollen water. Wash was laid out on bushes to dry.

An old farmer lying on a feather bed had a raging fever. Not far away the corpse of a woman was wrapped in a bedspread. Small children were sitting around weeping for their dear, dead mother. The father in vain, tried to understand a discussion with the American wagon owner. What was he telling him to do? He couldn’t understand English.

Walking by the gruesome area, Seele noticed a man leaning against a tree with his hat fallen over off of his head. He wanted to warn him about the danger of sun. Seele went up to the man, shook him, and raised his head “which had sunk to his chest when his wide-opened eyes became fixed on me, motionless and unseeing. The man was dead.” He was buried there on the banks of the Guadalupe.

He passed a tent with nine people lying begging for water. No one would bring them any. Seele brought them water from the river in pails. A long-ago song sung by his mother passed through his mind:

Beyond the island and rocks
We have vanished for eternity.
I feel as though I must weep
Must weep like a child.

From The Cypress by Hermann Seele

Many immigrants camped across the Guadalupe River from Seele’s farm. Many were buried there and years later when the railroad came to New Braunfels, workers discovered the bones of the 29 humans recorded by Ervendberg. The workers scraped them up and reburied them. Today trains roll over the site.

Immigrants planned to settle the San Saba

The real original destination of the Adelsverein German immigrants was the land around the San Saba and Llano Rivers. The Adelsverein had a contract with the Republic of Texas to settle up to 6,000 families and single men in this area. They should have known better, but they didn’t. They knew nothing about Texas.

When Prince Carl arrived in the summer of 1844 to make arrangements for the immigrants to travel from the coast to the land grant, this inland trek from the coast was the biggest challenge he had. He made a trip by horseback to the San Saba and decided that the settlers had to have a half-way destination to stop for supplies.

Unplanned destination became New Braunfels

And so, on March 15, 1845 in San Antonio, Prince Carl purchased the land situated on the Guadalupe and Comal Rivers. This land became the inadvertent final destination of the Adelsverein immigrants. Immediately Prince Carl had Lt. Nicholas Zink plot out a town-site. At the west end of this plotted land was a four-acre cemetery named the New Braunfels Cemetery.

Ervendberg records

When the first immigrants arrived, Rev. Louis Ervendberg recorded some 400 deaths, most of which were buried in the New Braunfels Cemetery in 1845 and 1846. An unnumbered amount of burials took place at the coast and on the side of the road of the trek up from the coast. There are no records to show the exact number or who died at the coast and on the way to New Braunfels. Rev. Ervendberg began his recordings by word of mouth from arriving settlers and it is estimated that 300 or so died at the coast and along the way. He recorded 21 deaths in 1845 and 373 in 1846.

New Braunfels Cemetery

This city cemetery was the first provided for immigrants and dedicated June 25, 1845. The first person buried there was Elise Catherine Reh Peter. Her husband, Gerlach Peter, died a month later. It is presumed that they were victims of a cholera epidemic that was just beginning at this time. Records show that many were buried in nameless graves on the southwest section of the cemetery. Over two hundred deaths recorded by Ervendberg were buried in the New Braunfels Cemetery.

The First Protestant Church is the custodian of those death records. The church has allowed the Sophienburg Archives to copy the records. The records show the name, date of death, age, birthplace, place of burial and cause of death of each of the 348 recorded deaths in 1845 and ’46. The causes of death are so varied that it is impossible to draw any conclusions. So many died of convulsions and something called mucus fever, bilious fever, dysentery, blood poisoning and yellow fever. Most of these sound like symptoms rather than the disease itself. Only two concrete diseases have been identified, cholera and spinal meningitis. Towards the heights of the epidemic with several deaths a day, there were no longer coffins available and many were just buried in a mass grave. The area is marked on the grounds of the cemetery.

Whole families of parents and children sometimes died all at once. All age brackets were victims from the very young to the very old. Several women died of childbirth.

By 1847, the numbers of recorded deaths dropped to 71. One may conclude that this particular epidemic was over.

The rest of the story

When John O. Meusebach accepted the responsibility of taking the place of Prince Carl as Executive Director of the Adelsverein, he was full of optimism. After all, the newspapers in Germany had painted a beautiful picture of Texas. But when Meusebach arrived in Texas, he quickly assessed the misery of the immigrants on the coast. He realized the financial disaster and there was no money to help the immigrants survive on the coast or even to help them get to New Braunfels. He was informed that 5,000 more people were on the way.

What was he to do? He appealed to the Adelsverein who sent a meager amount of money. He then explored the land promised the immigrants around the San Saba and Llano Rivers, the original destination.

In April 25, 1846, Meusebach guided 16 wagons and 180 settlers to colonize Fredericksburg. He then made a peace treaty with the Comanche Indians. This opened up the Texas frontier for settlement.

Meusebach remained a popular personality with the immigrants and in 1851 he was elected State Senator. Two years later, he was appointed commissioner for the German Emigration Co. to issue land certificates to the immigrants brought to Texas by the Adelsverein.

The rest of the story is good, thanks to John O. Meusebach.

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There is one historian’s name in New Braunfels that is mentioned over and over. After writing this column for the last nine years, and writing a few books, I can’t begin to tell you how many times his name is mentioned as a writer or a translator. Somehow the name slips in there before you know it. The person to whom I refer, is Oscar Haas.

Haas’ material is widely used and the Sophienburg has a vast collection of his papers, published and unpublished. As far as historical writers, the same can be said for Hermann Seele and Jacob Lindheimer but not to the extent of Oscar Haas’ contribution.

Sophienburg volunteer, Ralph Koch, is presently going through and organizing material from the Oscar Haas collection.

Oscar Haas was born on October 12, 1885, on a farm in Cranes Mill in Comal County. He was the oldest child of Ernst Georg Haas and Ottilie Rochau Haas. Both families were German immigrants. The families had moved to the Cranes Mill “mountains” soon after the Civil War. The farm is 16 miles west of New Braunfels and now is under the water of Canyon Lake.

Haas spent much of his early childhood on the Little Blanco River in Blanco County. He attended a little country school called the Twin Sisters School.

In 1897, the family moved to New Braunfels and he started the third grade at the New Braunfels Academy on Mill St. Right after finishing the sixth grade at this school, he began working for druggist August Forke. Forke owned the pharmacy and this building is the famous Forke Store now located at Conservation Plaza. I say famous because so many NB events have been held in this building with its old floors that retain its old atmosphere.

Obviously Oscar Haas was a bright, curious boy. Riding his bicycle along country roads, he would sketch buildings and people. The Sophienburg Museum has a large collection of Native American arrowheads that he gathered mostly in the Landa Park area. It is a beautiful mounted collection hanging in the Native American exhibit and contains spear points, flint knives, scrapers as well as the arrowheads.

In 1918 Oscar married Clara Amelia Conring and eventually she became a partner with him in his search for the history that both of them came to love.

As a young man he worked for the large mercantile store of Pfeuffer and Holm as a salesman of men’s clothing. This led to a brief partnership in the retail clothing and dry goods business. His store was directly across from the First Protestant Church and the building was eventually moved to Gruene.

A real break in Haas’ life occurred when he was elected county treasurer in 1934, a position he held for 28 years. By 1940 he had begun the discovery, collection and translation of old county records in the courthouse. Around that time, courthouses all over the state began getting rid of old records because of crowded conditions. There was a feeling that these records had no value, but Haas knew better. He saved the county records and had them recorded in the Texas State Archives. It was from these records that he began writing articles for publication in the New Braunfels Zeitung and the New Braunfels Herald. He wrote a column called “Know Comal County” in which he translated the old Commissioners Court records from German to English. Starting with the year 1846, he revealed to the current population of the county what had happened 100 years earlier. This series ran for three years in both newspapers. Following this series was another series called “99 and 100 Years Ago in New Braunfels.”

Hermann Seele was an early writer who wrote history and stories about New Braunfels. Seele arrived in the settlement in May of 1845. His recollections gave us complete descriptions of those early years. Of course, they were written in German, but Haas could translate them. An important literary work that Haas translated was Seele’s “Die Cypress”, a collection of non-fictional and fictional stories. This book makes excellent reading and can be purchased at Sophie’s Shop at the Sophienburg.

Another translation by Haas was Fritz Goldbeck’s historic poems describing New Braunfels. This to me was a very difficult translation, as it is hard to translate poetry from one language to another. Next came the translation of Prince Carl’s papers in which he recorded everything about the colonization project. Now just imagine this project. He translated the German “Fraktur”, the German equivalent of English script. Most of the German letters don’t even look like the English letters. I will say this, however, he probably learned this script at the country school at Twin Sisters. My dad learned this Fraktur going to school in the country, but my mother did not. She went to school in NB where she was taught English and German was a second language.

In 1961 Clara Haas joined her husband in his next venture, a series of 144 installments for the New Braunfels Zeitung. It was “Comal County in the Civil War” translated from the writings of Ferdinand Lindheimer. These translations were in the newspapers in the 1960s.

Retiring from the position of county treasurer in order to work on his large collection of historic materials, he began work on producing the history book “History of New Braunfels and Comal County, Texas; 1844-1946.” This book, published in 1968, is for sale at Sophie’s Shop and has become the #1 aid to historians researching history of the area.

Other publications were: “The First Protestant Church, Its History and its People 1845-1955”; also a translation of the Civil War Diary of Capt. Julius Giesecke and “History of the Singers and German Songs of Texas.”

All of this activity in writing did not go without reward. Early on, Haas was honored with several awards. The Historical Society of the Evangelical and Reformed Church honored him for historic church writing and the San Antonio Conservation Society History Award was given to him in 1966. Last, the Comal County Chamber of Commerce honored him with their annual Besserung Award for Outstanding Community Service.

Much of the information for this article was gathered from writings by Brenda Anderson Lindemann, Crystal Sasse Ragsdale and the Dolph Briscoe Center of American History, the University of Texas, Austin.

Oscar Haas died in 1981, but his accomplishments will live on for as long as there is a need for history.

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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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