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.

The post History of the Moeller House appeared first on Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

Tara V. Kohlenberg —

Ninety years ago, on October 8, 1933, New Braunfels celebrated the grand opening and dedication of the new Sophienburg Memorial Museum and Library, erected in honor of those pioneers who founded New Braunfels.

It was a grand affair for the entire community. There was a morning parade from Main Plaza to the Sophienburg, headed by the American Legion Drum & Bugle Corp, Boy Scouts and fire department. All were treated to the music of the Old Heidelberg Band while lunch was served by pretty girls in German costume. After the official dedication and customary speeches praising the pioneering spirit of our ancestors, the beautiful new museum and library building was opened to the public for the first time. The party continued into the evening with entertainment by the Music Club String Ensemble, the Echo Singing Club and a musical pageant depicting the important events in the founding of New Braunfels.

You may have raised an eyebrow upon reading the word “Library” with Sophienburg Memorial Museum, but the Sophienburg has long been entwined with the public library. For several years, in a series of locations, people could pay a membership fee to use a local small library (see Emmie Seele Faust Memorial Library, April 1, 2018, Sophienburg.com). It was not until the new museum built a dedicated library room in 1933 that there was truly a free public library.

By 1937, it was clear that the library needed its own space. A new public library building for the city of New Braunfels became a reality in October 1937. Mrs. Emmie Seele Faust, daughter of Hermann Seele, offered a large donation to build a memorial library. The Sophienburg Memorial Association donated a parcel of the Sophienburg Hill property for the new library, with the understanding that when it ceased to be a library, it would revert back to the Association. Built in the same rock style, the Emmie Seele Faust Memorial Library opened adjacent to the Sophienburg Memorial Museum on W. Coll Street in the fall of 1938.

As it is with the ebb and flow of life, so it goes for organizations. The Sophienburg Memorial Museum grew and flourished in place, filling the empty space left by the library room vacancy. In 1968, the city built the Dittlinger Memorial Library on property once the site of the Ernst Gruene home, located directly behind Emmie Seele Faust Library and Sophienburg Museum buildings. Since the Emmie Seele Faust building was no longer used as a library, per the agreement, it reverted back to the Sophienburg Memorial Association and became the Archives building.

The collection and archives continued to grow. By 1975, the Museum’s need for space prompted renovations and addition of the Cedar Room. In 1992, the Association purchased the 1929 New Braunfels City Hall building on the corner of North Seguin Avenue and Mill Street to house the ever-growing Archives. At that time, the old library building became storage for the artifact collection.

Now, all these years, the museum was run by one or two employees and a whole host of members and volunteers spread out in three buildings. Money was derived from memberships and a small Weihnachtsmarkt fundraiser, but it was almost always a struggle to have a steady income. The museum gift/book shop helped contribute to the coffer a little, but the page turned in 1998, which was the first year the museum participated in Wurstfest. Any items, mostly German themed, that were left over from Wurstfest and Weihnachtsmarkt came back to the museum, taking the gift shop to new heights. Our beloved Sophie’s Shop was born… but it didn’t get that name until 1999. Whether in the museum, online, or at Wurstfest, Sophie’s Shop serves to make money for the sole purpose of supporting the non-profit museum operations.

Following the completion of a new city library, the City of New Braunfels gifted the Dittlinger Memorial Library to the Sophienburg Memorial Association in 2001. Renovations to the Dittlinger Library building, creating an archives library and museum exhibit hall, would take money, so a capital campaign was held and the Old City Hall building was sold.

In 2004, Phase I is completed and the Archives, which has been closed for a couple of years, opens in their portion of the renovated building. The Museum exhibit space opened a year later. The original museum building became storage for the collection.

The Sophienburg Museum and Archives was created by the community as a memorial to our founders. She has always given back as a supportive community partner. She has been there to not only support New Braunfels’ anniversary celebrations, she captures and catalogues the history to share with future generations. The Sophienburg Memorial Association presents the annual Fourth of July Patriotic Celebration in partnership with the City of New Braunfels. The Museum presents programs such St. Nicholas Eve and Fiesta Patria celebrations.

In 2009, Sophienburg Museum and Archives proudly became the anchor for the Sophienburg Hill Historic District to help protect the rich architectural history of New Braunfels. As proof of the Association’s dedication, the Emmie Seele Faust Memorial Library was fully restored to its original historical splendor.

The Sophienburg continued to be recognized for excellence in protecting the history of New Braunfels. In 2017, the Sophienburg received two Texas Historical Commission honors: a Historical Site designation for Sophienburg Hill, and a Recorded Historical Landmark designation for the Emmie Seele Faust Library.

This year, the Sophienburg Memorial Association celebrates 90 years of preserving New Braunfels History. The Sophienburg Museum and Archives is an integral and vital part of New Braunfels. “Guardians of History, Keeper of the Treasures and Stewards of the Stories”.

Join us in celebration, Sunday, October 8, 2023, on the campus of the Sophienburg Museum and Archives, 1-4 p.m. All are invited.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives; LaVerne Pearce; Nancy Classen; Anna Lee Hicks.

The post Sophienburg — guardians of history for 90 years appeared first on Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

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.

The post Mammoth finds appeared first on Sophienburg Museum and Archives.