I really haven’t lived through a major war, but my mom and dad did. I have heard their stories and they are very different because Mom lived on a ranch/farm north of Fredericksburg and Dad lived in New Braunfels. Myra Lee Adams Goff grew up with my dad and she described those times through the eyes of the child she was then. In light of the current world situation, I thought it would be good to reprise Myra Lee’s article and see how New Braunfels coped back then with the uncertainty and fear that such times engender. — Keva Hoffmann Boardman

Around the Sophienburg, December 27, 2006

By Myra Lee Adams Goff —

It’s the end of December and this pesky little song has entered my head again and won’t leave. “Let’s remember Pearl Harbor as we did the Alamo.” I’m back in Julia Odiorne’s fourth-grade class at Lamar School. Earlier, on December 7, 1941, a surprise attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor had suddenly plummeted our country into World War II. We sang this song with gusto because as Texans we would never forget the Alamo and now we would be called on to “Remember Pearl Harbor” forever.

Miss Odiorne tacked a map of the world on the wall that she had gotten from the Weekly Reader, a newspaper for children. Every time Germany won a battle, she would place a little swastika on the map and for Japan it was a little white flag with a red “rising sun” in the middle. Naturally when the U.S. won, there were stars and stripes. For all that first year, there were almost nothing but swastikas and red suns, and that was scary.

We kept on singing and doing our part as children. The Junior Texas Rangers, as the children were called, collected scrap metal and even gum wrappers. New Braunfels was cleaned out of scrap metal. Newsman Roger Nuhn wrote that school children collected over a half-million pounds of scrap, including the cannons on Main Plaza. My Girl Scout troop collected string and I never knew why. We folded bandages, and I did know why. The Red Cross was very active in that endeavor.

A Civil Defense League was formed under the leadership of Mayor Walter Sippel. Citizens were assigned to air raid shelters in basements of schools, churches and public buildings. Now get this: Lamar’s basement is about 10 x 10 and there were about 350 people living in the area. We would be mighty cozy. Mock air raids, announced by the fire siren, were conducted on a regular basis. We were, after all, close to the many military bases in San Antonio.

The PTA at Lamar installed blackout curtains in our auditorium so that if there was a bomb dropped on New Braunfels, the children would be hidden. I never really understood that either, because we never were at school at night, but at least once a week, we were able to see our geography movies without the interference of the sun.

Rationing had become a way of life. Sugar, gasoline and tires were all rationed. A family was issued ration stamps according to the size of the family. Cookies were not as plentiful, Hershey bars were not to be found, and no frivolous driving could be done. If a tire went bad, just park the car in the garage for the duration of the war. My friends and I walked everywhere.

Every family was encouraged to plant a Victory Garden and the water rates were lowered for that project.

Right down on Main Plaza there was a Center for Service Men in the old Landa Building (present day Commissioners Court parking lot). Open to all servicemen and women, they would arrive on buses from San Antonio on weekends. The downstairs had a radio, nickelodeon, piano, pool tables, card tables and lots of food provided by local clubs. Upstairs there were 100 beds. Dances were planned at the center as well as at Landa Park. Thousands of servicemen and women would come to New Braunfels on weekends. In the end, 73,000 servicemen and women registered at the center.

Making money for the war effort was a big thing. The selling of war bonds was a huge activity and each county was expected to sell an allotted amount.

We sat in front of the radio as we now do the television. The news was always bad and as young teenagers, we listened to the terrible problems of Stella Dallas and One Man’s Family, two popular radio soap operas. “If you think you’ve got it bad, think about their problems.” Father Barber solved his family’s problems with a calming, “Yes, yes.” That was it.

When the war was over in 1945, the newsreels of the concentration camps that were in the movie theatres were shockingly real, and we knew then the importance of sacrifice. Almost 1,500 men and women served their country from New Braunfels, and sadly 38 gave up their lives.

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

The post Remembering a time of war, air raid drills, victory gardens and sacrifice appeared first on Sophies Shop.

By Tara V. Kohlenberg —

Some stories write themselves. Some, like this one, began as one idea before evolving into something completely different. The idea stemmed from a visit with Myra Lee Adams Goff, (you know, accomplished author and the one that started this column) when she handed me a copy of the The Golden Book of Favorite Songs. I had seen copies of this songbook in the Sophienburg Archives, but never researched it. I took it as a challenge.

The gold-colored 126-page booklet by Hall & McCreary Company, copyrighted in 1915 and 1923, was a favorite keepsake of hers, in part because she sang from the book when she was in school at the Lamar Ward School. A ward is like our attendance zone today. It was also the book used when she began teaching at Lamar Elementary School in 1954. Same school, updated name.

A man by the name of Curt E. Schmidt was named prin­ci­pal of Carl Schurz Ward School in 1931, a year be­fore Myra Lee Adams Goff was born. Schmidt had be­gun his teach­ing ca­reer in 1922 in a one-room school­house in Gille­spie County be­fore teach­ing Eng­lish at New Braun­fels High School. While at Carl Schurz, he earned his law de­gree from St. Mary’s Uni­ver­sity in 1942, leav­ing ed­u­ca­tion to prac­tice law. He re­turned to ed­u­ca­tion as prin­ci­pal of Lamar El­e­men­tary in 1950.

At that time, prin­ci­pals were not re­quired to teach classes, but he of­ten taught art and mu­sic. He was fond of The Golden Book of Fa­vorite Songs. The book was a teacher’s dream, teach­ing mu­sic, his­tory, pa­tri­o­tism, read­ing and re­li­gion all in one. It had songs of every genre: chil­dren’s songs, Christ­mas, Civil War, folk, pa­tri­otic, re­li­gious, Ne­gro “spir­i­tu­als”, with many of the songs’ his­to­ries be­ing given. There were also read­ings or recita­tions: Lin­col­n’s Get­tys­burg Ad­dress, Pledge of Al­le­giance and Twenty-third Psalm. Curt Schmidt led songs from the song­book fre­quently. He or­ches­trated chil­dren’s skits and mu­si­cal pro­grams every year.

Mrs. Goff graduated from Texas Christian University in 1953. Her first teaching job was at Lamar Elementary. Principal Curt E. Schmidt hired her because she could play the piano. She taught music and handwriting to fourth, fifth and sixth graders. She had a degree in secondary education, and there she was, hired to teach music to elementary kids. What’s more, she could not read a lick of music. She played by ear from the age of seven. If she heard it, she could play it.

As Mrs. Goff tells it, at one particular school assembly, while Schmidt was leading songs, he called out a Civil War song on page number sixteen, “Just Before the Battle, Mother.” Well, Mrs. Goff did not know it. She told me that she suffered through, plinking around, pretending, when he finally stopped to ask her what she was playing. She said, “I told you I couldn’t read music.”

I had a natural curiosity about Curt Schmidt. We lived next door to him on Magazine Street for a couple of years up until I was old enough to start school. I never attended school where he was principal. I would later see him orchestrating the Kindermasken Parade when school teachers helped put it on. I thought that the old German dance, Herr Schmidt, was about him. I remember him to be very energetic, almost intense about things. I wondered if my memories about his nature were correct.

Curt Schmidt was an innovator. He was proud of his German heritage and felt strongly about preserving the ways of the ancestors. German language had not been taught in New Braunfels schools since World War I. After thirteen years without German language instruction, Schmidt felt the children needed it. In 1931, he organized German Summer School, devoted entirely to teaching the German language, folkways, folk songs and German pioneer traditions. The number of German School students grew from the initial forty to over three hundred per summer over the years.

The summer program ran until it was crushed by World War II. Since the United States was at war with Germany, everything German became suspect again. Promoting the German language was considered subversive and the German program ended in 1940. You will frequently see the German language textbooks Deutsche Fibel (German Primer) and Erstes Lesebuch (First Reader) that he used in German Summer School in the Sophienburg collection, or estate sales. We have one of each at our house. Schmidt was very persistent. Later, in 1954, as principal of Carl Schurz, he was instrumental in finally getting German and Spanish language electives back into the elementary schools.

Curt Schmidt was ambitious. He first served as principal of Carl Schurz, then after returning from his law practice, he served as principal at Lamar for three years before returning to Carl Schurz. By the time Mrs. Goff returned to teaching after having a family (no pregnant women could teach!), Curt Schmidt was the superintendent of New Braunfels School District. Mrs. Goff’s teaching career led her to Carl Schurz, Lamar and New Braunfels Junior High before authoring her own articles and books to preserve the history of New Braunfels.

Schmidt served as superintendent from 1962 to 1966, during which time he established the first area vocational school in Texas, inaugurated the first Head Start program and established a vocational school of nursing. Overall, he spent forty years as an educator, mostly in New Braunfels. Some loved him, some did not, but he accomplished a lot in his time. He again practiced law from 1970 until his retirement in 1982.

Curt Schmidt loved his German heritage and his community. He was active in Scouting his whole life, earning the Silver Beaver and Scoutmaster Key awards. He was a charter member and past president of the New Braunfels Rotary Club, and active with the Sophienburg Memorial Association. Schmidt wrote and illustrated two books about German Texan pioneers and was the local correspondent to the San Antonio Light for ten years.

I may not have fulfilled my task of writing an article about The Golden Book of Favorite Songs, but in this final year of Lamar Elementary, I have managed to tie together a bunch of things that I did not know about before writing this article: the Songbook, the German primers, German School, Mrs. Goff and Herr Schmidt. It is almost like the Six Degrees of Curt Schmidt. Too much?

Sources: Myra Lee Adams Goff; Sophienburg Musuem and Archives.

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

The post The Golden Songbook and Herr Schmidt appeared first on Sophies Shop.

Kids of all ages gravitate to superheroes. I come from a time when the superhero list was relatively short: Superman, Mighty Mouse and Sky King. My favorite was Sky King, of course. But my real heroes — the ones I pretended to be in the backyard with all my neighborhood friends — were firemen. When your family members and your friends’ family members are firemen, it seems kind of a natural thing to play. Perhaps that’s why I find the history of the New Braunfels Fire Department fascinating.

Back in January 2017, Myra Lee Adams Goff covered the early history of the fire department (from 1874 up to about 1918) in her Around the Sophienburg article, “New Braunfels Fire Department — years of service”. In 1918, the city built and outfitted a new state of the art fire station, complete with three engine bays and sleeping quarters upstairs for the first paid firemen. That station became known as Central Station. It was the heartbeat of the firefighting community, for both paid men and volunteers. As a child, Central Station WAS the fire station to me. It held the shiny red engines in its neatly painted bays with pressed tin ceilings. The bay doors were almost always open and the firemen would often sit on the metal benches out front. This station also had a tower with a siren that went off exactly at noon every day without fail (or some poor young fireman would catch heck). That siren was the signal that my Opa would be home for lunch in 5 minutes. The tower isn’t there anymore, but the original 1918 station stands ready right next to the new Central Station. That building, located at 131 Hill Ave. is now the Fire Department Museum, and you can see all the cool history inside.

As New Braunfels grew, so did the need to protect the city. A community’s fire rating (insurance rate) is based on the building codes and the fire department’s ability to reach and extinguish a fire in the shortest amount of time. In 1931, the city saw fit to build Station No. 2., the one-story building that stood on the corner of Coll and Sycamore (next to the water tower) enabling fire coverage without having to wait for a train. The station originally housed one truck (the 1913 American LaFrance moved from Central Station) and two firemen with their families. Yes, families. R. Ebensberger and Hilmar Voigt were the first to occupy the station with family living quarters. Hilmar H. H. Chili Voigt was my Opa. He and my Oma moved in for a short time when my aunt was 11 and my uncle was 5. The station was replaced with the current Station No. 2. located on Loop 337 near Solms in 1975.

Station No. 3 was in Comaltown which was annexed by New Braunfels in 1868. Comal did have a fire house on N. Houston Ave. near where Lamar school is now, but it was torn down in 1925.

In 1950 the city bought and refurbished a 2-story building on the corner of Union and Garza (now Christus’ parking lot). The building had housed Simon’s Garage & Service Station on one end and Dolle’s Saloon on the other with the Hermann Son’s Lodge upstairs. From 1925 — 1950, fire protection had to come from Central Station across the Comal River. Station No. 3 remained in service until 1983 when the current station was built on Hanz Lane.

The city passed a bond in 1968 that built Station No. 4 on Kerlick Lane. It came online in 1970, went out of service for a while and then came back into service. The current Station No. 4 was built on Alyssa Way in 2012. Stations 5 and 6 are relatively new. No. 5 was built on County Line Road before 2006 and No. 6, on Stone Gate, came online in 2008.

To give you an idea of the department’s growth, in 1918, the department operated with three to four paid men and four companies of 15 volunteers each. By 1973, there were 28 paid men and 60 volunteers. Today there are 135 paid firefighters. The volunteer organization dissolved in the early 2000’s.

My Opa started with the fire department as a volunteer in about 1922. He became a ‘paid man’ in 1931, made Assistant Chief in 1958 and retired as Fire Marshal in 1966 after 35 years on the job. He also was a house painter/paper hanger, as most firemen needed a second job to make ends meet. Both my dad and uncle were members and officers of the New Braunfels Volunteer Fire Department for over 20 years, as were many of their friends. It was a way to give back to your community. The “hero games” we played as kids revolved around what we heard and saw. We pretended that the “Plectron” would go off (an electronic notification system at each volunteer captain’s house). One of us would jump on the “truck” (bicycle) and the other would stay by the phone, activating the “phone tree.” We also practiced for Pumper Races with the garden hose. As we got older, we took pride in being able to identify any firetruck coming our way—without seeing it, just by the sound of its siren. My favorite story about Central Station involved my Opa and my uncle. During WWII my uncle had joined the Army and, after completing basic in San Antonio, the soldiers shipped out by train. No one was allowed to notify family of their new orders or duty stations. My uncle knew that the train would pass right in front of the fire station, where the men sometimes sat out front on benches. He wrote on a rock he had picked up before boarding. Just as the train pulled through downtown New Braunfels, he stepped out onto the platform and threw the rock towards the fire station. My Opa no longer worried about my uncle going overseas. The rock said, “Aberdeen, Maryland.”

Firemen were — and are — a brotherhood. They risk their lives daily to protect the community, buildings, and people from fire, flood and disaster. They work hard and play hard, but they alone know what they see in their work and they carry it with them. THEY are my heroes and their history lives in the 1918 Central Fire Station. She looks pretty grand for 100 years old.

Sources:

• Sophienburg Archives
• New Braunfels Herald
• Sophienburg “Reflections”
• New Braunfels Fire Department

The post Heroes and history appeared first on Sophies Shop.

Doing research on the Sophienburg Hill property brings back memories of my 7th and 8th grade at New Braunfels High School. How does the museum fit together with the 7th and 8th grades, you ask? Here’s the story:

My introduction to the first two years in NBHS, the 7th and 8th grades, were totally filled with activities where boys and girls interacted with one another. This may sound strange to you, but at Lamar Elementary (for me up to 6th grade), the boys were in the back playground and the girls in the front. An occasional wave was about as close as we got. I’m talking about the era of Shirley Temple and the Our Gang comedy boys. So going to the big NBHS was quite a culture shock.

But boys and girls were eager to meet each other, even 7th graders. The PTA tried to address this need by providing places where students could get together. The first of these places was above the Jacob Mendlovitz Dept. Store downtown on San Antonio St. (now the Antique Mall on the corner of San Antonio St. and Castell Ave. The upstairs was open to students on week-ends and chaperoned by PTA members, mostly mothers). The wooden floor made wonderful dancing to the Nickelodeon. Occasionally someone would entertain with a skit or a song.

Needless to say, the location wasn’t too popular with the downtown merchants and when someone crawled out on the window awning over the sidewalk, it was time to look for another place.

On Butcher St. the school district had a big building that was converted into an entertainment center called the “Unicorn Stables.” Open to all NBHS students, there was dancing and even skating party nights. It even hosted formal dances.

But all this planned activity was not enough for the Shirley Temple/Our Gang 7th grade crowd. We had enough of all that planned activity. We already had the Mariners and the Sea Scouts who often interacted with each other on Lake Dunlap. Mariners were the top echelon Girl Scouts and the Sea Scouts were the top echelon Boy Scouts. As fate would have it, the Mariner adult leader and the Sea Scout adult leader both had family camps on Lake Dunlap. It was only natural that the two groups would meet at the same time at the lake. The boys took delight in showing off their boating skills by dumping the girls out of the boat into the water. Blue jeans and saddle oxford shoes weighed a ton.

Before Caller I.D., one of our favorite activities was to telephone the opposite sex and hang up when they answered. One of my friend’s father, a businessman, had a second telephone in the bathroom. What fun we had, calling the boys and then flushing the commode. Today’s youth cannot do that without being arrested. I think it’s called harassment. On Saturdays we called Krause Café and in our broken German would ask, “Hast do Schmier Kase heute?” Translation: Do you have cream cheese today? Then we would hang up and start the giggling routine. Why, you ask?

The picture show was a favorite hang-out. The theatre had to hire a person to walk up and down the aisles with a flashlight and one never knew when you would be spotlighted. Saturday was double feature day and so it was possible to spend the whole afternoon and evening in the movies. You never sat in the same seat for very long. It was kind of like “fruit basket turnover” or “popcorn bag turnover.” Getting popcorn thrown at you was a sign to turn around. If there was an empty seat, you moved to it.

The girls did lots of spending the night at each other’s houses. I don’t think the boys did that. It was years before I could spend the night at anyone’s house. I would get so homesick that I would have to be taken home. There’s nothing like a guest with dry heaves. I finally made it through the night my senior year. A friend had a big slumber party at their big house downtown for all girls at NBHS. I made it all night by sitting up fully clothed in the bathtub.

Almost all of my classmates had their driver’s license by age 14. There was almost no traffic so that made a big difference. Six 14-year-old girls (me included) drove out to a vacant ranch house out of town owned by the parents of one of the girls. We were going to spend the weekend in this house totally unchaperoned. We got to the ranch house in the afternoon full of confidence and independence.

When it started to get dark, we decided we would drive back to town to go to the movies. I have always wondered about that decision. We left the porch light on because we knew it would be dark when we got back. Sure enough, it was almost ten o’clock when we drove back to the ranch.

Coming over the hill leading to the house we were quite alarmed as we saw that the porch light was out. Pitch dark. We told ourselves all kinds of stories as to why that light was out and why it was so dark in the country.

We entered the house through the kitchen door and built a fire in the fireplace. We turned on the radio and on came the Mary Roberts Reinhart Mystery Theater. That program was known for the scariest of all mysteries, like all of Edgar Allen Poe’s mysteries. Even the theme song was scary. I think it was from Swan Lake. That program made your heart beat faster but for some reason we were drawn to listen to it, as they say, “like a moth to a flame.”

Suddenly there was an unfamiliar sound coming from the basement under the house. It sounded like bottles breaking. Absolutely stiff with fear, one of the girls went over to the door in the floor leading to the cellar. She screamed and claimed that someone was trying to push the door open. All six, like stampeding cattle ran to the kitchen looking for shelter. Some sat under the table, some in a closet and I remember standing up in the shower. There we froze until the sun peeped across the horizon and we packed up and left. But one more thing: outside we checked the half-open window leading to the cellar and discovered foot prints in the mud. We were in the car and out of there and no, did not go back.

We never solved that mystery but I’m sure that if there was someone there, they were more afraid than we were. Now come on, you guys that were in the cellar, fess up.
Back to why the Sophienburg Hill stories reminded me of my 7th and 8th grades. It was because my 7th grade friends had get-togethers of boys and girls most Saturday nights. One particular party was held at the old Ernst Gruene mansion where the Sophienburg Museum now sits. It’s been torn down but not because of this story. At the party, there was lots of dancing and record playing, popcorn and cheese dip, Orange Crush and Dr. Pepper with peanuts. But one activity was a little iffy. This is why I haven’t mentioned any names of participants in this whole column.

Our favorite game was “Spin the Bottle.” Sitting in a circle, someone would spin the bottle and when it stopped, the person it pointed to had to kiss them. This was a very popular game.

Suddenly there was commotion on the front porch. Two senior boys were spying on our little fun game. Pandemonium broke out. The worst of it is that they wanted to start a newspaper for NBHS. Guess what! They printed their own little paper and on the front page was the story of our private party. It was handed out to 7th-12th graders. It was so embarrassing and that was the end of our Saturday night parties.

Almost every time I enter the Sophienburg Museum I think of that 7th grade year and I go there often.

The post Entertainment different in the 1940s appeared first on Sophies Shop.

Dr. Ferdinand Roemer in his book “Roemer’s Texas,” when he arrived in the village of New Braunfels in 1846, wrote that a speculative American had laid out a new city in between the fork of the Comal and the Guadalupe within view of the city of New Braunfels and it was called Comaltown. This American citizen was Daniel Murchison, a land agent for Maria Antonia Veramendi and her husband Rafael Garza. Maria Veramendi Garza was the daughter of Juan Veramendi, governor of Texas under the Mexican regime who had received this land grant.

When Prince Carl laid out the city of New Braunfels on the west bank of the Comal, the Garzas laid out their inheritance on the east side of the Comal. Although Comaltown was separated from New Braunfels by water, it was soon annexed to the city of NB.

There has been very little history written about this thriving community so David Hartmann and I have begun a research project about Comaltown. We are collecting information on people, businesses, schools, churches, recreational activities and much more. David and I have a lot in common, including sharing a common ancestor here in Comaltown, Johann Georg Moeller (1844). We both grew up in this area and attended Lamar School. But when David went to Lamar, I was teaching there. David was in my music class at Lamar and so was Angie Morales, the daughter of Charlie and Francisca Morales who owned Morales Funeral Home on Common St. The funeral home was the first business that we researched in our new project.

The Morales Funeral Home, which was located at 171 Common St., was a thriving business until it was closed. Angie Morales (Kieny) was its last director and mortician. Her parents were Charlie and Francisca Sanchez Morales. Charlie was born in 1897 in Gruene and Francisca in Laredo in 1903. Together the couple had seven children. Angie, who was born in 1945, was the youngest. The other children are Carlota, Alfonso, Virginia, Francis, Martha, and Henry.

In 1921, Charlie Morales bought the property on which the Morales Funeral Home would be located. On the property was a small Sunday House and next to that was a two-story structure which, over the years, had served as a saloon downstairs and a small hotel with rooms for rent upstairs. There was a full basement for making wine and beer. Attached to this two-story building was another one-story addition probably used as a residence for the innkeeper. The buildings were constructed in the true German fachwerk style of clay bricks and cross timber. The clay used was plentiful in the Comaltown area, as many buildings were made of this easy-to-get material.

There is no information on the early owners, however, on the 1881 bird’s-eye view map of New Braunfels, the buildings can clearly be seen. They probably date back to the mid-1800s. They were at one time considered the oldest surviving buildings in Comaltown.

When Charlie Morales purchased the property, he removed the second story of the two- story building, probably due to the fragility of the clay. Other buildings in the area were converted to one-story due to the same situation. The basement became a cellar for can goods and vegetables. The Morales family lived in the remodeled structure and the other side became a funeral home in 1922. All of the Morales children were born at home.

Before buying the funeral home property, Charlie had worked for local contractors along with Rich Moeller. David Hartmann speculates that they worked for the Moeller Brothers Contracting firm consisting of Adolph and Alvin C. Moeller. All lived in the Comaltown area and Rich Moeller was a relative of the brothers.

Charlie Morales had several brothers who owned funeral homes in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston and so the mortician occupation was not new to him. Over the years over 30 family members were involved in the funeral business.

Angie grew up helping her dad and learning from him. She graduated from New Braunfels High School in 1965 and received her mortician’s license from the Commonwealth College of Science in Houston, doing an apprenticeship at Earthman’s Funeral Homes in Houston. Then in 1969 Angie returned to her hometown, New Braunfels, to help her father who retired, but remained active in the business. She became the first female funeral director and mortician in New Braunfels. She remembers some interesting times and she remembers hard times. Many families, due to lack of money, paid Charlie by bringing eggs, chickens, and even a goat. Some could not pay but received the funeral service anyway. Charlie Morales died in 1975.

To Angie, being a full time mortician and raising a family was no easy job. She remembers driving the hearse that the family named “Nellie Belle” hauling around young children that she helped raise.

Angie Morales maintained the funeral director position until 2006 when she closed the funeral home and turned the property over to her son. The buildings were subsequently torn down to make room for condominiums.

Most of the funeral records have been retained by Angie. Her former classmate at NBHS, Estella Delgado Farias, asked to make copies of the funeral home records. Estella was the person who did the research on the West End Hall and Baseball Parks. Angie agreed and Estella said that most of the 7,000 people in the records were buried in the Our Lady of Perpetual Help and Panteon Hidalgo Cemeteries. She also related that most of the funerals were conducted by the Morales Funeral Home. Estella and her husband, Robert Farias, are now working on the information which they are entering into a database. They are also searching for missing information and eventually will make all of this information available to the public at the Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

David and I are off to a running start. Well, maybe not exactly running, but we’re getting there. If you have information and pictures of Comaltown, we would love to use them.

The post Morales Funeral Home early business in Comaltown appeared first on Sophies Shop.