Letter to Prince Carl
By Myra Lee Adams Goff It’s the Silver Anniversary of Weihnachtsmarkt. Can you believe it? For 25 years the Sophienburg has been putting on this event. Weihnachtsmarkt means “Christmas Market”. Patterned after the Christmas Markets in Germany, the purpose is to allow tradesmen to offer customers goods and gifts for Christmas gift-giving. Of course, our […]
Landa first fair president
By Myra Lee Adams Goff It did not surprise me to find out that Harry Landa was the first president of the Comal County Fair Association. In those early days before the turn of the century, his name appears over and over for new projects, new industry, innovative ideas, and most of them succeeded. He […]
Journals are important to history
By Myra Lee Adams Goff A designated post office can reveal a great deal about an area and about who lived there. In Comal County the Spring Branch Post Office was at one time headed by Gottlieb Elbel and he had the forethought to keep a journal from 1867, when he became postmaster to 1872. […]
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet for auld lang syne
By Myra Lee Adams Goff Have you heard of Sylvester’s Abend? Have you heard of New Year’s Eve? Two names for the same event. To arrive at the Gregorian calendar that we and most European countries use was not an easy process. Many changes took place before the final calendar set up by Pope Gregory […]
Riley’s Tavern in Hunter lives on
By Myra Lee Adams Goff In 1867 when cotton was “king”, Andrew Jackson Hunter bought a tract of land in eastern Comal County for the purpose of raising cotton. He lived nearby on York Creek. In 1880 when the IGN Railroad came through that area, the small settlement was called Hunter. As you drive out […]
New Year’s Day callers
By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — “There was a little custom that, I think, has completely died out. It’s called New Year’s Callers.” So began a story told by local New Braunfels resident, Kola Albrecht Zipp. She was born in 1899 and remembered her older sisters participating in New Year’s Day Calling in the early 1900s. […]
Hermann Sons #21 celebrating 135 years
By Tara V. Kohlenberg — This year, the New Braunfels Hermann Sons Lodge #21 is celebrating 135 years. What sounded like a simple “Happy Birthday” article soon became a rabbit hole that I could not ignore. Hold on! First of all, who is Hermann and why do his sons have a lodge? I learned that […]
1881 bird’s-eye view of New Braunfels
By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — Created by Augustus Koch in 1881, the “Birds Eye View of New Braunfels” is so much more than just an etching of early New Braunfels. An aerial view of the city lying nestled between the rise of the Balcones Escarpment and the black dirt farmlands, it is almost photographic […]
New Braunfels forty-eighters
By Keva Hoffmann Boardman — The forty-eighters were refugees of the failed German Revolution of 1848. They were idealists. They fought to establish a liberal and unified Germany using liberty, democracy and unity as their main tenets. The designation “forty-eighter” excludes the hundreds of thousands who emigrated from 1848-1852 for mostly economic reasons. It also […]
Amanty Christmas Connection
By Tara V. Kohlenberg — Museums tell the stories of our lives over and over again in detail. It becomes challenging to present annual events – like Christmas – in a new and interesting way. Our current special showing is an 18-month long exhibit of War Stories: Memories of New Braunfels in WWI, so Christmas during […]
