By Simon V. Simek —

Considering the rainy days we had last week after such a long dry spell, we thought it relevant to help tell the history of New Braunfels’ eternally erratic weather, and our long-standing feud with rushing water. Diving into the archives, we found some tremendous accounts of how our predecessors fared in their own times against the elements.

The drought of the 1950s is one of the worst, if not the worst, recorded in New Braunfels history. New Braunfels was still largely agricultural, and without modern water solutions, local farmers and ranchers struggled to yield crops and raise livestock. Caroline Stange sat down in 1982 as part of our ongoing Reflections program, a local ongoing oral history effort from the Sophienburg since 1976, to tell her story and detail her experience of the ‘50s drought and the flood of 1972.

Mrs. Stange moved here a little later in life, when she finally agreed to follow her soldier son who was stationed nearby in 1955. At first, she found New Braunfels to be exceptionally clean and friendly, but also incredibly dry and hot, even in January. She had come from California, where the flowers bloomed and the weather was fair, and Texas seemed like an arid land devoid of her beloved flowers. Day after day it was dry, and her ranching neighbors had taken jobs in town to make ends meet. She regretted her move and prayed that it would rain for just five minutes. Even Landa Park and Comal Springs dried up. Finally, in 1957, the rains came, in the form of a flood, but nonetheless Mrs. Stange was thrilled to see flowers and green.

1957 was not the only flood that Mrs. Stange experienced in her adopted home. She remembered vividly the 1972 flood that happened just a decade prior to the recording. It began with a 2:00 AM call from her neighbor, who fought the loud drops on her tin roof for attention. The neighbor had heard the police come by and order residents to evacuate their homes, a warning Mrs. Stange didn’t hear. They wondered where to go, maybe to her son’s home in McQueeney, but they believed it too far. This was for the best, as that day his home would get 18 inches of water inside of it. They tuned in to the radio to hear Herb Skoog notify them that shelter was available at the civic center. The electricity had gone out in the neighborhood, but they were able to navigate their way to the lights at the civic center. While there, they saw the damage that the flood had already caused, like the mother who had her baby swept from her arms and the elderly woman wrapped in blankets who had just stood on her kitchen sink in neck-high waters to be rescued through the kitchen window. They stayed the night and returned home the next day to find Camp Warnecke’s tea towels littered about in the trees. News would stream in the next few days of others who were lost, some of them friends and neighbors. Mrs. Stange’s home was undamaged, but the flood had already wrecked its havoc on her life.

Caroline Stange and her story help visualize the seeming cycle of floods and droughts that our piece of Texas endures constantly. The Torrey mills experienced a form of this cycle as well in the previous century, although the determination to defy nature is a little more surprising.

For whatever reason, fire, air, and finally water all plotted against the earth and stone of John Torrey’s riverside plot at the juncture of Comal Creek and Comal River. Today, this is the tube chute, but it was the Torrey family who built the first dam for power. John Torrey and his brothers hailed from up North but came to Texas as entrepreneurs who sold merchandise to incoming Texas settlers. Following their success, John Torrey acquired the doomed plot of nearly two acres in 1848. He built a gristmill (grain) and sawmill, and later added a factory that made goods for the home like doors and blinds. On November 14, 1861, the first disaster struck and the entire complex burned down.

He quickly replaced these losses with a four-story stone building. Soon after, machines for cotton spinning and looms were added to the top floor. This became the first cotton factory in Texas, and it began production in 1865. In 1869, a warning came, and a flood damaged the building and some machinery, but production could continue. Just two months later, a tornado ripped through town, and the Torrey mill’s top floor was destroyed along with all the machinery.

Rebuilding was underway for three years, and in 1872, just weeks before operations could resume, the mill was struck for the last time. The summer torrent came, as it so often does, and Mrs. Trappe recalled the incident in 1945: She was only sixteen, and it had rained over 12 inches the night before, washing away the newly built iron bridge over the Comal. She watched as John Torrey and four others tried to move some of the machinery and materials from the first floor to the second. But the dam had gone, and the water pushed the building off its foundation. As it was readying for its collapse, the five men made it to the roof and looked for any escape. The only option was to grab on the telegraph wires which crossed the river. All five successfully took hold, and were able to swing towards land, jump, and ultimately save themselves. It is said that Mr. Torrey bore his losses without a murmur of despondency, but soon after he left New Braunfels for good and started again in Hood County.

New Braunfels and her residents have long been afflicted by volatile weather and overflowing riverways. That is not going to change. It is up to us, current residents of Comal County, to find the solutions, whatever those may be, to ensure our homes are here to stay for future generations.

Sources: New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung, John F. Torrey and Brothers by Susan Morrison, Around the Sophienburg by Myra Lee Adams Goff, Reflections 287 (Caroline Stange).

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

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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.

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It’s the same business, in the same place, run by the same family for almost 92 years. That’s Doeppenschmidt Funeral Home, now involving the fourth generation. And it doesn’t look like they are going to run out of clients any time soon.

In the early 1900s, on the corner of Seguin Ave. and Mill St. where Doeppenschmidt’s is located, Balthesar Preiss operated a livery stable, feed store and transfer service. They met trains and rented carriages for shopping, balls, and weddings. By 1912, a new building housed Baetge & Stratemann livery, transfer, feed and stable. Also in the same building on the left-hand side was Ed. Baetge and Gus Stollewerk working for Balthesar Preiss & Co., undertakers. By 1916 the double business advertised Ed. Baetge and Mrs. Otto Stratemann running the B. Preiss & Co. livery and feed stable and Baetge and Curt Ruedrich as undertakers for B. Preiss & Co.

Oscar Doeppenschmidt bought out Baetge and bought the building from Otto Stratemann in 1923. Up until that time Doeppenschmidt had a “pressing parlor” (cleaning and pressing) on W. Castell St. located in a building in the parking lot across from the Convention Center. He also operated an auto service station at 400 W. Seguin Ave. which was the vicinity of the former Hollmig’s Drive Inn. There he advertised as an agent for Chandler and Hupmobile cars, oil and gas.

After Doeppenschmidt took over the business where it is now located, he hired A.C. Moeller in 1928 for the first remodeling of the building for $10,000, no small amount at that time. Now look at the photograph dated 1927 and you can see what Doeppeschmidt’s business included. The man on the far right is Oscar Doeppenschmidt in front of a hearse. Notice the curtains and urn in the window. Next to that is an ambulance. It looks like the hearse, but has a red cross on the window. Originally these vehicles could be changed from hearse to ambulance and vice-versa. The other vehicles in the lineup were used as taxis and buses. Bus service was provided daily between San Antonio and Austin. In the center of the building are two archways and inside is a waiting room. Drivers of the vehicles were Richard Moeller, Marvin Rheinlaender, and Alvin Winkler.

Notice also the two gas tanks with the Magnolia Oil Company display. The two story building was constructed with apartments upstairs. Possibly there was also a saloon, not at all unusual in New Braunfels.

Another remodeling took place in 1972. The business by this time was solely Doeppenschmidt Funeral Home. Doeppenschmidt’s advertisement in the Herald was “Everybody wants a neat funeral for a small fee, a blessing to the poor and a help to the rich.” The advertisement claimed, “No commercialism, a chapel for 200 people and has the appearance of a quiet corner of a cathedral.” And it claims that the embalming room is not the gloomy den Dickens pictured in one of his novels, but has white tiling and bears the resemblance of the operating room of a modern hospital.

Why is the building called a home? An advertisement in the newspaper shows that “home is a real concern to their patrons.” You enter the parlor, like in a house for an atmosphere of homelike comfort. Services held as if they were held in one’s own “home”. Wonderful floor covering was laid out by Johann Jahn. Otto Rabenaldt was the licensed embalmer, assisted by Alice Dickerhoff.

Some old-timers and some not so old remember some of the funeral practices here in New Braunfels. Before television and radio, a rather ominous looking notice was printed on a small 4×7 inch white card with black borders. These cards with the deceased name were distributed around town. The early, early ones were in German script. Homes were draped with the colors of mourning – black or shades of dark grey. Funeral wreaths were hung on the outside door and inside the house over pictures, doors and windows. Sometimes mirrors and portraits of the deceased were covered with light veils.

Thousands of years ago all over the world, there is evidence that black was the color of funerals. Fear of the departed, not respect for them, was the reason. Covering oneself with black garments protected the person from spirit possession by the deceased. Widows wore a veil and black clothing for a year to hide from her husband’s spirit. These color practices have been all but forgotten by the younger generation and a majority of the older generation say “thank goodness”.

Going against these customs of wearing black brought social ostracism to the widow. Remember how Scarlett O’Hara was ostracized in “Gone with the Wind” when she abandoned the black clothes for brighter ones? Customs influence many of our actions and sometimes we don’t even know why, but I would never wear a red dress to a funeral, but not because of fear of the spirit possession.

Since the spirit domain was darkness, candles were lit to keep the dark spirits away. This practice comes from ancient people’s use of funeral torches around the body. The word funeral comes from the Latin “fumus” meaning “torch”. Doeppenschmidt used to turn on a light outside when there was a body inside.

The term “funeral home” no doubt comes from the importance of the home for funerals long before funeral homes. When a person died, the family would lay the body somewhere in the home, usually the parlor. Relatives and friends were invited to view the body. Then a casket was chosen from the undertaker’s supply or one could be ordered. The first NB undertaker, Balthesar Preiss, made his caskets. Some caskets were closed and some were open with a glass covering. By the way, the word “casket” comes from the Greek “kophinos” meaning basket. You can guess why, can’t you? The body was restrained in a basket with a rock on top to keep the spirit from escaping. While burying six feet under was thought to be a good practice, the basket, and finally the coffin was even safer. After the six feet under practice, a large stone was put on top of the coffin to keep the soul inside, hence we have the word “tombstone”.

Four generations of the Doeppenschmidts have run the business started by O.A. Doeppenschmidt in 1923. After he died, his wife, Emmie, and their son Bennie and wife Ruth, ran the business. The last two generations are Carl and his daughter, Michele.

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