Dr. Carl Windwehen’s wedding gift to his bride, Lena Coreth, was a beautiful home on 257 E. Bridge St. now owned by Joel and Merry Saegert, and that home is being nominated for the prestigious designation as a Recorded Texas Historical Landmark.

In Comal County, there are presently 50 structures that have achieved this designation. Just to give you an idea about what this entails, here are six structures that you no doubt are familiar with: CC Courthouse, Faust Hotel, First Protestant Church, Gruene Hall, Henne Hardware and Old New Braunfels High School. Look at sophienburg.com for a list of all 50 structures. The designation is awarded to not only residences but also bridges, churches, commercial buildings and schoolhouses.

The Windwehens

Dr. Windwehen practiced dentistry in NB for 40 years. He married Charlotte Stocker in 1902. A daughter, Stella, was born in Lockhart. In 1905, his wife, Charlotte, died and Windwehen moved with his daughter and his mother, Ida, to New Braunfels. By this time, NB had emerged as one of central Texas’ significant market towns. There were lots of teeth to fill and pull. The 1906 telephone book lists Dr. Windwehen as the only dentist with a telephone, perhaps the only one in town.

In 1910 Dr. Windwehen married Lena Coreth, a granddaughter of Ernst von Coreth, an Austrian nobleman who came to NB and purchased land on Mission Hill. Lena grew up near Mission Hill and attended school in NB. Many of you will possibly remember her brother, Rochette Coreth, prominent rancher and business man.

After the Windwehens married, they moved into their new home where eventually two more daughters were born, Mabel (Faust) and Florence (Eikel). Dr. Windwehen died in 1946 and Lena lived in the home until her death at age 90. She was well known socially, known for her art work and her gardens. The Saegerts have kept up the tradition of outstanding gardens on the property

The house

Originally pioneer homes utilized readily available building materials, caliché and lumber. It was a very basic one-room shelter. After a while, a fachwerk half-timber folk tradition house using rough-hewn cedar for the structure, clay as infill and lime to seal the walls. It is thought the immigrants either learned this technique in Germany or from Prince Carl who had the idea that this form of construction should be used because he felt it was more “pure”. OK!

A Queen Anne style architecture used in homes really started locally after the railroads arrived in CC in 1885 for the IGN and 1900 for the MKT. Prefab buildings became available. Steeply pitched roofs with full width porches and decorative trim, they were often built of wood siding or shingles, brick or stone, or a combination.

Looking at the Windwehen house from the outside, you see many of these Queen Anne features. Going inside, however, reveals a very personal, livable home. I decided to describe the inside of the home to you by combining not only recollections of grandchildren (mostly from the 1950s) but also the architectural description done by Bob Warnecke for the CC Historical Commission. The grandchildren are Jerry Faust, Kay Faust Specht, Carol Faust Patton and Jon Eikel who all have memories of the Windwehens and their home.

A compilation

Built on one of NB’s original town lots, the house is of wood frame construction on pier and beam. From the front, one can see the attic, finished in 1968, and a large porch to the left. There are two brick chimneys visible, used for pot-bellied stoves that are no longer used. Originally the house was heated by a coal-burning stove in the basement and the coal chutes are still visible at the back of the house.

Walk into the central corridor through the original front door. The parlor and then dining room with a large table and kitchen beyond are on the right. On the left are a living room, solarium, master bedroom/bath combination and second bedroom.

Most of the doors and transoms are original. The entry hall contained bookshelves, a piano, table and chairs. Grandson Jerry Faust recalls sleeping on the porch. Everyone slept there because there were many beds and no air-conditioning anywhere. Granddaughter Kay Specht remembers four or more white wrought iron beds and as she slept, she could hear the bells of the Catholic Church. All of the Windwehen babies were born in the house. Daughters Stella and Florence both married in the parlor and daughter Mabel was married in the Methodist Church, but had the reception at the house.

Kay’s mother Mabel told her stories of the Christmases celebrated at the Windwehen house and how Dr. Windwehen had played Santa Claus and the children were not allowed to see the tree until Christmas Eve, a practice in NB. In the dining room, a large tiffany-type chandelier hung over the damask covered table laden with silver, crystal and china. Granddaughter Carol Patton remembers the traditional afternoon Kaffee Klatsch with her grandmother, drinking coffee out of demitasse cups.

As a child, grandson Jon Eikel was impressed with the basement. He recalls the coal stove and the ducts that brought the heat to each room. He would walk to Hollmig’s Drive-In to pick up hamburgers for dinner with his grandmother. When he married, he and his wife lived in the back of the house converted to an apartment. In her bedroom, his grandmother had a small table where the three would play dominoes.

The Windwehens were significant to NB and the home embodies distinctive characteristics of a type of construction during the change of the century. Joel and Merry Saegert have maintained this external and internal model of preservation. Thank you, Joel and Merry.

The post Railroads change NB architectural scene appeared first on Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

By Keva Hoffmann Boardman —

We are here because of the Comal and the Guadalupe rivers. We have drunk it, powered mills and made electricity with it, and played in the beautiful water since 1845.

Farmers and ranchers in Comal County also used the waters of the Guadalupe and the many little spring-fed creeks that flow into it. But when that wasn’t convenient, they utilized natural ponds and watering holes. There were many: the Crawford Tank, Branch’s Waterhole, Altgelt’s Pond, Stein’s Waterhole, Waterhole Creek, Kopplin’s Waterhole, Weltner’s Pond, Bluff Waterhole, Alligator Hole and the “Goenze Weier” (Goose Pond) in Gesche’s Pasture to name a few.

The largest waterhole from way-back-when was the “Post Ock See” or Post Oak Sea, located about 6 miles out of NB on Hwy 46W. It was said that during long droughts, thousands of head of cattle and livestock were driven by cowboys from all over the area to water at the “Sea”. Local rancher Bill Adams remembered that “when every waterhole in the county was dry and when the Guadalupe was down to a trickle, the “Sea” had water.”

Post Oak Sea, or the “Sea”, covered many acres. By the early 1870s, several ranches surrounded it, but the “Sea” was used by all. When ranchers from other areas as far as Mason were in drought they brought their livestock to Post Oak Sea. In like fashion, ranchers from Comal County who’d lost pasture land to drought were invited to move their cattle to neighboring grasslands. It was a kinder and gentler time. In 1886, Comal County purchased acreage on the “Sea” to use as a public watering and camping place on the way to Fredericksburg. Watering holes were the gas stations and rest stops of the horse-and-buggy days.

Rancher Rochette Coreth shared memories of Post Oak Sea in the local newspaper. “Large numbers of livestock would water there in the days of the open range. Their hooves packed the soil and thereby kept the lake watertight.” Rochette also told a story of his father, Franz Coreth, and the Post Oak Sea. Franz had shot a steer that was watering at the “Sea” to take home to butcher. The steer wandered into deep water before it fell and Franz got soaking wet dragging it to shore with a rope tied to his horse’s saddle horn. His brother and nephew met him on the bank with an ox-drawn wagon. The steer had to be hauled 12 miles to the Coreth Ranch. A cold norther suddenly blew in and, to keep from freezing, the wet Franz crawled into the still warm, field-dressed carcass as they slowly made the three-hour trip home. One of the young men handed him the steer’s liver saying “Here is also a pillow.”

In History of Mission Valley Community, Alton Rahe recorded stories of rancher Bill Adams which included tales about Post Oak Sea. “This was a really unusually large body of water, never known to be dry until 1887, and since then held water for only a short time following heavy rains. We had a big time around this lake fishing … and swimming … On many a moon-lit night we young fellows … would get together at this “sea”, all on horseback, and with several trained dogs, we waited for hogs to come to water … We would hold our dogs and kept quiet until the hogs had filled up on water, and had a good time wallowing in it, then we turned the dogs loose and jumped on our horses surrounding them, the dogs baying and holding them in the water. Some of the best rodeos one ever saw would take place right then.”

What happened to the legendary “Post Oak Sea”?

Why it suddenly went dry in 1887 is still a mystery, but there were several old-timers who came up with guesses. Bill Adams said that he wondered if an earthquake or geological disturbance had caused it to drain. He remembered strange weather. In January and February of 1886, it had been extremely cold and the “Sea” had frozen over except for a patch in the middle. Then, that summer had been terribly dry followed by a massive storm with hurricane-like winds in August. By the summer of 1887, a large crack had opened up in the ground near his home which formed a long horseshoe-shaped line across the area for at least a mile. It was in places 5-6 inches wide and it was established, by throwing rocks down it, to be at least 100 feet deep in some places. Had the basin of the “Sea” also cracked?

Another story postulated that the “Sea” went dry because a group of local lads threw dynamite into the water to stun and harvest fish from deep in the lake. The group later feared that their laziness had destroyed the rock foundation of the “Sea”. Yet another tale blames the building of a fence through the middle of the “Sea”; the placing of fence poles might have pierced the basin and caused the water to leak down.

Post Oak Sea does occasionally return. The newspaper published a photo of it full of water after heavy rains in March of 1957. Rahe’s book has another photo of a very full “Sea” after the 1972 rains that caused a major flood in New Braunfels.

I took my Mom and we drove up Hwy 46 to locate the site of the famous historical watering hole following Mr. Rahe’s directions. “Travel west on Hwy 46, pass the intersection of FM 2722. Before you get to the Comal County Road Dept/County Engineers office on the left, you can still see the basin of the Post oak Sea on your right. A small amount of water is usually visible. The stock tank closer to the highway with big rocks was constructed recently and has nothing to do with the original Post Oak Sea.”

Take the short drive out 46 or at least google map it and look at the satellite image of the area. You can indeed still see the footprint of Post Oak Sea on the landscape. If you go after a good rain, you will even see a little water in what was once the largest watering hole in the county.

Sources: History of Mission Valley Community by Alton Rahe; Sophienburg Museum: NB Herald, NB Herald-Zeitung and Neu Braunfelser Zeitung collections; Oscar Haas collection; “Reflections” recordings #936 and #403.

The post Cool. Clear. Water. appeared first on Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

By Keva Hoffman Boardman —

The Six Shooter Ranch. The name evokes something rather wonderful in an old-Western-movie kind of way. However, dear reader, the history around the Six Shooter Ranch is anything but romantic. There are tales from different time periods which give us clues to its story and with some sniffing around, I think I have got the gist.

I first found a paragraph in the Marjorie Cook files. She was a feature writer/editor for the NB Herald.

Six Shooter Ranch was owned by Coreths and got its name from a man named John Sippel (who married a daughter of Ernst Gruene, Sr. Sippel lived in the house there and used to get drunk, lie on his bed and shoot flies with his six-shooter. The ceiling was full of holes as a result. The house stood on top of the hill adjoining the Eden Home. This was levelled for crushed rock by Landa on a lease from Coreth. Just before the house was torn down, it served as a bordello.

Is your interest peaked? Are there facts to back up any of this tale?

A transcript of an interview with Coreth Family descendants fills in some details of the location.

At one time they [Coreths] owned property from Mission Hill all the way over to the Eden Home. My uncle Rochette Coreth referred to it as the Six Shooter Ranch. There was a quarry there on the edge. That was in 1913, when Landa wanted to establish a rock quarry on the Coreth property and [paperwork] refers to it as the Six Shooter Ranch.

I looked into the land area a little closer and it seems that it was first owned by Ernst Gruene. His daughter Johanna and husband John Sippel lived on the property when they got married in 1873. In 1887, Sippel opened a rock quarry on the hill to get rock and gravel for the construction of the Guadalupe River Bridge (Faust St. Bridge). Sippel later recovered an 8-pound mammoth tooth at the site. The Coreth’s then acquired the land and they leased it to Landa to quarry gravel.

Olinska Sippel Posey, one of the daughters of John and Johanna Sippel, shared a very personal insight on her family. John built a home on the corner of Academy and Coll in 1881, and that’s where she lived so she didn’t live on the Six Shooter Ranch. She did remember that her father was a little bit crazy and dangerous. Olinska remembered that father John took her to visit her Gruene grandparents who lived on Rock Street one day. They crossed the San Antonio Street bridge, went through Comaltown and at the railroad tracks there on Rock Street, John told her to get out and walk the rest of the way. As she walked, he shot his gun several times over her head to hurry her along.

Olinska’s mother Johanna had a mental breakdown in 1893. Olinska said her mother felt she had to file for divorce in 1894. After her husband shot himself in the head on the second floor of his Phoenix saloon in 1900, Johanna Gruene Sippel lived until 1942.

Doesn’t this recollection just break your heart? Here is a bit more of the Sippels’ story.

John was the son of Valentin Sippel, one of NB’s first founders. John was quite the entrepreneur. He and father Valentin built the first Phoenix Saloon — same location, different building — in 1873. Off and on he lived on the 2nd floor of “Sippel Hall” and rented out the first-floor saloon. He also added an alligator pond and a bowling alley. In 1885 he became the local distributor for Anheuser-Busch. John set up a soda and mineral water bottling works, St. John’s Bottling, in 1886. In 1887, he opened the quarry at the Six Shooter Ranch. He added an ice factory to his line of businesses and became the distributor for Lone Star Beer in 1890.

I think his world started falling apart in 1892. His 18-year-old, first-born son Henry was shot and died while at business college in Dallas. The Sippels’ had already lost a two-year-old daughter in 1883. Henry’s death caused Johanna to have a mental breakdown and require several months of hospitalization. John was having a hard time financially as well. The bottling works went bankrupt after a bad freeze and it and the ice factory were put up for sale. Johanna filed for divorce and six years later, most likely depressed and drinking, John shot himself.

Perhaps this is the origen of the “drunk and shooting the flies on the ceiling” story; so much trauma and heartache for this man and his family to handle.

My last reference to Six-Shooter Ranch is later in time. Hanno Welsch Sr. recorded an oral history at the Sophienburg and told an interesting story. His family lived on a farm out on River Road and Rock Street. Remember that the ranch house of the Six Shooter Ranch was located about where the Eden Home and Dean Word’s pit is now.

There was a fella by the name of Clapp, of Clapp Shoe Company. He was living up there. He was a playboy. I imagine they gave him lots of money to get him away from their business. He hooped it up! He had some nice black horses and a buggy; well-groomed. He’d go to town and meet these girls. He’d get a pretty girl from off the train and have big parties there. And he liked six shooters, pistols and stuff like that. He was shooting at the fella that was working in the field on Rock Street, and, of course, once in awhile this fella would shoot back too you know. I don’t know but I think they were both drunk. They couldn’t hit a target.

Finally. I think I understand the bordello reference in Marjorie Cook’s notes. Mr. Welsch also talks about the “pretty ladies” which came in on the train. Behind the depot was a one-story house about 30 feet long with a porch along the sidewalk of Mill Street. The mostly dark and shuttered house was “verboten to us youngsters” but Welsch and his friends would slip over to the windows and listen to the “sweet talk”. Hanno describes how the ladies would come in by train, pulling up their skirts above the ankle as they stepped down onto the ground. There were always a lot of cowboys ready to help and then escort the ladies to the “entertainment house”. I think the Clapp gentleman at the Six Shooter Ranch would bring “these girls” to the ranch house to party.

So it looks like I’ve figured out quite a bit of the story. But Mr. Welsch gave me one more tantalizing tidbit connected to Six Shooter Ranch. One day Hanno’s father was plowing in the field down on the corner of Rock Street and he plowed up an old pistol.

It was a very peculiar pistol. It was originally a rim fire and it had been converted into a center pin fire pistol. It had beautiful engraving on it and a nice wooden handle. It must have come from the Six Shooter Ranch somehow.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum: Neu Braunfelser Zeitung; New Braunfels Herald; Marjorie Cook Collection; Myra Lea Adams Goff Collection; Hanno Welsch Sr. “Reflections” oral history.

The post The saga of the Six Shooter Ranch appeared first on Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

How would you like to watch the New Braunfels July 4^th fireworks from the highest point in New Braunfels? Maybe you could even see the fireworks in San Marcos, Seguin and Randolph Field from this spot. Well, you can’t do it this year, but maybe it will be possible in the future.

The New Braunfels Parks and Recreation Department is in the process of designing a new park which will be called Mission Hill Park. Off of Hwy. 46 right next to the HEB grocery store is a ten-acre piece of property obtained by the City for the development of a park. The name Mission Hill supposedly got its name from a Spanish Mission in the area from the mid-1700s. However, the description that is more accurate is “proposed site of the Mission Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe.” The mission that was established was short-lived in temporary quarters and really nobody knows exactly where it was located. Missions were established next to water sources and this property is a long way from the rivers. Whatever its origin, the name Mission Hill stuck.

One of the plans is to include a tower on the promontory point of the property reminiscent of a similar tower dating back to the early 1900s. Many New Braunfelsers remember the home with the tower.

The property where the park will locate has an interesting history about who owned it and what it was used for.

Go back to 1847 when the State of Texas issued a grant of land on which the Mission Hill is located to Andres Sanchez who transferred it to Daniel Murchison in 1854. The property was 320 acres.

In 1856 Murchison deeded the 320-acre property to Ludwig Kessler and shortly thereafter to Friedrich Ludwig Hermann Conring. The Conrings were the stewards of the land for almost three decades. Conring and his wife, Georgine Meyer, arrived in 1854 from Germany.

Two of their sons fought in the Civil War. One son, Ernst, was a saltpeter maker which explains why the Mission Hill property contains a kiln similar to the one in Landa Park. During the Civil War the kiln produced gun powder used by the army. This family information was shared by Lorine Riedel (Calvin) who still lives in NB. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Hermann and Georgine Conring. The Conrings built a home on Mission Hill in the 1850s. Lorine’s grandmother, Clara Conring, told stories about her grandmother, Georgine, hiding in the home during the Civil War.

In 1883 the property was sold to Franz Coreth and from that time on, it was owned by the Franz Coreth family, his son Rochette, and his grandson Franz Ernst Coreth.

According to Kay Faust Specht, great-granddaughter of Franz and Minna Zesch Coreth, Franz’s father was Austrian Count Ernst Coreth. After emigrating from Germany, Ernst and his wife Agnes Erler Coreth purchased 280 acres from John O. Meusebach near Wald Road on the Comal Creek. They lived on the property the rest of their lives. Remember when I wrote the Altgelt Pond story? (Sophienburg.com) The house was very close to that pond.

Now back to Mission Hill. Franz Coreth ranched and farmed the land that he bought from Hermann Conring. He built an L-shaped house in the late 1800s but unfortunately it burned down to the ground. Family tradition states that there was a volunteer fire department in New Braunfels but its horse-drawn fire wagon was unable to pull the heavy water tank up Mission Hill. A second house was built on the same spot, very similar to the first one but with the addition of a porch and a tower.

One of the daughters of Franz and Minna Coreth was Lina Coreth Windwehen who shared information with her granddaughter, Kay Faust Specht. Lina grew up in that house and told her granddaughter many tales of living in the house on Mission Hill. She remembered a large screened-in porch. Of course, the tower with the “widow’s walk” was a favorite of all the children. So many events could be seen from that tower. Miles of the land below and early mapmakers came to survey NB from that tower. During WWI, in 1918, Gen. Pershing brought his troops to the ranch from Ft. Sam Houston where they practiced their maneuvers. He watched the troops on the plain below from Mission Hill.

Rochette Coreth was the son of Franz and Minna and he continued to ranch the land after his father died. When he married his first wife, Flora Bading, he built a second house on the hill next to the original house. It was actually the third Coreth house on the hill. Flora Bading died when their only child, Franz Ernst Coreth, was three years old.

The next segment of the Coreth story on Mission Hill began when Rochette married Melinda Staats. Relatives of Melinda’s that provided the following information were: Mitzi Nuhn Dreher, Judy Nuhn Morton, and A.D. Nuhn Jr. The A.D. and Irene Nuhn family lived in the tower house in the mid-1940s. The Nuhns remember seeing the Eiband and Fischer fire down on the Plaza in 1947. It was a huge fire. They also remember lightning striking the tower blowing out what was around the water faucets. When the lightening hit the chimney, the whole dining room filled with soot. The tower was the source of many adventures for the Nuhn children and their friends. I was lucky enough to be one of them.

Another source of information from a more modern observation was that of Joel Karl Erben, great-nephew of Melinda Coreth. His mother, Joline Staats Erben, was the sister of Melinda. As a young child he spent many hours at the Mission Hill homes and ranch. Joel recalls that with Hurricane Carla, considerable damage was done to the upper rails and shutters of the tower. That kept him from going to the top of the tower. It was possible to see things from that viewpoint that one could see nowhere else.

Joel remembers a story about a political cocktail party at Mission Hill. Rochette was on the board of directors of the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association. The Coreths gave a party for the directors which, incidentally, included Gov. Dolph Briscoe and his wife, Janie. As formal as these affairs can be, the Coreths asked the guests to park at the bottom of the hill by the barns and hike up the hill. He has a vision of the women struggling up the hill wearing pumps (high heels).

Imagine this: Joel remembers cloudy days when the tower was above the clouds. Now that’s a picture. From the tower it was possible to see the smoke stacks of LCRA sticking up over the fog line. He says that weather fronts take on a different view from up high.

Rochette Coreth was a very popular figure in NB. He involved himself politically and for that he was honored to be the grand marshal for the New Braunfels Centennial parade. Riding his white horse, he had a saddle embellished with sterling silver. The suit he wore and the saddle are at the Sophienburg. A video shows Rochette galloping up the side of Mission Hill after the parade.

The last Coreth to own Mission Hill was Franz Ernst Coreth. In the 1990s both of the unoccupied houses burned down.

The Parks Department is still in the planning stage for the property that will be enjoyed by the whole community. I would think that the whole Coreth family will be proud that this significant property will be honored as a park.

The post Mission Hill Park appeared first on Sophienburg Museum and Archives.

Recently I had an opportunity to practice my investigative reporting skills. I’m not adventurous enough to be a real investigative reporter but every once in a while something piques my curiosity and I’m off on an adventure. Reading a newspaper article by Oscar Haas that he wrote 45 years ago about Altgelt Pond got me started.

Never having heard of the pond before, I started looking and found very little. The story was very interesting but gave me sketchy clues about where this pond was located. Clue #1 was that it was four miles west of New Braunfels on the Dry Comal Creek. After several dry runs, my husband and I started over at the Plaza, went out Landa St., turned right before the overpass, turned left on Loop 337, heading toward the Dry Comal Creek area. Sure enough, large patches of trees on the right side of the loop led us to a little turn-in right after McCoys Lumber and Holiday Marine Boat Supplies. There was the River City Range and right there as you drive in on the left side of the short drive is Altgelt Pond. The pond has a chain-link fence around it but it is visible.

Johnny Rodriguez, a native of New Braunfels, owns the River City Range, a seven acre miniature golf course, two driving ranges, practice facility, batting cages, and sanded and lighted volleyball courts. There is a bar with several television sets, pool table, and ping pong table. Rodriguez bought the property five years ago.

Stories handed down by old-timers in the area tell of very big fish and that the pond was a favorite fishing spot. The pond has never dried up. Stories of the pond go back to the beginning of the settlement. Occasionally alligators were sighted in the Comal River and thought to be from the Dry Comal. Rodriguez said that even through the last drought in Comal County, the pool remained full. Other pools and tanks in the area dried up. It is estimated that the pool is at least 60 feet deep but was impossible to measure. Imagine the difficulty of measuring the depth of a spring-fed pool.

No one knows what name the pond had in the past. If it was named after the owners, it could have been Veramendi Pond, Prince Carl Pond, Meusebach Pond, Ernst Coreth Pond and finally Altgelt Pond. Probably the Native Americans had a name for it. According to Haas, there were several different names given to the pond, such as “Blue Hole” and “Bottomless Hole”. Early settlers called it “Der Teich”, meaning The Pond in German. This pond may be bottomless but it is not blue. It’s hard to imagine it as ever being described as blue. It’s green with algae and looks like it could be a great setting for one of the swamp movies. I imagine the snakes love it.

One of the first owners of the land on which the pond was located was John O. Meusebach, successor to Prince Carl as head of the Adelsverein in Texas. When Meusebach came to New Braunfels to take the place of Prince Carl, he came with a contract signed by Count Castell, president of the German Emigration Company. The contract stated that Meusebach would receive 500 acres of the company’s land of his choosing. In June, 1847, Meusebach chose a 280 acre plot where the pond was located.

Six months later he sold the tract to Count Ernst Coreth for $3,266 including a house, two cedar log cabins, farm implements, garden seeds, ploughed land, ditches and fences.

Meusebach married Miss Agnes Coreth, oldest daughter of Count Ernst and Countess Agnes Coreth on Sept. 26, 1852. For a brief time the Meusebachs lived at Hueco Springs and later founded Loyal Valley. Agnes Meusebach’s parents, Count and Countess Coreth, came with their six children to Texas in the fall of 1846 on the ship York, an emigrant sailing ship out of Antwerp. Five more children were born in Texas. The last child, Otilie, was born in 1858 and married Hermann Altgelt in 1879. The obituary of Mrs. Agnes Coreth states that the family after its arrival in Texas “went on to Fredericksburg, returned to NB and lived on a farm later known as the Altgelt Farm, which has the famous Altgelt Pond on it.” (Oscar Haas said that the pond was owned by E.R. Teinert in 1970.) It now belongs to Johnny Rodriguez.

Rochette Coreth, son of Franz Coreth and the grandson of Ernst and Agnes Coreth, told Oscar Haas a story about Altgelt Pond. He said that when his grandfather owned the land on which the pond was located, he used the pond for irrigation. There was a certain special kind of clay that he had hauled in by mule carts and placed the clay around the outside of the pond to build it up. He was able to use the flow of the pond for irrigation purposes. The water was then above the level of the surrounding fields and it was possible to use gravity flow to irrigate. The pond became the object of a riparian (water) rights suit. Haas said that a mill owner farther down the Comal Creek had been using the overflow of the pond to turn a waterwheel for his mill. When Coreth dammed it up, water no longer flowed to his mill. The mill owner, and Haas did not name the person, filed suit against Coreth and the suit eventually went to the Texas Supreme Court. The court ruled in favor of Coreth’s rights.

The whole area on which Altgelt Pond is located has its unusual features whether for agricultural purposes or industry. Some old prominent names connected with this land were Meusebach, Altgelt, Coreth, Ogden, Eikel and especially Dittlinger who was the founder of the settlement of Dittlinger in the early 1900s. He and I.A. Ogden began a rock-crushing business on a large scale that has grown to what it is today. Dittlinger created a settlement of houses,a school, a church, stores, and a dance hall for workers at “Las Calera”, or The Lime as it was called by the inhabitants.

The settlement of Dittlinger is no more, agriculture in the area is sparse, but Der Teich refuses to go away. Come to think of it, I might be able to start a new career in investigative journalism.

The post Location of Altgelt Pond revealed appeared first on Sophienburg Museum and Archives.