What’s happening to the old house at 230 W. Mill St? I found out. Jeff and Denise Mund have bought the old Georg Pfeuffer house and they are restoring it. Records show that this is the sixth time that there have been major additions and renovations.

Ownership of the lot on which the house stands was conveyed to Johann Georg Pfeuffer in 1852 and it is assumed that the house was built shortly thereafter. It is one of the early houses in New Braunfels built with fachwerk walls, a custom brought from German architecture. One can see fachwerk construction in present day Germany. Casement windows with unique latches can be seen upstairs. Hand-hewn cedar beams throughout the house and wide cedar beams were used in the ceiling. The full basement contained the kitchen and has a brick floor. In the downstairs area are two original black walnut doors, a wood that was plentiful along the banks of the Guadalupe.

Johann Georg Pfeuffer was born in 1799 in Bavaria. He married Barbett (Barbara) Broschel in 1829 and six children were born to the couple.

Pfeuffer was a tanner and owned several tanneries in Germany. He was quite a prosperous businessman. The children were all educated and servants tended to their needs.

The family does not know why in 1845 Pfeuffer sold all his tanneries, uprooted his family, and signed up with the German Emigration Company to come to Texas. They were among the second group of emigrants and arrived in Galveston in November of 1845. From there the family took a schooner to Indianola.

A near tragedy occurred when they were put on an overloaded schooner. It sank in the bay outside of Indianola. The lives of the family were saved but most of their possessions were lost. Now they were virtually penniless and were stranded on the coast along with the hundreds of other emigrants. They didn’t arrive in New Braunfels until 1848. The 1850 Comal County census lists Georg as 51, Barbett as 44, Valentine as 18, Christopf as 16, Daniel as 12, Barbette as 9, and Anna Marie as 6. The oldest son, also named George, was 20 years old and wasn’t listed in this census. He was known to have moved to Corpus Christi at the time.

Sometime between 1852 and 1860, the elder Georg Pfeuffer began a tannery in the basement of his home on Mill St.( Source: “Texas and Texans”,1914 translation). Inquiring about the process of tanning, I asked Al Ludwig, the g-g grandson of Georg Pfeuffer and owner of Ludwig Leather Co. on Seguin Street. He said that the process was done by soaking the hide in tannin extracted from oak trees to produce leather that was soft and durable. The word Tanne is an old German word for oak or pine trees (hence the word Tannenbaum). How did this family survive with the tannery in the basement?

Family records state that Georg Pfeuffer was very opinionated about the politics of the day. He signed the petition in Comal County calling for secession. Four sons fought in the Civil War.

About that time the young Georg Pfeuffer returned to New Braunfels from Corpus. This Pfeuffer son became the most prominent in the family, as he was a Texas Senator and responsible for the capitol in Austin being constructed of Texas Granite. Later he became president of Texas A&M College. To read more about him, log on to Sophienburg.com Nov. 26, 2008.

Johann Georg Pfeuffer (Sr.) died in 1886. Thereafter the house was conveyed to the Baetge family. In 1942 Arthur Baetge as executor of the Baetge estate sold the house to Annie Lehman who, in turn, conveyed it to her son Leroy Lehman in 1954.

Leroy Lehman and his wife Agnes raised one son and four daughters in this home. Some changes were made to the home to accommodate their growing family. The August Koch map of 1881 shows the house without the side porch that the Lehmanns added. Ernest Lehman, son of the Leroy Lehmans, recently brought the original pillars to the Munds.

The City of New Braunfels designated the house as a historic landmark. All of us in New Braunfels benefit from restoration projects like the Munds have taken on.

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Imagine that you are on the Texas Coast where you have just arrived on one of the Adelsverein ships. You left Germany three months ago. You are far away from the Heimatland (homeland) for the first time ever and it is Christmas time. Your whole life you have loved the traditions that you grew up with – the music and the decorated tree that celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. On Hermann Seele’s arrival in Galveston, he wrote in this diary: “Memories, sweeten for me, lonely as I am in a foreign country, the hours with the balsam of a wonderful past.”

The year is 1844. The Republic of Texas is in the last stage of being an independent nation. Texas would soon become a state of the United States. The land was beautiful but rugged.

These immigrants would bring their culture and joyous traditions with them from Germany. The Adelsverein promised them land, supplies to help them get established and the provision of churches and schools. The immigrants brought with them the love of music, food and dance, strong family values, and the German traits of self-discipline and most of all, tenacity. These last two were important qualities because the whole venture was fraught with obstacles, but they persevered. In five years, New Braunfels was the fourth largest city in Texas.

Prince Carl hired Louis Ervendberg to establish a church in the new settlement of New Braunfels. Ervendberg met the first group of immigrants on the coast and conducted the first church service there on December 23, 1844. Prince Carl cut down a small oak tree for a Tannenbaum and decorated it with candles and candy for the children. This service on the coast is considered the first church service of the German Protestant Church. Prince Carl made this comment about the service: “The people, deeply touched, shed ardent tears of compassion and on Christmas, Holy Communion service would be conducted.”

German historian, Joachim Klenner, has done extensive research on Ervendberg and says this about the man:

He graduated August 26, 1833 from the University of Griefswald, taught school for four years, and then requested consent to immigrate to North America in1837. He gave as his reason for immigrating that a rich family from Hannover wanted him to come to North America to teach their children for five years. He was granted a permit with the stipulation that he could not come back to Prussia if he ever returned to Germany (no reason is given for that). He emigrated as Louis Ervendberg although his family name was Cachand. You have to wonder why he changed his last name.

Ervendberg settled in Illinois where there were others from Hannover, Germany. There was no pastor in the area so he organized a congregation. In 1838, he married Marie Luise Sophie Dorothea Műnch. They left Illinois in 1839 to come to Texas. After arrival in Galveston, they moved to the small settlement of Blumenthal in Colorado County. It was in Blumenthal that he was later approached by Prince Carl to handle the religious services for all the settlers, Protestant and Catholic. He accepted the invitation.

Ervendberg met with this first group of immigrants on the coast and accompanied them as they crossed the Guadalupe on March 21, 1845. This date is considered the founding date of New Braunfels as well as the German Protestant Church. He lost no time in organizing his German Protestant Church in New Braunfels. Prince Carl gave remembrance gifts to the congregation: a chalice, the twin of which is located in Germany, and two bells that are currently installed on the front lawn of the First Protestant Church.

In the settlement of New Braunfels, the first services were held outside at the foot of Sophienburg Hill until a log church could be built. Hermann Seele taught school in the same spot. Seele was chosen secretary of the church, a position that he held for 56 years.

Constant rain kept the Guadalupe River in a constant state of flooding that brought disease. The steady arrival of immigrants on the coast under these conditions played out a tragic drama of horrors. After Texas became a state, a war broke out between the United States and Mexico and the promised immigrant wagons were sold to the United States Army. There was no housing, no food, and no way to get from the coast to the settlement. In desperation, many immigrants tried to walk the 150 miles to New Braunfels. Hundreds died along the way and many arrived in the settlement sick, only to spread the sickness. A make-shift hospital was set up and Pastor Ervendberg recorded 348 deaths in one year. Sixty orphaned children were left and all but 19 were taken in by family or friends. The remaining 19 were taken in by the Ervendbergs. The Adelsverein gave Ervendberg land on the Guadalupe where he and Luise eventually set up what is believed to be the first orphanage in Texas.

For numerous reasons, Ervendberg’s career as pastor fell apart, as did his marriage to Luise. They decided to return to Illinois. She left with their three daughters, and he was to follow shortly with their two sons. Waiting for him in Illinois, Luise learned that her husband had intentionally met with one of the orphans and left for Mexico. She returned to Texas and he was gone. She never saw her sons again and she was granted a divorce in 1859.

Although the orphanage story is sad, the Ervendbergs provided a home where memories were made as well as old traditions kept and new ones formed for all who lived there. Many of the orphans and Ervendberg children grew up, married and had happy endings to their stories. Generations later, descendants of the orphans and the Ervendbergs gather at the old orphanage to celebrate the Ervendbergs and their ancestor’s survival in Comal County.

The German Protestant Church also survived and a stone church was built in 1875, with the tower added to the front of the building in 1889. This building still stands today.

In 1894, three new bells were installed in the tower (not the two small bells that you see now on the front lawn). Each bell has a significant name – Germania signifies the German heritage, Columbia signifies the immigrant loyalty to their new country and Concordia expresses the hope for harmony between the old and the new, not only generations, but ideas and traditions. The largest of the bells, Concordia, almost six feet in diameter and four feet high, has a deep mellow voice and forms the bass for the harmony of their blending. Columbia is forty-four inches in diameter and forty inches high. Germania is the smallest, three feet in diameter and thirty inches tall. Hers is the high tenor. These bells represent the struggles that the church and community have endured in its long history.

Henry Longfellow’s poem, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” tells it all:

(Verse 1)

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

(Verse 4)

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.

(Verse 5)

Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

At least eight generations have been born in this new land of Texas with new memories made and old traditions harmonized with new. I heard the bells on Christmas Day.

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