By Keva Hoffmann Boardman –

Sometimes a little tidbit of information sets me off on a bunny trail. I took one of those trails recently after finding and reading a 1975 letter from Oscar Haas to Mrs. Gregorio Coronado here in New Braunfels. Haas was drawing her attention to the mention of a Mexican boy, Pablo Diaz, in the 1850 Comal County census. That piqued my interest, and I ran down the trail Haas laid out in his letter. It isn’t that I doubt Oscar at all, I just wanted to journey along with him in his research.

Haas told Mrs. Coronado that Pablo had been captured by Comanche who had made a raid over the Rio Grande into “Old Mexico” and carried him with them up to the San Saba River country. He suggested she look at Roemer’s Texas, to find Pablo mentioned. So, I went to Roemer’s and on pages 242-243, I found Roemer describing his travels with John O. Meusebach as he was finalizing the treaty between the German Emigration Company and the Comanche Nation in February 1847.

Roemer said that they met a young blond-haired, blue-eyed, 18-year-old Anglo-American man who dressed and acted as an Indian. Ten years earlier, the blond young man had been captured after his parents were murdered by Comanche near Austin. Roemer goes on to say that the young man “had a little Mexican boy about eight-years-old, who rode behind him on the horse and whom he treated as a slave…he looked half-starved and was shivering in the cold north wind because of his scanty dress. In answer to my question how he had come here, the “Indianized” Anglo-American answered quietly, ‘I caught him on the Rio Grande.’”

Wow. Pablo was with the Comanche when he was eight-years-old.

Next, Haas told Mrs. Coronado that at the treaty conference, Meusebach ransomed Pablo from the Comanche Chief. I did a little digging and found corroboration of this in the Julius Dresel diary in the Sophienburg’s archive collection. The entry in the diary describes a time Dresel was staying on Meusebach’s farm at Comanche Springs:

“The next morning a small Mexican boy, Pablo Diaz, whom Meusebach had ransomed from the Comanches at a peace settlement on the San Saba (north of Llano), showed me how a brown bear on a long chain, could eat an enormous pumpkin which he held in his for paws while balancing on his hind paws. “Wackerlos” (cowardly) and “Schlinge” (Noose), the dogs, barked noisily. — April 18, 1853”

Oscar Haas continued in his letter to tell Mrs. Coronado that Meusebach had taken Pablo to Sisterdale and left him with the Dresel Family. True. Pablo is listed with the names of those in Dresel’s house in the 1850 Comal County census. Sisterdale was in Comal County until 1862; it is now in Kendall County.

Dresel’s diary entry for April 27, 1853, also confirms that Pablo was left in Sisterdale. Dresel says he had taken Pablo “into his quardianship” from Meusebach and that Pablo was put in charge of the milking and butter and cheese making at his farm.

Haas next informed Mrs. Coronado that Julia Dresel taught Pablo to read and write both German and English. I can find no written documentation for this statement. I did find that on Find a Grave it states that on the 1860 Gillespie County census, there is a Pablo or Paulo Diaz living as a servant in the William Marschall household. The Marschall and Meusebach families were joined by marriage so there is a link. I looked up the 1860 Gillespie County census and found a “Paulo” from Mexico listed in the Marschall household. It could be our Pablo, but I am not sure.

When the War Between the States broke out it 1861, Texas voted to secede from the Union. However, many of the Germans of the Texas Hill Country did not identify with the Confederate cause and did not want to fight for it. Some of the men decided to head to Mexico to stay during the war or find a way to get back north and enlist in the Union Army. Oscar Haas told Mrs. Coronado that Pablo joined the 68 young men from around the Fredericksburg-Sisterdale-Comfort area because he “thought it to be a good opportunity to return to Mexico to try to find his relatives. He owned a pony then and a saddle and a rifle, same as all the others.”

Geez…I wish I could find proof of this statement but I can’t. Oscar must have had an oral source from the time.

I do know that the group of men, including Pablo Diaz, started out for Mexico at the beginning of August 1862. On the evening of August 9th, the group set up camp on the banks of the Nueces River. A group of Confederate soldiers had been tracking the Germans and fired on them sometime that night. Twenty-eight men from the German group slipped away during the battle. Nineteen others were dead by morning. Nine more wounded Germans were summarily executed. Another nine were pursued by the Confederate soldiers to the Rio Grande and killed as well. The thirty-seven Germans killed in what became known as “The Battle of the Nueces” or “The Nueces Massacre” included Pablo Diaz. His and the bones of thirty-five others were recovered in 1865 and buried in Comfort. Their names are listed on the Treue der Union Monument, a twenty-foot-tall limestone obelisk erected over their remains.

On Find a Grave, it is also stated, “Although Mexican, he [Pablo] was considered by all to be as “German” and “Unionist” as any of the others.” This is someone’s theory, but I can’t say I don’t think it might be true. After all, young eight-year-old Pablo seems to have been treated with kindness and maybe even with some affection by the Germans who ended up caring for him. I am sure he spoke German. And after around 14 years with them, he had heard their views on everything…including slavery…and most likely agreed with his adopted friends and guardians.

I am absolutely enthralled with this young man’s story. It is one of incredible courage, adaptability and thirst for freedom. RIP Pablo.

Sources: Roemer’s Texas, Dr. Ferdinand Roemer, 1995 edition; John O. Meusebach, Irene Marschall King, 1967; Sophienburg Museum & Archives: Oscar Haas Manuscript Collection, the Dresel Family Manuscript Collection and the Nueces Massacre file.

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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 does not include political refugees from previous periods of political unrest.

There were as many as 4,000 forty-eighters who came to America. Many of the Forty-eighters were young men in their twenties and thirties willing to risk their future. Many of them came from the southwestern Germanic states, from towns like Baden, Hesse, Wurtemburg, the Palatinate, and the Rhineland. Many were highly educated professionals: journalists, soldiers, physicians, pastors, bankers, engineers, lawyers, innkeepers and merchants. And many were “free-thinkers” or even atheistic in their views.

In the book, The Forty-eighters, edited by A.E. Zucker (1950), eleven professors put together a list of several hundred of these men who fled to America. The list includes six who emigrated to Texas — and interestingly enough, five of them have ties to New Braunfels. Let’s take a look at these guys.

Eduard Degener (1809-1890) was the son of a wealthy banker in Braunschweig. He was privately tutored and studied in England. He ran in aristocratic circles even though he favored liberal, democratic ideals. In his elected government positions, he voted for proposals pushing a German republic. He was a member of the first German National Assembly at Frankfurt in 1848. When the revolution failed, Degener emigrated to Maine and in 1850 he made it to Texas. He lived near New Braunfels, and then in Sisterdale, as a gentleman farmer. Degener was a German Unionist and vocal abolitionist. Two of his sons were in the group of young men who tried to get to the North via ship from Mexico in 1862. Overtaken at the Nueces River by a force of Confederate soldiers, many of the men, including the Degeners, were killed. Eduard was put in prison in San Antonio for several months. After the war, he was a wholesale grocer in San Antonio, elected to two constitutional assemblies in Texas and also served in the Forty-first Congress for two terms. In 1865, Degener, with William Steves and William Heuermann, bought land in Comfort. There, they buried the remains of those massacred at the Nueces and put up the “Treue der Union Monument” in their honor.

Carl Daniel Adolf Douai (1819-1888) was born in Altenburg. He studied at the University of Leipzig, got his doctorate and then travelled to Russia where he became a private tutor. He also married a baroness. From 1846 to 1850, Douai was in and out of prison five times! His revolutionary writings and his experimental school made him a target. Leaving Germany in 1852, he settled in New Braunfels and founded his own school. By 1853, he had become editor of the San Antonio Zeitung in which he advocated the gradual abolishment of slavery. Public outcry against his editorials necessitated the help of the Sam Antonio Turnverein (Athletic Club) to protect his offices. He moved to Boston in 1856. He founded a kindergarten and school but after several years this closed due to his atheistic articles. Moving to New York in 1866, he opened another school and edited a socialist newspaper. Through it he became one of the first to popularize Marxist philosophy in the US. Douai wrote articles on philosophy, German grammar, world history and education, as well as short stories and a novel. He was “a brilliant and courageous writer, unafraid of offending his readers’ opinion.” He was also a musician who composed over 60 songs.

Julius Dressel (1816-1891), born in Geisenheim, Rhineland, was the son of a prosperous wine merchant. He studied history, literature and law in Heidelberg. Julius joined his father’s wine business and promoted Rhenish wines around Europe. The Dresel home welcomed guests with radical political ideologies; Julius soon joined the ranks of these revolutionaries and was present at their major meetings. At the failure of the 1848 Revolution, Julius was exiled and he emigrated to Texas where his brother Gustav was employed by the Adelsverein (The Society for the Protection of German Immigrants) as general agent. He was good friends with Lindheimer and many of the early New Braunfelsers. He bought land in Sisterdale but he first worked the New Braunfels farm of John O. Meusebach. Several years later, he moved out to the Sisterdale property. During the Civil War, his abolitionist leanings caused the Confederates to place him in prison in San Antonio. After release, Julius did business in the city until his brother Emil died in California. He became heir to the estate and moved his family to the Sonoma Valley where he took over his brother’s vineyard until his own death. Dressel wrote and published essays and poems in various journals and newspapers, many dealing with the subject of homesickness for his Vaterland.

Gustav Wilhelm Eisenlohr (1811-1881) was born in Loerrach, Baden. He studied theology in Karlsruhe, Halle and Heidelberg. He became the vicar in Emmendingen. Eisenlohr was very outspoken in his support of the 1848 Revolution. Accused of high treason and imprisoned, Gustav was given the choice of being sentenced or to leave Germany. Fleeing to Switzerland, he then emigrated to America in 1850 with his young son. He first took a pastorate in Richmond, Ohio. Eisenlohr then answered an advertisement for the pastorate of the German Protestant Church in New Braunfels. He was installed by Hermann Seele in 1851. After six years, he accepted a pastorate in Cincinnati. He edited and wrote many poems for the Protestantische Zeitlaetter (newsletter) for 20 years. It was “for the instruction and edification of thinking Christians.” Educated in Greek and Latin, this liberal theologian also translated the poems of Petrarch! Pastor Eisenlohr and his second wife returned to New Braunfels 22 years later to retire. Both he and his wife are buried in Comal Cemetery.

Oskar von Roggenbucke (1811-1883), born in Suhl, Thuringia, was a career soldier who attained the rank of major in the Prussian army. Like many other soldiers, he resigned his commission and joined the forty-eighters. A political refugee, he emigrated and came to Texas in 1854. He and his family stayed six months in New Braunfels before settling on a farm in Comfort. He was also an abolitionist. His two sons refused to become soldiers for the Confederacy. They joined the group of Germans headed for Mexico and were among those slaughtered on the Nueces River. Von Roggenbucke lived in Comfort until his death.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives: Oscar Haas Collection; Dresel Family History; The First Protestant Church Its History and Its People, O. Haas; The Forty-Eighters, A.E. Zucker; A Hundred Years of Comfort in Texas, G. E. Ransleben.

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