Caption: Shoppers at Weihnachtsmarkt 2019.

By Myra Lee Adams Goff

This week the Sophienburg Museum and Archives will present a great shopping experience to the public. It’s called Weihnachtsmarkt, or Christmas Market, at the Civic Center. It begins Friday, Nov. 19th through Sunday, the 21st.

The market offers 60 plus unique booths, plus Breakfast with Santa and a charming café called Sophie’s Café. It features freshly prepared food in a European outdoor café setting. Sophie’s Shop moves down from the Sophienburg to offer German-made Christmas ornaments and unique decorations. Many local authors are offering their books for sale.

The Sophienburg Museum and Archives is a not-for-profit organization that derives its operating funds from individual donations, memberships, and much from Weihnachtsmarkt. When you purchase at Weihnachtsmarkt, you are helping the Sophienburg keep its doors open.

The Museum displays the rich history of New Braunfels with occasional special exhibits. The present exhibition is the Civil War. A volunteer group works diligently on the collections stored in the old museum building. There is constant work involving organizing and restoring items and papers donated by individuals.

The Archives are a rather complicated collection of records. Let’s suppose you would like to find out something about your family or something about an historical event like WWI or something that happened in NB. In old journalistic terms, you can find out “who, what, where, where, when, why, and how”. Make an appointment to work with a helper.

Here is what is available to the public:

What the Genealogy Society has done for the Sophienburg records will “knock your socks off”. They have collected over 1,000 research books, have compiled burial records from the Comal Cemetery, New Braunfels Cemetery, Comal and Guadalupe County cemeteries and small family cemeteries. They compiled birth, marriage, and death records for Comal County, extracted from the CC Courthouse.

There is a large collection of obituaries and related documents put on the computer by genealogy, collected from 574 donated family history books. They compiled the census of 1850 and every 10 years thereafter to 1930. There is an index of Probate records and Commissioner’s Court minutes starting in 1866 through 1937. Many of the aforementioned records are available for sale in Sophie’s Shop. Genealogy has maintained the Herald-Zeitung on microfiche up to the present.

Recently First Protestant Church allowed the Sophienburg to copy their original German records from 1845 and their translation in English. There are other church histories as well, plus directories, telephone books, and high school annuals.

Now this is a big one: There are over a million photographs in the Sophienburg collection. An attendant can enter a name or event on the computer and tell you if a photograph is available. For a small fee, you can have the photograph copied. Over 200 maps, going back to 1836 are in the collection.

The Reflections program began in 1976 for the purpose of interviewing NB citizens about what they remember about the past. These programs are played on the local radio station. A list of people interviewed is available and a list of subjects is being compiled. About 1,100 interviews have been recorded and you may listen to them at the Archives or purchase a particular interview in CD form. This is an ongoing program and anyone interested in participating is welcome.

For serious historic research, there are the 65 Prince Solms Archives in German, with a few numbers translated into English. There are two volunteers available to do German translations, including the elaborate German Fraktur.

To bring us up in the technological world, the Sophienburg has a web site that you can log in at home. It’s chock full of information about what’s going on with the organization. In addition the column that I write for the Sophienburg that appears in the Herald-Zeitung every other Sunday is on the web.

The Sophienburg asks for your support in keeping this institution up to date by supporting Weihnachtsmarkt. See the website for details.