Albert, Texas

Albert is on Williams Creek sixteen miles southeast of Fredericksburg and one mile west of the Blanco county line in southeastern Gillespie County.  The earliest known settlers in the area were George Cauley, Ben White, Sr., and a man named Jacobs.  The town dates from 1877, when Fritz Wilke, George Maenius, and John Petri moved from Fredericksburg seeking new grazing lands for their cattle.  Wilke, a blacksmith, bought his land from a man named Elmeier, who was murdered in a robbery several years later.  The town was originally called Martinsburg after an early settler and was a stop of the Fredericksburg-Blanco stage route.  The Martinsburg post office operated from 1877 to 1886, when mail was routed through nearby Hye in Blanco County.  In 1892, however, Martinsburg got a new post office and a new name, thanks to Albert Luckenbach, who sold his store in Luckenbach, moved to Martinsburg, and opened a new post office, which he registered as Albert.  The first local school was established in 1891, and in 1897 postmaster Otto Schumann opened the town's first store.  The Albert Echo, a singing society, was founded the following year.  In 1900 a new school building was erected; there the young Lyndon Baines Johnson was enrolled for a year.  A local Lutheran mission was established in 1902 and eventually grew into what was often called the Lutheran Church of Stonewall, which Johnson attended.  Albert had fifty residents in 1925, four in 1964, and twenty-five in 1972.  By 1985 the store had been torn down, the school was a community club, and the town's dance hall was partitioned and used for storage; Albert still had twenty-five residents and two businesses.  The reported population in 1990 and again in 2000 was twenty-five.

[Information taken from Kathleen Bauer, "Settlement and Progress of the Albert Community,: Junior Historian, September 1968; written by martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Bankersmith, Texas

Bankersmith, thirteen miles north northeast of Comfort in northwestern Kendall County, was established in 1913, when the San Antonio, Fredericksburg and Northern Railroad laid its track between Fredericksburg and Comfort.  The community was named for Temple Doswell Smith, president of the first bank to be established in Fredericksburg and one of the primary donors for the railroad construction.  Just south of the community was the only railroad tunnel in the state.  A local post office was established in September 1914 with Rudolph Habenicht as postmaster.  The office was sometimes listed as being in Gillespie County, depending on where the postmaster lived.  At its peak in the 1920s Bankersmith had a store, a dance hall, a lumberyard, and about fifty residents.  the population fell to ten by 1930, and the railroad abandoned its track in 1935.  A business and few scattered houses marked the community on county highway maps in the 1940s, but the post office had already been discontinued.  A population of twenty was reported from 1949 through 1961.  The ruins of the old railroad tunnel were still visible in the 1980s. [This tunnel is now operated as a bat viewing site]

[Information taken from Kendall County Historical Commission, A History of Kendall County, Texas (Dallas: Taylor, 1984); written by Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Cain City, Texas

Cain City, four miles southeast of Fredericksburg in southern Gillespie County, was founded by J. C. Stinson, a Kansas farmer who move to San Antonio and bought 324 acres in Gillespie County in 1913.  He and a surveyor named A. J. Green laid out streets, lots, and parks in anticipation of the arrival of the Fredericksburg and Northern Railway, which was built through Gillespie County in 1913.  Cain City was named after San Antonio businessman Charlie Cain, and important fund-raiser for the railroad construction.  A depot was built near the railroad tracks, and the town grew into an important shipping center for agricultural products from the surrounding rural area.  In 1914 Cain City got a water system, and unpaved road to nearby Luckenbach, and two early businesses, the Farmers' Produce Company warehouse, built by Tom Schmidt, and Alfred Jung's lumberyard.  Also in 1914 Stinson petitioned the federal government for a post office, which opened the following year with railroad agent Hugo Pahl as postmaster.  

In 1915 Mrs. Fletcher Hamilton of Illinois opened the Mountain Home Hotel, which she later sold to Stinson.  That year also brought Cain City a telephone exchange, two general stores, owned by Alfred Pahl and by A. M. and Marion Cox and Luther Price, and a schoolhouse, with Katie Striegler as teacher, which had a peak enrollment of thirty students.  In 1917 the Cain City Bank was founded with Stinson as president, and in 1919 Gus Bausch opened a cotton gin.  In the 1920s, however, Cain City's prosperity began to diminish.  In 1922 Stinson sold the hotel and moved back to San Antonio, and the Cain City Bank folded shortly thereafter.  Cain City's population reached an estimated high of seventy-five in 1925.  In 1927 Edgar Tatsch and Theodore Keller opened a dance hall.  Fifteen years later Mrs. Will Bird, who had bought the Mountain Home Hotel from Stinson, razed the hotel.  The railroad ceased operation on October 1, 1944.  By 1949 the estimated population had sunk to twenty-five, and by the mid-1960s the community was little more than a ghost town.  The population was estimated at fifteen in 1964.

[Information taken from Eileen Schneider, "Cain City-Ghost Town," Junior Historian, November 1964; written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Cave Creek, Texas

Cave Creek is a small rural community located on Farm Road 1631 about ten miles northeast of Fredericksburg in eastern Gillespie County.  Settlement in the area of a stream called Cave Creek began in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  Many residents were German farmers.  St. Paul Lutheran Cemetery, also known as Cave Creek Cemetery, contains marked graves that date to 1884.  Highway maps in the 1930s showed the cemetery, a church, and dwellings.  Cave Creek and the cemetery were still identified on highway maps in 2000, but no population estimates were available.

[Information taken from: St. Paul Lutheran Cemetery website (http://rootsweb.com/~txgilles/cave.htm).; written by Laurie E. Jasinski; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Cherry Spring, Texas

Cherry Spring is on Cherry Spring Creek a half mile south of the Mason county line and 16 1/2 miles northwest of Fredericksburg in northern Gillespie County.  The site was originally settled by Dietrich Rode and William Kothe, who left Fredericksburg in search of land in 1852.  According to some sources Rode hade built a small Lutheran church at Cherry Spring in 1849 with lumber shipped from Austin.  Later settlers included William Marschall, Conrad Ahrens, Ludwig Spaeth, and Adam Schneider.  Cherry Spring was on the route from San Antonio to El Paso and thus enjoyed a moderate prosperity as a commercial center.  A number of the early settlers were sheep ranchers.  The Cherry Spring post office was established in 1858, and by 1860 the town had a population of 202, 142 of whom had German surnames.  In 1897 John O. Meusebach was buried at Cherry Spring.  The community's post office closed in 1912.  Its population was estimated at forty in 1933 but by 1964 had fallen to nine.  In the late 1960s, however, Cherry Spring grew, reaching a reported population of seventy-five by 1970.  Its population was still seventy-five in 2000.

[Information taken from Rudolph L. Biesele, The History of the German Settlements in Texas, 1831-1861 (Austin: Von Boeckmann-J0ones, 1930; rpt. 1964). Sara Kay Curtin, A History of Gillespie County, Texas, 1846-1900 (M. A. thesis, University of Texas, 1943). Joe Tatum, "History of the Gillespie County Livestock Industry," Southwestern Sheep and Goat Raiser, July 1946; written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Crabapple, Texas

Crabapple is on Crabapple Creek about 10 1/2 miles north of Fredericksburg in northern Gillespie County.  The area was originally settled sometime in the mid-1800s by Friedrich Wellgehausen, Jacob Land, Adam Pehl, Mathias Schmidt, Nicolas Rusche, James Riley, Heinrich Keese, and Jacob and Adam Fries.  Most of these early settlers were of German origin.  A school had been established in Crabapple by 1867, and during the 1880s a Lutheran congregation was founded.  In 1897 St. John's Lutheran Church was built there.  The Crabapple post office operated from 1894 to 1910.  Maps dating from the 1960s showed a school, a church, and several cemeteries at Crabapple.  No population was reported for the community in 2000.  

[Information taken from Don Hampton Biggers, German Pioneers in Texas (Fredericksburg, Texas: Fredericksburg Publishing, 1925). Ella Amanda Gold, The History of Education in Gillespie County (M.A. Thesis, University of Texas, 1945); written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Doss, Texas

Doss is on Mormon Creek nineteen miles northwest of Fredericksburg in northwestern Gillespie County.  It was founded in 1849 by brothers John E. and Thomas C. Doss, who built a gristmill and distillery on Threadgill Creek in 1856 and later added a dam and sawmill.  they sold the dam in 1864 to August Steiness, who tore down the distillery and expanded the gristmill's capabilities.  A room he added onto the house served for many years as a mail delivery station for the community.  After Steiness's death in 1866, his widow sold the mill to William F. Lange, a German immigrant, who built a larger dam.  This dam, which was destroyed by a flood, was rebuilt between 1872 and 1875 by stonemason Philip Buchmeyer, and the mill came to be known as Lange's Mill.  The Doss school was founded in 1884.  A post office called Lange was opened in F. W. Lange's store in 1898, but in 1907 the name was changed to Doss, and the office was moved to what is now the Doss Townsite, two miles south of the mill.  The population of Doss was estimated at fifty in 1925, sixty in 1933, twenty-two in 1964, and seventy-five from 1972-2000.  In the 1980s Lange's Mill, two miles north of Doss on Farm Road 783, still stood, along with the dam.  In 1989 Doss was still a predominantly German community and included Lutheran and Baptist churches, a general store, a fire station, and a two-room schoolhouse, the last unconsolidated rural school in Gillespie County and one of only a few such schools remaining in the state.  The school in 1989 served twenty-three children in eight grades.

[Austin American-Statesman, January 29, 1989;  Fredericksburg Radio-Post, August 31, 1934; Written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Eckert, Texas

Eckert is 11 1/2 miles northeast of Fredericksburg in northeastern Gillespie County.  It was originally called Nebo, presumably after nearby Mount Nebo, and was founded in 1875 when eight Anglo-American families settled there and built a log church called Mount Zion.  The town was officially renamed when local farmer and merchant Wilhelm Rudolph Eckert opened a post office in 1903.  The population was estimated at 100 in 1925 but fell to fifteen in 1933 and to seven in 1964.

[Information taken from Gillespie County Historical Society, Pioneers in God's Hills (2 vols., Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1960, 1974); written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Fredericksburg, Texas

Fredericksburg, the county seat of Gillespie county, is seventy miles west of Austin in the central part of the county.  the town was one of a projected series of German settlements from the Texas coast to the land north of the Llano River, originally the ultimate destination of the German immigrants sent to Texas by the Adelsverein.  In August 1845 John O. Meusebach left new Braunfels with a surveying party to select a site for a second settlement en route to the Fisher-Miller Land Grant.  He eventually chose a tract of land sixty miles northwest to New Braunfels, where two streams met four miles above the Pedernales River; the streams were later named Barons Creek, in Meusebach's honor, and Town Creek.  Meusebach was impressed by the abundance of water, stone, and timber and upon his return to New Braunfels arranged to buy 10,000 acres on credit.  the first wagon train of 120 settlers arrived from New Braunfels on May 8, 1846, after a sixteen-day journey, accompanied by an eight-man military escort provided by the Adelsverein.  Surveyor Hermann Wilke laid out the town, which Meusebach named Fredericksburg after Prince Frederick of Prussia, an influential member of the Adelsverein.  Each settler received one town lot and ten acres of farmland nearby.  The town was laid out like the German villages along the Rhine, from which many of the colonists had come, with one long, wide main street roughly paralleling Town Creek.  The earliest houses in Fredericksburg were built simply, of post oak logs stuck upright in the ground.  These were soon replaced by Fachwerk houses, built of upright timbers with the spaces between filled with rocks and then plastered or whitewashed over.

The colonists planted corn, built storehouses to protect their provisions and trade goods, and prepared for the arrival of more immigrant trains, which came throughout the summer.  Within two years Fredericksburg had grown into a thriving town of almost 1,000, despite an epidemic that spread from Indianola and New Braunfels and killed between 100 and 150 residents in the summer and fall of 1846.  The first two years also saw the opening of a wagon road between Fredericksburg and Austin; the signing of the Meusebach-Comanche Treaty, which effectively eliminated the threat of Indian attack; the opening of the first privately owned store, by J. L. Ransleben; the construction of the Vereins-Kirche, which served for fifty years as a church, school, fortress, and meeting hall; the formal organization of Gillespie County by the Texas legislature, which made Fredericksburg the county seat; the founding of Zodiac, a nearby settlement, by a group of Mormons under Lyman Wight; the construction of the Nimitz Hotel'; and the establishment by the United States Army of Fort Martin Scott, which became an important market for the merchants and laborers of Fredericksburg, two miles east of town.  After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1849, Fredericksburg also benefited from its situation as the last town before El Paso on the Emigrant or Upper E. Paso Road.

Religion played an important part in the lives of the German settlers of Gillespie County.  Devout farmers drove as much as twenty miles into town for religious services and built Fredericksburg's characteristic Sunday houses for use on weekends and religious holidays.  Though most of the original colonists were members of the Evangelical Protestant Church, there were also Lutherans, Methodists, and Catholics.  Initially, all communions held services in the Vereins-Kirche, but in 1848 the Catholics built their own church, which was supplanted in 1860 by the Marienkirche (old St. Mary's Church).  Also in 1848 the German missionary Father Menzel erected a large wooden cross on Cross Mountain just north of Fredericksburg.  The Methodists withdrew from the Vereins-Kirche around the same time, and another group left the Evangelical Protestants in 1852 and formed Zion's Evangelical Lutheran Church under Rev. Philip F. Zizelman.  Their church building, completed the following year, was the first Lutheran church in the Hill Country.

The German settlers were also passionate believers in the importance of education.  The first school in Fredericksburg was established under Johann Leyendecker, in whose home Catholic services were held immediately after the town's founding.  Leyendecker was succeeded as teacher a year later by Jacob Brodbeck, who was in turn succeeded by Rev. Gottlieb Burchard Dangers.  In 1852 Heinrich Ochs replaced Dangers; Ochs remained an important figure in the community until his death in 1897. The first public school, with August Siemering as teacher, and the first official Catholic school in Fredericksburg were established in 1856.

Fredericksburg, like many of the German communities in south central Texas, generally supported the Union in the Civil War.  Still, despite widespread opposition to slavery and secession on philosophical grounds, a number of Fredericksburg residents supported the Confederacy.  Charles H. Nimitz organized the Gillespie Rifles for the Confederate Army and was later appointed enrolling officer for the frontier district.  The Fredericksburg Southern Aid Society subscribed more than $5,000 in food and clothing for confederate soldiers in 1861.  In general, however, the people of Fredericksburg and Gillespie County suffered under Confederate martial law, imposed in 1862, and from the depredations of such outlaws as James P. Waldrip.  Waldrip, the leader of a notorious gang, was shot by an unknown assassin beneath a live oak tree outside the Nimitz Hotel in 1867.

The bitter experience of the Civil War strengthened the traditional German determination not to get involved in state and national affairs.  The Germans tried to maintain their independence by steadfastly refusing to learn or use English.  The first newspaper in the county was the German-language Fredericksburg Wochenblatt, established in 1877, and a teamster who drove freight from Austin to Fredericksburg in the 1880s claimed that the local sheriff, who spoke German and broken English, was the only person in Fredericksburg who could act as an interpreter for him.  The most authoritative history of early Fredericksburg was Fest-Ausgabe zum fuenfzig-jaehrigen Jubilaeum der deutschen Kolonie Friedrichsburg, written by Robert G. Penniger for the town's fiftieth-anniversary celebration in 1896.  Not until after 1900 were the first purely English-speaking teachers employed in Fredericksburg's public schools.

As the town grew in size and importance, however, its self-imposed isolation was beginning to break down.  the first Gillespie County Fair was held in 1881 at Fort Martin Scott and moved to Fredericksburg in 1889.  The fair, celebrated as the first in Texas, soon attracted relatively large numbers of visitors to Fredericksburg.  The town got its first electric-light company in 1897 and its first ice factory in 1907; by 1904 the estimated population had risen to 1,632.  Another factor in Fredericksburg's decreasing insularity was the construction of the San Antonio, Fredericksburg and Northern in 1917 and remained in operation until July 25, 1942, when it died, a victim of improved roads and automobiles.

By World War I a number of residents of Fredericksburg considered Penniger's editorial newspaper too pro-German.  [Beginning January, 1916 the newspaper was printed in English rather than German.] Another symbol of change was the spring 1928 vote to incorporate, a move the people of Fredericksburg had resisted for eighty-two years because they preferred to use the county as the unit of local government: why, they reasoned, pay two sets of public officials when one would suffice?  At the time of the vote Fredericksburg was the largest unincorporated town in the United States, and the increasing size and complexity of both the town and the county made a change necessary.  The 1930 United States census, the first in which Fredericksburg was included, gave the town's population as 2,416.  Thereafter the population grew slowly but steadily, reaching 3,544 in 1940, 3,847 in 1950, 4,629 in 1960, 5,326 in 1970, and 6,412 in 1980.  As Fredericksburg grew it became the principal manufacturing center of Gillespie County.  At various times it has had a furniture factory, a cement plant, a poultry-dressing plant, granite and limestone quarries, a mattress factory, a peanut-oil plant, a sewing factory, a metal and iron works, and a tannery.  As early as 1930, however, the town was also becoming known as a resort center, with a tourist camp and hunting and fishing opportunities; a significant part of the town's economy continues to depend upon its ability to attract the tourist trade.  One of the organizations that has helped make Fredericksburg an important tourist center is the Gillespie County Historical Society, founded in 1934 to preserve local history and traditions.  Its immediate goal was the completion, with the help of the Civil Works Administration, of a replica of the Vereins-Kirche, which had been torn down in 1897.  When it was completed in 1936 for the Texas Centennial celebration, the structure became the home of the Pioneer Museum.  After the museum was moved in 1955 the new Vereins-Kirche became the home of the Gillespie County archives.  Another local structure of some historical significance is the Admiral Nimitz Center in the old Nimitz Hotel, commemorating native son Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, a hero of World War II.

In the 1980s Fredericksburg had thirty-eight restaurants, thirteen motels, a resort farm, a campground, three art galleries, and twenty antique stores.  In addition, the town was the site of a number of annual events, many of which recall Fredericksburg's German pioneer past, which attracted visitors from throughout the state.  Among these events were the Wild Game Dinner (for men only) in March and the Damenfest (for women only) in October, both of which benefit the Fredericksburg Heritage Foundation; the Easter Fires Pageant; the Founders Day celebration, on the Saturday nearest May 8, which benefits the Gillespie County Historical Society; A Night in Old Fredericksburg, in July; Oktoberfest; and the Kristkindle Market and Candlelight Homes Tour, both in December.  The Gillespie County Fair is held in Fredericksburg on the third weekend in August; the fairground are also the site of racing meets on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July and hunter-jumper horse show in June.  In 1990 the population of 6,934, and in 2000 the community had 8,911 inhabitants and 910 businesses.

[Information taken from: Don Hampton Biggers, German Pioneers in Texas (Fredericksburg, Texas: Fredericksburg Publishing, 1925), Sara Kay Curtis, A History of Gillespie County, Texas, 1846-1900 (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1943), Gillespie County Historical Society, Pioneers in God's Hills (2 vols., Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1960, 1974), Ella Amanda Gold, The History of Education in Gillespie County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1945), Sarah Sam Gray, The German-American Community of Fredericksburg, Texas and its Assimilation (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1929), Richard Zelade, Hill Country (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1983); written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Grapetown, Texas

Grapetown is on South Grape Creek 9 1/2 miles south of Fredericksburg in southern Gillespie County.  The first landholder was John Hemphill, who received the deed to a site on the Fredericksburg-San Antonio road in 1848.  Eight other settlers, including several freight drivers who carried produce from Fredericksburg to San Antonio and thence to Indianola, received deeds to land in the area in 1854.  In 1860 Friedrich Wilhelm Doebbler opened Grapetown's first business establishment, a general store and hostelry called Doebbler's Inn.  Grapetown became a ranching center of some importance; many local ranchers sold their cattle to Charles Schreiner of Kerrville.  Most of the people of Grapetown sided with the Union during the Civil War, and many paid the price for their loyalty.  Two local men, August Hoffman and Heinrich Rausch, survived the battle of the Nueces and eventually returned to Grapetown, where they spent the duration of the conflict hiding in the hills from the Confederate patrols.  The first school in Grapetown was held in 1859 in Doebbler's home; the teacher was a Scot named Louis Hartwig.  Grapetown Line School opened in 1882; local children had previously attended school in Fredericksburg.  About 1870 a nine-to-ten-month school was opened in Grapetown; it was moved several times.  Parents paid the teacher.  In 1880 a post office was established in Doebbler's Inn; the office closed three years later.  A local singing club and a shooting club were combined in 1887, and Grapetown was the site of the first annual Gillespie County Schuetzenfest (shooting festival), at which 140 kegs of beer were consumed in four days.

In 1913 the Fredericksburg and Northern Railway built through the Grapetown area, and the neighboring community of Bankersmith was founded.  Also around this time the Mountain Townsite Company of San Antonio bought a tract of land on Doebbler's Hill and planned a town to be called Mount Alamo.  Ten years later, however, the company was dissolved and the land restored to its former owner, Otto Cowan.  Cowan, the grandson of Friedrich Doebbler, had closed Doebbler's Inn in 1915.  In 1932 State Highway 87 was rerouted through Comfort, and Grapetown suffered a decline in trade.  The last Grapetown school was consolidated with the Rocky Hill School in 1944.  From 1967 to 1978 the area school had one teacher and about twenty pupils.  The old schoolhouse was purchased by the community and in 1989 was still being used as a Community Club.  The estimated population of Grapetown, 145 in 1900, had dropped to seventy by 1965.  As late as 1989, however, the Grapetown shooting club was still active in the Gillespie County Schuetzen Bund (shooting association).  Area businesses in 1989 included a limestone quarry.  The community had seventy-one residents, and area ranches housed a number of weekenders.

[Information taken from the Gillespie County Historical Society, Pioneers in God's Hills (2 vols., Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1960, 1974). Cynthia Hohenberger, "The Grapetown Legacy," Junior Historian, September 1965; written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Gold, Texas

Gold, on North Grape Creek 13.5 miles northeast of Fredericksburg in eastern Gillespie County, was founded in 1869 by the families of two German brothers, Jacob and Peter Gold, who had died of cholera soon after their arrival in Texas in 1852.  Their widows and six sons owned most of the community's land, the store, and the cotton gin.  therefore, despite the presence of other early settlers such as Heinrich Herbert, Gottfried Ottmers, Conrad Bock, Peter Herber, Heinrich Eckhardt, and Peter Fahrenhorst, the town became known unofficially as Rheingold, later shortened to Gold.  The town's first school, taught by August Schuchard, was built around 1873.  By 1889, when a new school building was erected, enrollment was around forty.  The Gold post office opened in 1908.  The community had a dance hall, a gin, a blacksmith shop, a filling station, and a grocery.  Between 1926 and 1929 the estimated population rose from fifteen to 100, but in the 1930s the town started to decline.  The post office closed in 1931, and by 1933 the population had fallen to ten.  By 1945 a few small farmers made up the entire population of Gold.  In 1990 the Rheingold school building was still standing and was used as a community center.  Gold still appeared on county maps in 2000.  No population estimates were available. 

[Information taken from Gillespie County Historical Society, Pioneers in God's Hills (2 vols., Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1960, 1974). Ella Amanda Gold, The history of Education in Gillespie County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 19450; written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Harper, Texas

Harper is on U.S. Highway 290 twenty-three miles west of Fredericksburg in far western Gillespie County.  It is in the heart of the Hill Country and has an ideal climate.  The site was first settled by the Matthew Taylor and Eli McDonald families in 1863.  A historical marker shows the site of the McDonald massacre of August 1864, in which two members of the McDonald family were killed by Kiowa Indians, a young mother and four children were captured, and the elderly Aunt Hannah escaped.  The first post office was established in 1883 by George Franklin Harper, for whom the town was named.  Harper celebrated its centennial in 1963, and more than 15,000 visitors attended the festivities.  In 1985 the town served a large ranching area and had six churches, a fire department and ambulance service, a public school, and growing residential subdivisions.  As of 1982 Harper had the oldest bank still operating in Gillespie County.  The population was 383 in 1982 and 1990.  By 2000, however it had grown to 1,006.

[Information taken from Kathleen E. and Clifton R. St. Clair, eds., Little Towns of Texas (Jacksonville, Texas: Jayroe Graphic Arts, 1982); written by Ola Mae Hopf; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Hye, Texas

Hye is on U.S. Highway 290 near the Gillespie county line ten miles west of Johnson City in western Blanco County.  Whites settled the area in 1860 when a number of farming and ranching families moved to Rocky Creek, three miles east of the site of present Hye.  Rocky, as this area of settlement came to be called, continued to grow steadily throughout the 1860s and 1870s with the influx of both German and Anglo settlers.  In 1880 Hiram G. (Hye) Brown, for whom the community was later named, built a small store and house south of the Pedernales River on the Austin-Fredericksburg road at the location of present Hye.  Brown had come with his parents to Rocky eight years earlier.  In 1886 he established a post office at Hye, which he operated as part of his general store.  After the post office came in, other businesses were begun in the area, including a gristmill and a blacksmith shop.  In 1906 a cotton gin was erected at Hye, and it continued to operate until 1945.  In 1904 Brown built a new structure to house the post office and his business on the south side of the road just opposite its old location.  This building, the Hye General Store and Post Office, which in 1966 was entered in the state archives as a Recorded Texas Historical Landmark, still stands today and continues to serve its original function.  

Hye gained particular attention in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson used the front porch of the post office as the setting for his appointment of Lawrence F. O'Brien as United States Postmaster General.  Johnson, whose boyhood is nearby, also claimed to have mailed his first letter at the age of four from the Hye post office.  The population of Hye was estimated at 200 during the 1920s and 1930s.  It dropped to fifty during World War II and then climbed gradually from ninety in 1947 to a postwar high of 140 in 1968.  From 1970 to 2000 it was estimated at 105. [Before 1858 this area was a part of Gillespie County]

[Information taken from Dallas News, November 4, 1965.  John Moursund, Blanco County Families for One Hundred Years (Austin, 1958).  John Moursund, Blanco County History (Burnet, Texas: Nortex, 1979); written by Richard Bruhn; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Lange's Mill, Texas

Lange's Mill is on Threadgill Creek just off Farm Road 783 two miles north of Doss in northwestern Gillespie county.  The mill itself was established in 1849 by the Doss brothers, but it was later renamed for William F. Lange, who ran the mill from 1859 to 1878.  In 1880 the community that grew up around Lange's Mill received its mail from Cherry Spring.  A post office called Lange was established at the community in 1898, with Julius Lange as postmaster.  In 1914 the Lange's Mill community comprised some 150 residents, a Baptist and a Lutheran church, and a general store.  The local post office was discontinued in 1917, and mail for the community was sent to Doss.  A historical marker was placed at the mill in 1936.  In the early 1990s the mill remained in the Lange family and was still standing, though it had been closed to prevent vandalism.

[Information taken from Marker Files, Texas Historical Commission, Austin; Written by Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Loyal Valley, Texas

Loyal Valley is an unincorporated farming and ranching community, established in 1858 six miles north of Cherry Spring in the southeastern corner of Mason County.  The community is located near Cold Spring Creek, which runs east for 7 1/2 miles to its mouth on Marschall Creek in Llano County, just west of Loyal Valley.  The community is located on the old Pinta Trail.  Current population is 50. Elevation 1,522 feet.

Loyal Valley was settled in 1858 by German immigrants from Fredericksburg, including Henry and Christian Keyser, John Kidd, and a Mr. Gertsdorff.  It was also a stagecoach stop on the route between San Antonio and the western forts.  The community received a post office in 1868, and Solomon Wright was the first postmaster.

John O. Meusebach moved to Loyal Valley after the New Braunfels tornado of September 12, 1869 destroyed his home there.  According to Meusebach's granddaughter Irene Marschall King, he named the area for his personal loyalty to the Union that he had maintained during the Civil War.  He operated a general store and stage stop.  Meusebach was appointed justice of the peace, notary public and served as the community's second postmaster in 1873.  His daughter Lucy Meusebach Marschall was postmaster in January 1887, and his wife Agnes became postmaster in August 1887.  Meusebach brokered the Meusebach-Comanche Treaty in 1847, making area settlers safe from Comanche raids.  However, Kiowa, and Apache depredations were still committed against the settlers.  During the 1870s, settlers from neighboring communities relocated to Loyal Valley for safety.

The most famous white captive of the area was Herman Lehmann, son of Augusta and Moritz Lehmann.  Philip Buchmeyer (or Buchmeier) was the second husband of the widowed Augusta Lehmann, and stepfather to her sons Herman and Willie.  The Buchmeyers ran a hotel and saloon, which later was owned by Charlie Metcalf.  Philip Buchmeyer built a one-room stone structure school-church, which was still standing as of 1980.

In 1875, the Mason County Hoo Doo War erupted over cattle rustling and those who took the law into their own hands.  Armed bands raided settlements spreading fear and unrest.  John O. Meusebach was shot in the leg during a raid of his store.  In the midst of the war, Loyal Valley home owner Tim Williamson was murdered by a dozen masked vigilantes who accused him of cattle theft.  Williamson's adopted son Texas Ranger Scott Cooley sought revenge.  Cooley and his desperadoes, which included Johnny Ringo, created a reign of terror over the area.  It was during this episode that Ringo committed his first murder, that of James Cheyney.  [Loyal Valley was located in Gillespie County prior to 1858.]

[Adapted from Wikipedia Article; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Luckenbach, Texas

Luckenbach is a scenic community in southeastern Gillespie County with strong musical associations.  the site was settled in the late 1840s and early 1850s by German farmers, among them the brothers Jacob Luckenbach and August Luckenbach, Jacob was a veteran of the Texas Revolution.  the pleasant setting is a mixture of caliche hills and bottomlands on Grape Creek, a tributary of the Pedernales River.  The first post office opened in 1854 under the name of South Grape Creek.  Mrs. Albert Luckenbach, nee Minnie Engel, established a store and saloon.  A dance hall, a cotton gin, and a blacksmith shop were in existence by the late 1800s.  A number of family cemeteries and a Catholic cemetery were also established.  The growing population supported a primary school and a Methodist church.  Residents in addition to Methodists included in roughly equal numbers, Lutherans and Catholics.  One local schoolmaster, Jacob F. Brodbeck, designed and tested an airplane in this community, but a major demonstration flight in 1865 terminated in a crash.  Sometime in the later 1800s the post office closed.  When it reopened in 1886, August Engel served as postmaster and renamed the town Luckenbach.  William Engel became the next postmaster and opened the general store, which remains today in its original building.  In 1896 the population was 150.  It increased to a high of 492 in 1904 but declined dramatically in the first half of the twentieth century.  From the 1920s to the 1950s Luckenbach had a population of twenty.  The dance hall was rebuilt by the early 1930s, and the new structure included a maple dance floor.  During dances, William's wife, Anna Schupp Engel, often served homemade dishes on her own china plates.  When William died in 1935, his sons assumed control of the family businesses, including the saloon and dance hall.  One son, Benno Engel, served as the new postmaster.  The town's population was sixty in 1960 but shrank during the following decades to twenty-five.  By 1967 the seven-grade school was consolidated with the Fredericksburg schools.  

In 1971 Benno Engel sold Luckenbach to John Russell (Hondo) Crouch, from nearby Comfort.  Kathy Morgan and Guich Koock also bought into the town as Crouch's partners.  Styling himself the "mayor" and "Clown Prince of Luckenbach," Crouch, a former swimming champion, actor, and columnist, declared Luckenbach "a free state...of mind" and successfully turned the small community into a foil of the nearby "Texas White House"--Lyndon Johnson's place down the Pedernales at the LBJ Ranch.  In 1973 singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker recorded his best-selling album Viva Terlingua in Luckenbach.  Frequent festivals--including an annual Mud Daubers' Day, an annual Hug-in, a women's chili cook-off, the Luckenbach Great World's Fair, and the Non-Buy Centennial Celebration (a take-off from the Republic of Texas Bicentennial in 1986), to which the Prince of Wales and Elizabeth Taylor were invited--brought tens of thousands of people to the pastoral setting.  Popularized in regional culture as the place where "Everybody is Somebody," Luckenbach achieved legendary proportions in 1977, the year after Hondo's death, when the Waylon Jennings hit song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)" became a national favorite.  The town attracted both professional and amateur musicians who enjoyed the laid-back, historic atmosphere.  State historical markers for the Luckenbach school and town of Luckenbach were erected in 1982 and 1986, respectively.  At the beginning of the new millennium the Texas Almanac gave the population of Luckenbach as twenty-five, even though the marker for tourists at the entrance to "old" Luckenbach gave the population as three.  A Luckenbach Club continued to meet seasonally at the old school to maintain the grounds and to support what remained of a sense of community.  Luckenbach was the site of Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic from 1995 through 1999.  In December 2002 Texas Monthly listed the town in the "Top 25 Unusual Treasures of Texas."  the dance hall continued to be a popular gathering place for area and visiting musicians.  Although most road signs directing travelers to Luckenbach have been stolen as souvenirs, the determined visitor still can find the historic hamlet just a few miles east of Fredericksburg, on Farm Road 1376 south of U.S. 290.

[Information taken from Don Hampton Biggers, German Pioneers in Texas (Fredericksburg: Fredericksburg Publishing, 1925). Gillespie county Historical Society, Pioneers in God's Hills (2 vols., Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1960, 1974). Annie Engel Knape, The Story of Luckenbach, Texas (MS, Sophienburg Archives, New Braunfels). Joe Nick Patoski, "Lookin' Back, TX," Texas Monthly, December 1990. Becky Crouch Patterson, Hondo, My Father (Austin: Shoal Creek, 19790.  Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, Richard Zelade, Hill Country: Completely Updated 4th Edition (Houston: Gulf Publishing Company, 1997).  Written by Glen E. Lich and Brandy Schnautz; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Morris Ranch, Texas

Morris Ranch is 8 1/2 miles southwest of Fredericksburg in southern Gillespie County.  The town bears the name of the Morris Ranch, which was started in 1856 when a noted horse breeder named Francis Morris bought 23,000 acres in the area.  In 1884 Morris employed his nephew to establish a center for raising and training horses, and in 1886 John a. Morris inherited the property from his father and continued with the work.  By the late 1880s the ranch headquarters had become the center of a community with a complex devoted to animal husbandry, a hotel, a cotton gin, and a roller mill for flour and horse feed.  Just outside of town were a racetrack and living quarters for young men training to become jockeys, as well as the Morris home.  A stone schoolhouse that doubles as a church was erected, and the Morris Ranch post office opened in 1893.  By the 1890s various states had enacted laws curtailing horse racing, and this affected the market for thoroughbred stock.  The Morris family closed down their operation in Texas in 1902, selling their remaining horses and breaking up the ranch into smaller farms.  In 1925 the town's population was estimated at seventy-five, and in 1945 the town still had a cotton gin, a general store, a drugstore, a flour mill, a church and a school.  The post office closed in 1954, and the store shut down soon afterward.  By 1964 the estimated population had fallen to nine, and by 1968 no population was listed in the Texas Almanac.  A number of the original buildings were still standing as of the 1980s.

[Information taken from T. Lindsay Baker, Ghost Towns of Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986); written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Rocky Hill, Texas

Rocky Hill, originally known as Zodiac, was on the Pedernales River four miles southeast of Fredericksburg in Southern Gillespie County.  Zodiac was founded in 1847 by a group of 200 Mormons under Lyman Wight, who had sought and received John O. Meusebach's permission to settle near Fredericksburg.  The Mormons quickly built the first gristmill and sawmill in Gillespie County and supplied the Germans with seeds, flour, and lumber; they also helped build Fort Martin Scott in 1848.  The 1850 Census showed Zodiac with a population of 161.  The Mormons left Gillespie County after a flood destroyed their mills in 1853 but retained ownership of a one-acre cemetery in Zodiac, at which Wight was later buried. Shortly after the Mormons departed, a group of English, German, and Danish families moved in.  Before and during the Civil War the area was the site of the only Gillespie County cotton plantation to use slave labor; descendants of the slaves still owned land there as late as 1947.  The town was renamed Rocky Hill after the local school, built in 1885.

[Information taken from Gillespie County Historical Society, Pioneers in God's Hills (2 vols., Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1960, 1974) and H. B. Lewis, "History of the Mormon Colony," Frontier Times, July 1936; written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Sandy, Texas

Sandy is at the junction of Farm roads 1320 and 1323, seven miles northwest of Johnson City in northwestern Blanco County.  In the mid-nineteenth century settlers moved to Sandy from the Deep South, drawn to the area by the abundant water and fertile, sandy soil.  In spite of frequent raids by Indians, a Sandy post office was established nearby by the early 1880s.  Each settlement had its own one-room school, but by 1925 all had merged into one at Sandy, and two teachers were hired to work there.  This school was later consolidated with the schools at Johnson City.  According to estimates, the population in Sandy fluctuated after 1925 but never rose above thirty.  In the 1980s the post office there served only twenty-five residents, most of whom were involved in the turkey industry.  Through 2000 the population was still reported at twenty-five.  [Before 1858 this area was in Gillespie County]

[Information taken from: John City Record-Courier, Blanco County Centennial Edition, August 1, 1956.  Fred I. Massengill, Texas Towns: Origin of Name and Location of Each of the 2,148 Post Offices in Texas (Terrell, Texas, 1936); written by Mary H. Ogilvie; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Stonewall, Texas

Stonewall is on the Pedernales River thirteen miles east of Fredericksburg in southeastern Gillespie County.  It was named for Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson by Israel P. Nunez, who established a stage station near the site in 1870 and a post office in 1875.  In 1860 a few families were living in log cabins there on a grant held by Justa Flores.  In 1879 a settlement called Millville was founded nearby, and in 1882, when the stage station and post office were moved there, its name was changed to Stonewall.  The German settlers combined sheep raising with cattle raising and experimented with fruit trees.  The Stonewall area is today a major source of peaches.  Andreas Lindig built the first limekiln in Gillespie County at Stonewall, and from him the other settlers learned to manufacture lime.  Stonewall is 1.5 miles west of Lyndon Baines Johnson State Park, part of the land in the park was owned at one time by an original German settler of Stonewall, Casper Danz.  The population of Stonewall, estimated at 200 in 1925, attained an estimated high of 300 in 1961 and fell to a low of 150 in 1964.  It was estimated at 245 from 1974 to 1990.  The population reached 469 in 2000.

[Written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Tivydale, Texas

Tivydale is on the Pedernales River fourteen miles west of Fredericksburg in western Gillespie County.  It was originally known as Bunkesville or Pumpkinville and was renamed for Joseph A. Tivy, who sold land in the Pedernales River valley between 1877 and 1885.  For one dollar Tivy later gave 43 1/2 acres for the local school.  The Bunkesville Band, a local musical group specializing in German music, was still active in 1947.  The population of Tivydale, estimated at fifteen in 1933, had risen to thirty by 1949.  The population estimate remained the same through the following decade and a half.

[written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]

Willow City, Texas

Willow City is on Willow Creek 11 1/2 miles northeast of Fredericksburg in northeastern Gillespie County.  The earliest recorded settler before the Civil War was a slaveholding Baptist preacher reported to harbor a strong dislike for the neighboring Germans.  Sometime after the war a group of settlers--including ranchers Andrew Moore, Jim Renick, William Luckenbach, Bill Hardin, and Pierce Smith, storekeeper Gene Harrison, and miller, Bill Ricks--came to Willow Creek and founded one of the few Gillespie County communities settled by English-speakers rather than Germans.  These early settlers traded mostly in Austin because they preferred dealing with other Anglo-Americans rather than with the Germans in nearby Fredericksburg.  The town prospered and gained an early reputation as a criminal hangout.  The post office opened in 1877 and was named Willow until 1887, when it changed to Willow City.  The town had two teachers as early as 1881; one was John Warren Hunter, who once had to wrestle a six-gun away from an angry student.  In 1885 a Methodist congregation was organized, although a church was not built until 1900, under Rev. T. J. Lassater.  From 1892 to 1894 the population was estimated at 132, and by 1915 Willow City had three general stores, a drugstore, two blacksmiths, and a cotton gin.  The population declined during the first half of the twentieth century, to 100 in 1925 and forty in 1939.  During the 1940s it climbed again, reaching sixty by 1949, and then it fluctuated between a low of seventeen in 1964 and a high of eighty-five in 1968.  In 1970 the population was estimated at seventy-five, where it remained through 2000.

[Information taken from Sara Kay Curtis, A History of Gillespie County, Texas, 1846-1900 (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1943; written by Martin Donell Kohout; transcribed by Jimmy Davis]