News
Death Notices
News Links
Food Pages
Weather
Sports
Sports Links
More
E.W. Scripps
West Texas news and sports/May 11, 1998
News digest / Sports digestOut Yonder: Fredericksburg overcame some tough beginnings
Skip to next storyBy ROSS McSWAIN
S-T ColumnistFREDERICKSBURG - Last week, this Central Texas community celebrated its 152nd birthday. Since its founding on May 8, 1846, this gem of the Texas Hill Country has prospered and grown, but it wasn't always rosy.
Fredericksburg, Mason, Llano, New Braunfels, Boerne and other communities eventually became Germany's most successful overseas colony. As a result, some dozen or more Central Texas counties are predominately Germanic in ancestry. What is particularly unusual is that Fredericksburg became the first permanent settlement north and west of the Balcones Escarpment which was then occupied by mostly hostile Indians.
The colonization of Central Texas by German immigrants was filled with hardships, many brought on by colony leaders who were well meaning but impractical German noblemen that organized a Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas in 1842. This society was called the ``Adelsverein,'' or ``Noble's Union.''
It wasn't difficult to get immigrant prospects. The society advertised throughout most of Germany that takers would be given $240 in cash, free passage and free land - up to 320 acres per family. In addition, the society would finance the first crop, provide a log house and also furnish certain public services, such as churches, mills, a hospital and even an asylum. All the immigrant needed to do was promise to cultivate at least 15 acres of land and live on the place for three years. Thousands signed up.
But the society's plan was based on it getting 3 million acres in the Fisher-Miller Land Grant. Leaders hoped to settle half of it and sell the remainder at a profit.
According to historian T.H. Fehrenbach, the Fisher-Miller land deal was the greatest land swindle in Texas or American history. The folks that sold the grant to the Germans didn't have clear title to the land in first place, and most of the acreage was located far beyond any settlement, smack dab in the middle of Comanche country. In addition, the land was mostly poor for farming purposes.
Unfortunately for the noblemen, and particularly their leader, Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, there were 7,000 emigrants sitting on the docks at Galveston and Indianola.
Prince Carl, a cousin of Britain's Queen Victoria, found the society he headed bankrupt. He had been cheated twice by dealers who sold him parcels of land they did not own. He and the others ended up trying to put a colony together in the limestone hills. It was cheap land because the Comanches owned it and as Fehrenbach tells it, ``no one told them about the deal.''
With thousands of Germans showing up from the homeland looking for a place to start a home; hundreds dying of disease and hunger; and depleted funds, Prince Carl resigned and returned home. He put the problems in the lap of his deputy, Otfried Hans, Freiherr von Meusebach.
Meusebach quickly shed his title and called himself John O. Meusebach. He became a Texas citizen and went to work unraveling the mess Prince Carl left. His first concern was getting the Germans off the Gulf Coast where they were getting sick and dying of fevers. Although many died en route to the Texas Hill Country, others made it to the more healthy climate around New Braunfels.
But New Braunfels could not accommodate all the new folks, so Meusebach cut a treaty with the Comanches and Fredericksburg and Mason were soon opened to settlement. The treaty, affirmed in March 1847 in an oak grove near the Sloan Community in San Saba County, was never broken.
Fehrenbach says it is incredible ``by modern standards'' that Fredericksburg and its countryside was ever settled because the Germans had little to help them except a lot of grit. They adapted to the new country, and we all are proud of their efforts. The Concho Valley should be especially proud of these neighbors to the south. Many German tradesmen helped build Fort Concho and San Angelo and stayed to make this area their home.
Happy birthday Fredericksburg, from all of us Out Yonder.
Unless otherwise stated, all material is copyright of the San Angelo Standard-Times.
E-mail comments to standard@texaswest.com
