Christian Crenwelge Place
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A native of Germany, Christian Crenwelge migrated to this area in 1854 and worked as a farmer and cabinetmaker. At a sheriff's land sale in 1872 he bought this property located across the street from his home. for a short time he operated a molasses press here. The Victorian style Sunday house was constructed about 1903. Crenwelge sold this residence and his homestead after the death of his wife in 1906. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1979
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A German native, Christian Crenwelge joined the Hill Country's immigrant wave in 1854 and worked as a farmer and cabinetmaker in and around Fredericksburg. At an 1872 sheriff's sale he bought this lot across from his home, where for a time he ran a molasses press. The Victorian-style "Sunday house" here went up around 1903, and Crenwelge sold both this property and his homestead after his wife's death in 1906.
Why it matters
The property and its Sunday house preserve the distinctive rhythm of German Texan farm life, where families kept a town lot to stay over for weekend worship and market days.
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Related people
- · Christian Crenwelge
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Johann Joseph Knopp House
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Newly arrived from Germany after a six-week clipper voyage to Indianola and an oxcart haul inland, stonemason Johann Joseph Knopp bought this Fredericksburg lot for seventy dollars in gold and built a native-stone house here in 1871. While he worked his trade, his wife and children farmed the family land a mile away, raising a large family in the plain, durable style typical of the German Hill Country.
Vogel Sunday House
Fredericksburg, TX
German immigrant Christian Vogel built the left half of this little Fredericksburg dwelling in the 1880s as a "Sunday house"—a town base where farm families stayed overnight for Saturday trading and Sunday worship. His son Amandus and daughter-in-law Elizabeth expanded it and sheathed it in pressed tin around 1900, and Elizabeth used it until her death in 1944. The custom was a distinctive feature of the German Hill Country's settlement pattern.
The Patton Home
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Business leader Albert Lee Patton and his wife Emma built the first four rooms of this limestone home in the mid-1870s, soon after buying the property in the German-settled town of Fredericksburg. Later additions, including a three-window front bay, expanded the house as the family and the town prospered. It remained in Patton hands for more than a century, passing to a daughter before leaving the family in 1978.
Heinrich Bierschwale House
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German immigrant Heinrich Bierschwale built this two-story stone house in 1872–73 while teaching in the rural schools of Gillespie and Mason counties; he later served as county and district clerk. The home's vernacular stonework, bracketed porch columns, and six-over-six windows reflect the craftsmanship German settlers brought to the Texas Hill Country. Bierschwale and his wife Margarete raised nine children here, and the house has stayed in the family for well over a century.