Comal County, C.S.A.

🏛️The era

New Braunfels was barely fifteen years old when the Civil War began. German immigrants founded it in the mid-1840s beside the cold, spring-fed Comal River, near where it joins the Guadalupe. They built a town of craftsmen, millers, farmers and merchants, and they brought with them a strong habit of building things.

When secession came before Texas voters in 1861, Comal County did not divide the way you might expect. German Texans are often remembered as Unionists, and in some Hill Country counties many of them were. Here the local newspaper argued hard for the Southern cause, and the county voted for secession 239 to 86.

Once war came, the Union blockade and the distance from Northern factories left the Confederacy short of almost everything. A town full of mills and skilled hands suddenly mattered. Comal County became a manufacturing and supply center, turning its water power and its workshops to the needs of a nation at war.

👥People & events

More than 300 men from Comal County enlisted, and their companies scattered across the war's western edge. Capt. Theodore Podewills raised the Texas Mounted Rifles, who joined Hood's Texas Cavalry as Company F. Capt. Julius Von Bose's Company K rode with the 3rd Regiment, Texas Cavalry, Arizona Brigade, serving in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Capt. Gustav Hoffmann's Company B, 7th Texas Regiment, saw a remarkable span of the war. It marched west in the Confederate push into New Mexico Territory, a gamble to carry the Confederacy to the Pacific. That campaign ended in retreat in 1862. The same men then took part in the surprise recapture of Galveston on New Year's Day 1863, and later in the Red River Campaign of 1864, when Confederate forces turned back a Union drive aimed at Texas.

At home, New Braunfels was headquarters for a 21-county defense district under Gen. Robert Bechem of the 31st Brigade, Texas state troops. Its workshops turned out gunpowder, flour, cornmeal, lumber, sash and door frames, carded wool, cotton thread and writing paper. The Comal Manufacturing Company wove wool and cotton cloth for soldiers' uniforms.

One venture shows both how inventive and how fragile the home front was. The Texas Paper Manufacturing Company ordered machinery from Europe to make newsprint out of corn shucks. Getting money abroad through the blockade proved too hard, and losses in export funds killed the project before it could start.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Comal County complicates a tidy story. German Texans are rightly remembered for Unionist resistance in parts of the Hill Country, and some of them paid for it with their lives. But immigrant communities were not all alike. This one voted heavily for secession, sent hundreds of men into Confederate service, and put its industry to work for the war.

The marker also shows how the Confederacy actually fought. A largely agricultural South had to improvise factories wherever it found water power and skilled workers. Small towns like New Braunfels made up a scattered, homemade war economy, and that economy was always one broken supply line from failing. The corn-shuck newsprint scheme is a small example of a much larger pattern of shortages.

The story reaches far beyond Texas, too. Through their soldiers, the people of one county took part in the Confederacy's bid for the Far West, the fight for the Gulf Coast, and the defense of the Red River country. Together those campaigns show how far west the Civil War really stretched.

🧭If you visit

New Braunfels still wears its German roots openly. As you walk the older streets, look for the solid, practical buildings of a town founded by craftsmen. Then imagine those same workshops and mills humming with wartime orders.

Go down to the Comal River while you're here. Its clear, fast spring water drove the mills that made this a supply center, and it explains better than any document why industry grew up in this spot. Local museums dedicated to the town's founding and German heritage can add depth to the marker's story.

New Braunfels sits on the corridor between San Antonio and Austin, so it fits easily into a Hill Country road trip. Pair this stop with other Civil War sites in the region to see how differently Texas communities answered the question of secession. The contrasts are a big part of the story.