County Jail of 1885
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This two-story stone structure served as the fourth jail for Gillespie County, organized in 1848. It was constructed by the firm of c. F. Priess and Bro. in 1885. The ground floor housed a holding area and living quarters for the jailer. the second floor had two steelclad cells located against the east wall and maximum security cells in the center and at the back. The building was used as a county jail facility until 1939. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This two-story stone building was the fourth jail of Gillespie County, which had been organized back in 1848, and was raised in 1885 by the firm of C. F. Priess and Bro. The ground floor held a booking area and the jailer's living quarters, while the upper floor kept steel-clad and maximum-security cells. It locked up the county's prisoners until 1939.
Why it matters
Sturdy stone jails like this one mark the arrival of formal law and order on the Texas frontier, a stage every settled American community passed through.
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Related people
- · C. F. Priess
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Gillespie County Courthouse
Fredericksburg, TX
When Gillespie County's commissioners hired San Antonio architect Alfred Giles to raise this native-limestone courthouse in 1881–82, they were giving civic permanence to a frontier German-Texan community barely a generation old. Its careful symmetry made it the county's second and grandest courthouse, serving justice until 1939 before a gift from the McDermotts restored it as a library and community hall. The stone itself, quarried nearby, ties the building to the Hill Country landscape it governed.
Gillespie County
Fredericksburg, TX
Once crossed by the trails of roving Indian peoples, these Hill Country lands were settled by German immigrant pioneers in 1846, with a group of Mormons founding Zodiac the next year. The county was created and organized in 1848 and named for Richard Addison Gillespie, a Texas frontier defender and Mexican War captain who was killed at the Battle of Monterrey in 1846. Fredericksburg became its seat.
Market Square (Mark Platz)
Fredericksburg, TX
From Fredericksburg's founding in 1846, Market Square—Marktplatz to the German settlers—stood at the town's center, then still ringed by heavy forest. The octagonal Vereins Kirche rose the next year in the middle of Main Street, serving at once as church, school, meeting hall, and a refuge in case of raids, while a jail and public schoolhouse followed in the 1850s. Rebuilt in the 1930s as a pioneer memorial, the church became the county's first museum and library, and the square remains the community's gathering place.
Pape Log Cabin
Fredericksburg, TX
Friedrich Pape, his wife Katherine, and a surviving daughter reached Galveston from Germany in late 1845, having lost three children on the voyage, and were among the first forty families to settle Fredericksburg. Soon after arriving in May 1846, neighbors joined in communal labor to raise this post-oak log cabin to shelter the ailing Mrs. Pape. Its hand-cut logs and once-thatched roof make it one of the oldest structures in town.