Dangers Stone House
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built in 1851 by the Rev. Gottlieb Burchard Dangers (1811-69), soon after his purchase of this town lot from Friedrich Pape. Dangers, who had emigrated from Germany in 1849, was the second Protestant minister in Fredericksburg. The two rooms in the rear and the cellar were added by Dangers about 1857. The house was constructed in the pioneer German style, with some walls of fachwerk (half-timbered) construction. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Rev. Gottlieb Burchard Dangers, who emigrated from Germany in 1849 and became Fredericksburg's second Protestant minister, built this stone house in 1851 on a lot bought from a fellow settler. About 1857 he added two rear rooms and a cellar. Its half-timbered fachwerk walls reflect the pioneer German building traditions that immigrants carried to the Texas Hill Country.
Why it matters
The house is a tangible record of the German immigrants whose faith, craft, and building styles gave Fredericksburg its enduring character.
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Related people
- · Gottlieb Burchard Dangers
- · Friedrich Pape
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
The Meinhardt-Pfeil Home
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The original limestone section of this Fredericksburg home was built around 1850 by pioneer settlers Albert and Doris Meinhardt. After Doris sold it in 1879 to her former son-in-law G. Adolph Pfeil, a cotton gin owner, he adapted it as a blacksmith shop and later a soda water factory, keeping it in the family until 1939.
Old St. Mary's Church (Die Alte Kirche)
Fredericksburg, TX
Old St. Mary's traces to 1846 and the first German settlers of Fredericksburg, who replaced an earlier log church with this stone building, finished in 1863 under Rev. Peter Baunach. It served as the parish church until a larger sanctuary opened in 1906, then took on new life—including as a schoolhouse. Its steeple, pointed-arch windows, and stone buttresses make it a fine, early example of Hill Country Gothic.
St. Mary's Catholic Church
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As its congregation swelled in the late 1800s, St. Mary's parish resolved to build a grand new sanctuary, completed in 1906 to designs by prominent San Antonio architect Leo M. Dielmann and built by contractor Jacob Wagner. Its Gothic-inspired native stone rises to a dominant corner tower and spire holding three bells carried over from the parish's 1863 church. Stained-glass windows, some picturing the builder's own daughter, filled the sanctuary between 1906 and 1917.