Eiband and Fischer General Mercantile
New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas
Marker Inscription
EIBAND & FISCHER GENERAL MERCANTILE IN 1846, ONE YEAR AFTER NEW BRAUNFELS WAS FOUNDED, A MERCANTILE COMPANY OWNED BY JAMES FERGUSON AND HENRY HESSLER OPENED ON THE CORNER OF CASTELL AND SAN ANTONIO STREETS. BY 1858, BOTH MEN HAD DIED AND ERNST SCHERFF, AN EMPLOYEE, PURCHASED THE BUSINESS FROM FERGUSON’S WIDOW. THE NAME CHANGED TO ERNST SCHERFF MERCANTILE. SIX YEARS LATER, SCHERFF MOVED THE BUSINESS TO THE CENTER OF TOWN ON THE CORNER OF MAIN PLAZA AND SEGUIN STREET. SCHERFF, AS SOLE OWNER, GREW HIS BUSINESS INTO ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL IN THE REGION. IN 1887, SCHERFF LEASED THE BUSINESS TO HIS NEPHEW, GEORGE KNOKE FROM GERMANY, AND GEORGE EIBAND, AN EMPLOYEE. THE BUSINESS BECAME KNOWN AS KNOKE & EIBAND. IN THE LATE 1890s, ERNST (E.A.) EIBAND (GEORGE’S BROTHER) AND EMIL FISCHER, BOTH EMPLOYEES, LEASED THE BUSINESS. IN 1910, A WEEKLONG GRAND OPENING CELEBRATION FOR THE ENLARGED EIBAND & FISCHER, INC. TOOK PLACE AND WAS ATTENDED BY CROWDS FROM SURROUNDING AREAS. THE MERCANTILE CONTINUED SUCCESSFULLY SELLING GROCERIES, PIECE GOODS, CLOTHING, CHINA, CRYSTAL, FARM MACHINERY, FEED AND SEED TO LOCAL CITIZENS, FARMERS AND RANCHERS. LIKE THEIR PREDECESSORS, THEY ALSO SERVED AS COTTON BUYERS AND SHORT-TERM BANKERS. THE PROPERTY WAS BOUGHT BY EIBAND & FISCHER IN 1929. ON MARCH 2, 1947, THE STORE WAS CONSUMED BY FIRE. THE ANNEX ACROSS THE COURTYARD WAS UNTOUCHED AND SERVED AS THE STORE FOR TWELVE YEARS AFTER THE FIRE. THE BURNED OUT SHELL OF THE BASEMENT SERVED AS THE HOME OF WURSTFEST FROM 1963-1966. SINCE 1975, THE NEW BRAUNFELS UTILITIES HAS USED THE ANNEX BUILDING FOR OFFICES. THIS SITE REMINDS US OF THE SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSES THAT ONCE THRIVED AND LAID THE FOUNDATION FOR TODAY’S DOWNTOWN NEW BRAUNFELS.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A general store opened at the corner of Castell and San Antonio Streets in 1846, just a year after New Braunfels was founded, and passed through a succession of German-connected owners over the next century. Growing into one of the region's most successful mercantiles, Eiband & Fischer sold everything from groceries and china to farm machinery, and also served as cotton buyers and short-term bankers. A 1947 fire finally consumed the store, though its surviving annex still stands.
Why it matters
The store's long life traces how a frontier town's commercial core matured into the downtown that anchors New Braunfels today.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
New Braunfels was barely a year old in 1846 when the first version of this store opened its doors. The town had been founded in 1845 as a German colonization settlement, and like every frontier community it needed, above all, a place to buy and sell — a general mercantile that could supply households, farmers, and ranchers with everything a young town lacked.
The store's long life spans an enormous stretch of American change: from the frontier decade of the 1840s, through Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, into the industrial optimism of the early twentieth century. A single storefront lineage carried the town from ox-cart days to the age of farm machinery and department-store abundance.
General stores like this one were the beating heart of small-town commerce. They didn't just sell goods; they extended credit, bought crops, and served as informal banks — knitting a rural economy together in a place where a proper bank might be far away and cash often scarce.
People & events
The store passed through a remarkable relay of hands, most of them tied to the town's German community. It began in 1846 under James Ferguson and Henry Hessler at the corner of Castell and San Antonio Streets. By 1858 both founders had died, and an employee, Ernst Scherff, bought the business from Ferguson's widow, renaming it for himself. Scherff moved it to the center of town at Main Plaza and Seguin Street and, as sole owner, built it into one of the most successful enterprises in the region.
The pattern that followed says something lovely about how these businesses grew: employees became owners. In 1887 Scherff leased the store to his nephew George Knoke, newly arrived from Germany, and to an employee named George Eiband, and it became Knoke & Eiband. In the late 1890s George's brother Ernst (E.A.) Eiband and Emil Fischer — both employees — took over the lease, and in 1910 a weeklong grand-opening celebration for the enlarged Eiband & Fischer drew crowds from all around.
At its height the store sold groceries, piece goods, clothing, china, crystal, farm machinery, feed, and seed, and like its predecessors it bought cotton and lent money short-term. Then, on March 2, 1947, fire consumed the store. The annex across the courtyard survived and served as the store for another twelve years — and later, from 1963 to 1966, the burned-out basement shell became the first home of Wurstfest before the annex found new civic use.
Its place in the American story
The rise of the American small-town downtown is one of the quiet epics of the nation's history, and this single site tells it in miniature. Across the country, the general store was where the rural economy actually happened — where a farmer's cotton became credit, where a family's year was provisioned, where commerce and community overlapped completely.
The multi-generational, employee-to-owner succession here mirrors a broader American pattern in immigrant merchant communities: businesses handed down not always by blood but by trust, apprenticeship, and shared origin. It's a story of upward mobility built one ledger at a time.
And the store's dual role as cotton buyer and short-term banker points to something historians emphasize about the pre-modern countryside: before branch banks reached every town, the merchant was the credit system. A place that sold you crystal and a plow might also carry your debt until harvest.
If you visit
Look for the surviving annex — the building that outlived the 1947 fire and still stands where the great store once anchored the town. It's a tangible link to more than a century of commerce on this ground, and standing before it you can picture the crowds who thronged the 1910 grand opening.
This site sits at the heart of downtown New Braunfels, so it folds naturally into a walking tour of the old commercial core. Let the marker reframe the streetscape for you: the pleasant downtown you see was laid down by enterprises like this one, storefront by storefront, over generations.
There's a nice thread of local memory here, too — the basement of the burned store gave an early home to a beloved town festival. Ask a resident about the town's German-rooted celebrations and you'll find this humble spot is woven into how the community still gathers.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
New Braunfels: County Seat of Comal County
New Braunfels, TX
This land had long been home to Karankawa, Lipan Apache, Tonkawa, and Waco peoples when the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants sent thousands of colonists to Texas in the mid-1840s. Led by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, several hundred founded New Braunfels on Good Friday, 1845, on land bought from the Garza family and parceled out by lottery. By 1850 it ranked among the largest cities in Texas, humming with craftsmen, mills, breweries, and kilns.
The New Braunfels Herald
New Braunfels, TX
On this site in the heart of New Braunfels once stood the Zum Schwarzen Wallfisch — the Black Whale Saloon — before the block became home to the town's newspaper. Established in 1892 by S.R. Whitley and his sons, the New Braunfels Herald was the community's first English-language paper, published here on and off between 1896 and 1944. In a town founded by German immigrants, an English newspaper both chronicled local life and helped draw new businesses and residents to the growing Comal County seat.
Mill Street Telegraph Station
New Braunfels, TX
In the decades after the telegraph reached the United States, small Texas towns wired themselves into the national grid one line at a time. New Braunfels opened its first station in the 1860s inside the Guadalupe Hotel, where German-speaking schoolteacher August Schmitz tapped out messages; in 1871 the office followed him to his fachwerk (half-timber) house on Mill Street, its mud bricks drawn from Comal Creek. The station shuttled back to the hotel and finally to the railroad depot by 1881, tracing how a frontier town's communications matured.
Louis Henne Co.
New Braunfels, TX
Built in 1893 by noted local contractor Christian Herry, this Victorian storefront in New Braunfels grew out of the family tin shop next door. Its owner, Louis Henne, was part of the German craftsman-merchant tradition that shaped the town, and the enterprise he expanded onto this site has passed through three generations. The building's ornamented facade still advertises the confidence of a Gilded Age Main Street business.