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.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mill Street Telegraph Station
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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.
New Braunfels Woolen Mill
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German immigrants August Tolle and Dr. Theodor Koester built a large two-story cedar-timber building in 1864, and in 1868 it became the New Braunfels Woolen Mill, drawing on Comal River water for steam power. The successful mill eventually closed for lack of a protected trademark, and in 1901 the Popp family converted it into the town's first steam laundry, which ran until a 1934 fire. Only the old bell, rock foundation, and part of the chimney remain.
Comal Community
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In the mid-1800s, German families—Schwab, Friesenhahn, Wenzel, Fey, and others—left nearby New Braunfels to carve farms out of the countryside, forming the village that became Comal. Among the first Germans to reach Texas in the 1840s, they built a close-knit farming settlement anchored by a cooperative cotton gin, a grocery, a blacksmith shop, and early church and school institutions. Some of their farms remain in the hands of descendants today.
Fischer Store
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German brothers Hermann and Otto Fischer crossed the Atlantic and settled on Lake Creek in 1853, first surviving by subsistence farming and wild game in the remote Hill Country. As more families arrived after the Civil War, Hermann turned his home into a mercantile business that became the beating heart of the community that took his name. The 1902 store—built of local juniper, longleaf pine, and cypress, and still holding its post office booth and revolving hardware cabinets—stands as a textbook early-20th-century rural general store.