Evers Family Cemetery

San Antonio, TX

This peninsula in the San Antonio River, once bounded by water on three sides and the Concepcion Acequia on the fourth, was bought in 1845 by Philadelphia native John Bowen. He and his family built a seven-room home, planted orchards and vineyards, and ran a waterwheel-irrigated truck farm; Bowen served as city postmaster and treasurer and, a staunch Unionist, reportedly sheltered fugitive slaves. The island became a beloved gathering spot, hosting the first Volksfest and the German Turnverein before the river was diverted in the 1920s and joined it to the mainland.

Rio Medina, TX

In the 1840s, families from Oberentzen in Alsace, France—the Habys, the Gsells, and the Becks—settled a high bluff above the Medina River, part of the wave of Alsatian colonists Henri Castro drew to this stretch of the Texas frontier. Two Haby sons helped found nearby Castroville in 1844, and the clan earned the nickname the 'fighting Habys' as several joined the Texas Rangers to defend the settlement. They harnessed the perennial artesian springs they called Die Quelle with gravity-fed irrigation ditches, and their stone Alsatian homes and family farms endure today.

Castroville, TX

Early Castroville colonists—Dutch and German immigrants who arrived on Henri Castro's ships in the 1840s—rest in this small family plot, where Marie Becker Ihnken was buried in 1847. Her son Gerhard, a leading citizen, farmed vast lands and ran a sawmill, store, and orchard, and is credited with bringing the area's first reaper and binder. One of Medina County's oldest cemeteries, it holds eight marked Ihnken graves and, by tradition, a freedman who worked for the family; it has stayed inactive since 1950 to protect unmarked graves.

Boerne, TX

Born in Boerne in 1869 to Prussian immigrants, Adolph "Ad" Toepperwein learned to shoot from his gunsmith father and could outshoot seasoned marksmen by age ten. After stints as a cartoonist, vaudeville performer, and circus act, he signed with the Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1901 as an exhibition shooter. With his wife Elizabeth—whom he taught to shoot—he toured for over forty years as "The Wonderful Toepperweins," setting records that landed him in Ripley's, the Guinness Book, and the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.