Homestead of Karl Itz
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Karl Itz (ca. 1838-1908), a native of Westerburg, Germany, arrived in Texas in 1852 and settled in Gillespie County. He married Henrietta Evers (1839-1923) in 1856. At the outbreak of the Civil War Itz joined a group of German immigrants in support of the Union. Marching toward Mexico in August 1862, the men encountered Confederate forces at the Battle of the Nueces. Though many of the Germans were killed, Itz was not injured and lived in hiding until the war ended. He moved his family to this site and built a stone home in 1875. A log house was later added. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1987
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Karl Itz left Westerburg, Germany, as a boy and settled among the German immigrants of Gillespie County in 1852, marrying Henrietta Evers a few years later. When the Civil War came, Itz joined fellow German Unionists who refused to fight for the Confederacy and set out for Mexico, only to be overtaken by Confederate forces at the Battle of the Nueces in 1862. Many of his companions were killed, but Itz survived and lived in hiding until the war's end. He later moved his family here and built this stone home in 1875.
Why it matters
Itz's survival of the Nueces massacre preserves the story of Texas Germans whose loyalty to the Union made them targets in a Confederate state. His homestead is a reminder that the Civil War divided immigrant communities as sharply as it did the nation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Texas Hill Country around Fredericksburg was, by the 1850s, unmistakably German. Waves of immigrants from the German states had crossed the Atlantic and pushed inland to Gillespie County, bringing their language, their trades, and their own ideas about liberty. They carved farms out of rocky ground and built a society that stood a little apart from the rest of Texas.
That difference turned dangerous when the Civil War came. Many of these German settlers had little love for slavery and little loyalty to the Confederate cause, and their Unionist sympathies made them suspect, then hunted, in a state that had joined the rebellion. The Hill Country became a place of divided loyalties and real peril, where a family's convictions could put it in the crosshairs.
Into this world came Karl Itz. Born around 1838 in Westerburg, Germany, he arrived in Texas in 1852 as a teenager and settled in Gillespie County. In 1856 he married Henrietta Evers, and like his neighbors he set about building a life. When war forced a choice, he did not abandon the convictions he had carried across the ocean.
People & events
When the fighting began, Itz joined a group of German immigrants who stood with the Union. Refusing to take up arms for the Confederacy, these men chose flight over submission, and in August 1862 they set out southward, marching toward Mexico and the hope of safety or a way to serve their chosen cause.
They did not make it. On the way they were intercepted by Confederate forces, and the clash became known as the Battle of the Nueces. It was a brutal, one-sided affair, and many of the German Unionists were killed. The event seared itself into Hill Country memory as a defining tragedy of the region's wartime divisions.
Itz survived. Unhurt in the fighting, he did not simply return home; he lived in hiding until the war finally ended, a fugitive in his own adopted country for the crime of loyalty to the Union. When peace came at last, he could rebuild in the open. He moved his family to this site and, in 1875, built a stone home here, later adding a log house. That house standing on the land is the quiet, durable answer to years spent in hiding.
Its place in the American story
The Civil War is often imagined as a clean line between North and South, but it ran straight through communities, families, and immigrant neighborhoods too. The Texas Germans are among the sharpest reminders that the Confederacy was never united behind its own cause, and that dissent inside the South could be met with deadly force.
The Battle of the Nueces belongs to a larger, harder national history of loyalty and reprisal. Newcomers who had crossed an ocean partly in search of freedom found that their principles made them targets in their new home, and their story complicates any tidy picture of who the war was between. It is a chapter about the price of conviction when neighbors turn into enemies.
Karl Itz's survival and return give that grim history a human resolution. A man who spent the war hiding for his beliefs lived to raise a family and lay stone upon stone in the open air. His homestead stands for the immigrants whose Americanism was defined not by where they were born but by what they refused to fight for.
If you visit
Fredericksburg draws visitors for its German heritage, its shops, and its Hill Country charm, but this homestead asks you to feel the harder history beneath the postcard. Approaching the stone house Itz built in 1875, remember that the man who laid it had recently spent years in hiding for his loyalties.
Let the building speak. Stone and, later, log, raised by hand on land chosen after the danger had passed, it is architecture as an act of return and endurance. Give yourself a moment to think about what it meant to build something permanent and visible after years of staying out of sight.
As you enjoy the region's German food, music, and craft, carry the fuller story with you. The same immigrant community that gave the Hill Country its cheerful heritage also paid a steep price for its convictions at the Nueces. Standing at Karl Itz's homestead ties those two truths together, and it will deepen every other German-Texan stop on your trip.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Karl Itz
- · Henrietta Evers
Related events
- · Battle of the Nueces
Themes & tags
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