Jacob Neffendorf
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
JACOB NEFFENDORF BORN IN REDERT, NASSAU, GERMANY, JACOB NEFFENDORF (1822-1910) CAME TO TEXAS IN 1845 ABOARD THE BARQUE NEPTUNE. HE WAS IN THE GROUP WHO SURVEYED THE FREDERICKSBURG TOWNSITE AND ALSO HELPED MOVE FAMILIES HERE FROM NEW BRAUNFELS IN 1846. SETTLERS RECEIVED A 100 BY 200 FOOT TOWN LOT AND A 10-ACRE OUTLOT FOR FARMING. NEFFENDORF BUILT A LOG CABIN ON HIS TOWN LOT ON CREEK STREET AND LIVED THERE WHILE CLEARING HIS OUTLOT NEAR THE KREUZBERG (CROSS MOUNTAIN). HE BOUGHT NEARBY OUTLOTS UNTIL ACCUMULATING MORE THAN 200 ACRES IN THIS VICINITY. JACOB MARRIED KATHERINA DIETZ (1828-1904) IN AUGUST 1850; THE COUPLE RAISED EIGHT CHILDREN IN THEIR HOME NEAR THIS SITE. JACOB SERVED AS GILLESPIE COUNTY TREASURER IN 1874-76. (2010)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Jacob Neffendorf sailed from Nassau in the German states aboard the barque Neptune in 1845, part of the wave of immigrants who settled the Texas Hill Country under the Adelsverein colonization scheme. He helped survey the Fredericksburg townsite and move families up from New Braunfels in 1846, receiving the standard town lot and ten-acre outlot and building a log cabin on Creek Street. Clearing land near Cross Mountain, he steadily assembled more than 200 acres, raised eight children with his wife Katherina, and served a term as Gillespie County treasurer.
Why it matters
His life traces the German immigrant founding of Fredericksburg, one of the most distinctive ethnic settlement stories of the 19th-century American frontier.
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Related people
- · Jacob Neffendorf
- · Katherina Dietz
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Klingelhoeffer House
Fredericksburg, TX
Johann Jost Klingelhoeffer left Europe in 1846 seeking freedom and opportunity, sailing to the port of Indianola and making his way through New Braunfels to Fredericksburg. Around 1854 he built his home in the German Fachwerk, or half-timbered, style—oak timbers filled with handmade brick and two ground-floor rooms divided by a dogtrot breezeway. Additions after the Civil War and again in 1955 reshaped the house, but it endures as an example of the distinctive Texas-German building tradition unique to the Hill Country.
Baethge-Behrend Homestead
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A German family immigrated to Texas in 1854 and, after moving about the central part of the state, settled roughly 120 acres in the Fredericksburg area in 1867. Their homestead centered on a house built of handmade clay-and-straw brick alongside a cluster of outbuildings. Their sons inherited the farm, and the family held it until 1937, when it passed to another German-Texan family.
Heinrich Kensing_Johanna Borchers Kensing
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Heinrich and Johanna Borchers Kensing were German immigrants who reached Texas in 1845 and settled in Gillespie County before moving into Mason County. In July 1865 the couple were attacked by Indians near Platt Kopf; Heinrich died at once, and Johanna died three days later at a neighbor's house, leaving seven children. A 1972 marker records their fate on the exposed Hill Country frontier.
Karl Kensing Cemetery
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Karl Kensing was born in Germany in 1828 and immigrated to Texas with his family in 1845, three of the children surviving to settle in Fredericksburg by 1850. On their Hill Country property the Kensings set aside a small family burial ground, where Karl became the first known interment alongside his wife and later descendants. The graves, moving from traditional German inscriptions to simple English ones, quietly chart the passage from immigrant pioneers to their American-born children.