James House

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.

Boerne, TX

From the 1700s, the Camino Real de San Saba ran northwest from San Antonio through Comanche- and Apache-dominated Hill Country to the Spanish Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas on the San Saba River, a route mapped by Joseph de Urrutia in 1767. Long used by Native peoples and later by Spanish entradas, the "old trail" became a path for German settlers arriving from the 1840s onward, its alignment recorded by surveyors like Jack Hays and John James. It passed just west of Boerne's Main Plaza before threading north through Spanish Pass toward the Guadalupe River.

Boerne, TX

Kendall County was carved out and organized in early 1862 and named for George Wilkins Kendall, a journalist and author who co-founded the New Orleans Picayune and survived the ill-fated Santa Fe Expedition. Beyond his newspaper fame, Kendall became the most successful sheep rancher in the Southwest. The county seat was fixed at Boerne, in the German-settled Hill Country.

Boerne, TX

Built in 1869–1870, this is the first and only courthouse Kendall County has ever had, raised seven years after the county organized. Its early officials were a colorful lot: first county judge Joseph Graham later became U.S. Consul to Argentina, and first sheriff Capt. John Sansom was a Texas Ranger and Indian fighter. Early dockets brimmed with frontier cases—horse theft, cattle rustling, and illegal liquor sales—before additions and remodeling in 1909 and 1954.