HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Krause House/Mann's Crossing Post Office

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Anton F. Krause and Johanna Roesler emigrated from Austria to Texas in 1854. Like many new arrivals, they walked most of the way from the Texas coast to San Antonio, where they were married in the San Fernando Church in May 1855. In 1875 they sold their San Antonio store and saloon and moved with their six children to southwestern Bexar County near Mann's Crossing. The family purchased 101 acres in 1875 and a smaller tract including this site in 1876. They built a small log cabin and stone kitchen that year with the help of neighbors, including family friend and stonemason Henry Nentwich, whose daughter Elizabeth later married the Krauses' son Charles. The logs were hewn from local elm trees and the sandstone was found nearby. Additions were made as the family grew over the years. From January 1879 to November 1880 and again from September to December 1886, Anton Krause served as postmaster of Mann's Crossing, using his house as the post office. Krause and his sons also were active in law enforcement, and the house was used by Texas Rangers and federal agents to hold prisoners at various times. Typical of the gradual development of rural farmsteads evolving from a single pen log cabin, this house includes typical features of a vernacular farmhouse such as the original log core structure, board-and-batten siding on extensions, standing seam metal roof and box eaves. Its very survival is historically significant. The Krause land was designated a family land heritage farm in 1975. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Anton Krause and Johanna Roesler emigrated from Austria in 1854, walking much of the way from the Texas coast to San Antonio, where they married the following year. In 1875 they moved to rural southwestern Bexar County near Mann's Crossing, building a log cabin and stone kitchen with the help of neighbors. Anton served twice as postmaster—running the office from his home—and the family's law-enforcement ties meant Texas Rangers and federal agents sometimes held prisoners in the house.

Why it matters

The Krause homestead captures the immigrant farmstead life that filled out rural Texas, evolving cabin-by-cabin from a single log pen into a working farm.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

When Anton Krause and Johanna Roesler left Austria for Texas in 1854, they joined one of the great migrations of the nineteenth century — the wave of Central European immigrants who crossed the Atlantic seeking land and a fresh start. Texas was a magnet for German-speaking settlers in particular, and the couple's journey was as hard as any in that era: they walked most of the way from the Texas coast inland to San Antonio, where they married in the historic San Fernando Church in 1855.

Their story then follows the arc of the frontier itself. After years running a store and saloon in San Antonio, they sold up in 1875 and moved with six children to the rural southwestern edge of Bexar County, near Mann's Crossing. This was the Reconstruction and Gilded Age era, when the countryside beyond the towns was still being settled farmstead by farmstead.

Out there, a family built its world from what the land gave. The logs of their cabin were hewn from local elm; the stone came from nearby sandstone. This was rural Texas coming into being, one homestead at a time, with neighbors as the only infrastructure that mattered.

People & events

The heart of this marker is a family and the community that raised its buildings. In 1875 and 1876 the Krauses bought their land and, with the help of neighbors, put up a small log cabin and a stone kitchen. Among those neighbors was the stonemason Henry Nentwich — a family friend whose daughter Elizabeth would later marry the Krauses' son Charles, weaving two frontier families together the way such communities so often did.

Anton Krause wore more than one hat, as frontier men had to. From 1879 to 1880, and again in 1886, he served as postmaster of Mann's Crossing, running the post office out of his own home so that mail could reach a scattered rural population. The house was the community's link to the wider world.

It was also, at times, an outpost of the law. Krause and his sons were active in law enforcement, and the marker records that Texas Rangers and federal agents used the house to hold prisoners. Picture that: a family farmhouse that was, by turns, a home, a post office, and a temporary jail — the many public functions a single sturdy building might serve where formal institutions were thin on the ground.

Its place in the American story

The Krause homestead tells, in miniature, the story of how rural America was actually built. The nation's countryside filled in not through grand projects but through countless immigrant families who arrived with little, leaned on their neighbors, and grew a working farm out of a single log pen. The marker even notes the architectural evidence of that growth — the original log core, the board-and-batten additions, the standing-seam metal roof — a house that expanded as the family did.

The immigrant thread here is quintessentially American. A couple from Austria walking inland from the Gulf coast, marrying in a centuries-old church, and putting down roots on the frontier is the kind of journey repeated a million times over in the making of the United States. Their farm, designated a family land heritage property in 1975, marks generations of continuous stewardship of the same ground.

And the house's double life — post office and occasional jail — captures a deep truth about frontier America: before government reached the countryside, ordinary homes did the work of public institutions. The survival of this modest structure, as the marker itself says, is what makes it historically significant. So much of this vernacular world has simply disappeared.

If you visit

This is a home — a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark — so let your eye do what the marker invites and read the building itself. Look for the layers: the original hand-hewn elm-log core at the center, then the board-and-batten siding on the later additions, the standing-seam metal roof, the box eaves. Each layer is a chapter, added as a family grew.

You're in the rural southwestern reaches of Bexar County, well away from San Antonio's busy center, and that quiet is part of the point. Come here to feel the scale of frontier life — a small cabin and stone kitchen raised by neighbors' hands, in a landscape where the nearest post office might be someone's front room. It rewards an unhurried visit.

As you take it in, hold the building's three lives in mind at once: a family's home, the Mann's Crossing post office, and, now and then, a lockup for prisoners held by Texas Rangers and federal agents. That so ordinary-looking a house did so many jobs — and simply survived when countless others vanished — is exactly what makes it worth the drive.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

Plan your visit

Nearby

Make a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.

Museums & culture

Attractions

Food & drink

Places to stay

Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · Anton F. Krause
  • · Johanna Roesler Krause

Themes & tags

ImmigrationFrontier HistoryHome

Nearby & related markers

Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church

La Coste, TX

Before 1911, Catholics around La Coste had to travel all the way to Castroville for Mass, so the community petitioned for a church of its own. Emil Zinsmeyer donated land for a church, school, and cemetery, and that year a red-brick Gothic building rose and was named Our Lady of Grace. For more than a century it has been the area's largest congregation, its June festival the community's signature gathering since 1925.

Immigration

City Hotel

La Coste, TX

Alsatian immigrant and local developer Emil Schmidt built the City Hotel in 1912, bringing public lodging to La Coste for the first time. Its spot near the railroad depot made it a magnet for the salesmen, railroad crews, and dam builders passing through, and its verandas and restaurant were an instant success. Under Gus and 'Ma' Maggie Keller after 1928, its back-room saloon—famously dodging Prohibition raids through well-timed phone calls—became the stuff of local legend, its walls and ceiling covered in bottle caps.

TransportationImmigration

Lydia Mendoza

San Antonio, TX

Born in Houston, Lydia Mendoza became one of the earliest and most beloved voices of the Texas-Mexico borderlands. Her 1934 recording of "Mal Hombre" launched a sixty-year career built on her powerful voice and her mastery of the twelve-string guitar. Known as "La Alondra de la Frontera," she performed at President Carter's inauguration and earned the National Medal of Arts before a stroke ended her career in 1988.

Women's HistoryImmigration

Texas' First All-Spanish Radio Program

San Antonio, TX

On October 28, 1928, a San Antonio station billed as "Radio Sam" launched a two-hour nightly broadcast entirely in Spanish — the first program of its kind in Texas. Owner Sam Liberto and businessman Edward Buckley recruited Julián F. Lozano to produce and announce "The International Goodwill Program," which he hosted in a spirit of cross-cultural understanding until his death in 1951. The tradition he began seeded the many hours of Spanish-language radio that San Antonio stations still air today.

Innovation & FlightImmigration