Mary Theresa Juergens
New Ulm, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1809-October 31, 1891) German natives Conrad and Mary Theresa Hennecke Juergens came to Texas in 1833, the year of their marriage, and built a cabin near this site. In March 1836 as the Texas Revolution was raging, many Texas settlers, in fear of the advancing Mexican army, fled their homes in what became known as the Runaway Scrape. The Juergens family chose to remain, but soon were victims of a raid by Indians, thought to be members of the coastal Karankawa tribe. Conrad Juergens was wounded, and Mary and two of Conrad Juergens' young sons from a previous marriage were captured. Pregnant at the time of her kidnapping, Mary gave birth to a girl, Jane Margret, while in captivity. Months later, mother and daughter were ransomed at Coffee's Trading Post on the Red River, suggesting they were traded by the Karankawas to a nomadic tribe. The Juergens' sons were not rescued. Mary and Jane returned to Conrad, but he died within two years. After a brief second marriage to George Grimes, Mary married Samuel Redgate in 1843. They moved to Dayton, Ohio, where Mary died in 1891. Redgate and Jane Margret returned to Texas and settled in Parker county, where in 1936 the State of Texas erected a monument at their graves to honor them and Mary. (1992)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
German immigrants Conrad and Mary Theresa Juergens reached Texas in 1833 and built a cabin near this site. When the Texas Revolution sent settlers fleeing in the 1836 Runaway Scrape, the family stayed — and was raided by Karankawa people. Conrad was wounded and the pregnant Mary was carried off with two stepsons; she bore a daughter, Jane Margret, in captivity before mother and child were ransomed at a Red River trading post. Mary later remarried and died in Ohio in 1891.
Why it matters
Her ordeal weaves together German immigration, the chaos of the Texas Revolution, and the violent frontier collision between settlers and the coastal Karankawa people.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1830s, the country around present-day New Ulm in Austin County was raw frontier on the edge of Mexican Texas. This was Stephen F. Austin's colonization country, where the Mexican government had opened land to settlers, and where a newcomer's world consisted of a cabin, a clearing, and a great deal of uncertainty. Into that world, in 1833, came Conrad and Mary Theresa Juergens.
They were German-born, and their arrival makes them part of an early trickle of German settlement in Texas — the leading edge of what would, in later decades, become one of the great streams of immigration into the region. They came the very year they married, and they built a cabin near this site, staking their new marriage on a piece of land far from everything they had known.
Within a few years, the ground beneath that cabin turned dangerous. By 1836 the Texas Revolution was raging, and the settled districts dissolved into fear and flight — a chaos that would test the young couple in ways no ocean crossing had.
People & events
In March 1836, as a Mexican army advanced and word of it spread, settlers across the region abandoned their homes in a panicked mass flight remembered as the Runaway Scrape. The Juergens family made a fateful choice: they stayed. Soon afterward they were attacked in a raid, thought to have been carried out by the coastal Karankawa people.
The cost was terrible. Conrad Juergens was wounded, and Mary — along with two of Conrad's young sons from a previous marriage — was carried off into captivity. Mary was pregnant when she was taken, and while held captive she gave birth to a daughter, Jane Margret. Months later, mother and infant were ransomed far to the north, at a trading post on the Red River, a detail suggesting she had been passed from the Karankawas to another, more nomadic people before her release. The two boys were never recovered.
Mary's story did not soften after her return. She came back to Conrad, but he died within about two years. A brief second marriage followed, and then in 1843 she married Samuel Redgate; eventually she moved with him to Ohio, where she died in 1891, far from the Texas cabin where her ordeal began. Her daughter Jane Margret — the child born in captivity — returned to Texas, and in the 1930s the state raised a monument at the family's graves to honor them and Mary.
Its place in the American story
Mary Juergens's life braids together three great threads of the American frontier story. She was an immigrant, part of the German migration that would help shape Texas's culture and countryside. She was caught in the turmoil of the Texas Revolution, when a whole society came apart and fled. And she lived through the violent collision between arriving settlers and the Native peoples whose homeland they were entering.
Hers is also a woman's story of the frontier, and those were too rarely written down. The endurance of a pregnant woman carried into captivity, giving birth far from home, and surviving to raise that child, is the kind of experience that shaped countless frontier families but seldom made it into the official histories. This marker exists so that one such life would not vanish.
And it captures a hard, honest truth about westward expansion: that the settling of the land was not a peaceful pageant but a series of raw human collisions, with suffering on more than one side. The Karankawa, a coastal people whose world was being overrun, would themselves be gone from Texas within a few decades. Mary's story is one thread in that larger, painful national fabric.
If you visit
This is a memorial marker, so let it be a place to stand still and imagine rather than to tour. Picture the isolation of 1833: a newly married couple, an ocean away from home, raising a cabin in a country where the nearest neighbors might be miles off and the future was anything but assured.
As you read the marker, hold onto the human scale of what it describes — a family that chose to stay when everyone else ran, a mother's captivity, a child born into it, sons who never came home. It is a lot of life and loss compressed into a few lines of stone, and it rewards a slow, thoughtful reading.
The surrounding Austin County countryside, with its German settlement heritage, gives the visit its context; a drive through the area makes the immigrant side of the story tangible. Come understanding that you are standing near where a young couple began, and where an ordinary frontier life turned, in a single spring, into an extraordinary one.
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
- · Mary Theresa Juergens
- · Conrad Juergens
- · Jane Margret
Themes & tags
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