New Braunfels: County Seat of Comal County
New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early inhabitants of this area included Karankawa, Lipan, Tonkawa and Waco Indians. Between 1844 and 1846, the Verein Zum Schutze Deutscher Einwanderer in Texas (Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas) sent more than 7,000 German settlers. Several hundred of them arrived in this area in 1845. Led by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, they founded a community here on Good Friday, March 21, of that year. Rafael L. and Maria Antonia Veramendi Garza sold the colonization society more than 1,200 acres of land for the settlers, who held a drawing for lots shortly after arriving. Briefly referred to as Comal Springs, the community was named New Braunfels for the German town of Braunfels on the Lahn River. On May 11, 1846, the Texas Legislature incorporated the city, although the charter was not ratified until the following year. By 1850, New Braunfels was reportedly the fourth largest city in Texas. Because of its temperate climate and abundant natural resources, agriculture and industry thrived. Early craftsmen included bakers, blacksmiths, butchers, button and fringe makers, cabinetmakers, carpenters, coppersmiths, locksmiths, machinists, saddlers, tailors, shoemakers, tanners, tinsmiths, turners and wagon makers. Industries included brick kilns, cotton gins, a door and blind factory, flour and grist mills, breweries, a sawmill, a soap and candle house, and a woolen mill. The city's settlers were undaunted by early hardships. Many old-world customs survive among descendants of the original colonists, and the city's heritage is reflected in its buildings, street names and institutions. (1970, 2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This land had long been home to Karankawa, Lipan Apache, Tonkawa, and Waco peoples when the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants sent thousands of colonists to Texas in the mid-1840s. Led by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, several hundred founded New Braunfels on Good Friday, 1845, on land bought from the Garza family and parceled out by lottery. By 1850 it ranked among the largest cities in Texas, humming with craftsmen, mills, breweries, and kilns.
Why it matters
New Braunfels is the cornerstone of organized German settlement in Texas, a colony whose language, crafts, and customs still shape the state's cultural landscape.
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Related people
- · Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels
- · Rafael L. Garza
- · Maria Antonia Veramendi Garza
Related events
- · Founding of New Braunfels, 1845
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Eiband and Fischer General Mercantile
New Braunfels, TX
A general store opened at the corner of Castell and San Antonio Streets in 1846, just a year after New Braunfels was founded, and passed through a succession of German-connected owners over the next century. Growing into one of the region's most successful mercantiles, Eiband & Fischer sold everything from groceries and china to farm machinery, and also served as cotton buyers and short-term bankers. A 1947 fire finally consumed the store, though its surviving annex still stands.
The New Braunfels Herald
New Braunfels, TX
On this site in the heart of New Braunfels once stood the Zum Schwarzen Wallfisch — the Black Whale Saloon — before the block became home to the town's newspaper. Established in 1892 by S.R. Whitley and his sons, the New Braunfels Herald was the community's first English-language paper, published here on and off between 1896 and 1944. In a town founded by German immigrants, an English newspaper both chronicled local life and helped draw new businesses and residents to the growing Comal County seat.
Mill Street Telegraph Station
New Braunfels, TX
In the decades after the telegraph reached the United States, small Texas towns wired themselves into the national grid one line at a time. New Braunfels opened its first station in the 1860s inside the Guadalupe Hotel, where German-speaking schoolteacher August Schmitz tapped out messages; in 1871 the office followed him to his fachwerk (half-timber) house on Mill Street, its mud bricks drawn from Comal Creek. The station shuttled back to the hotel and finally to the railroad depot by 1881, tracing how a frontier town's communications matured.
Louis Henne Co.
New Braunfels, TX
Built in 1893 by noted local contractor Christian Herry, this Victorian storefront in New Braunfels grew out of the family tin shop next door. Its owner, Louis Henne, was part of the German craftsman-merchant tradition that shaped the town, and the enterprise he expanded onto this site has passed through three generations. The building's ornamented facade still advertises the confidence of a Gilded Age Main Street business.