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.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Long before European settlers arrived, the springs and rivers of this area drew people. The marker names Karankawa, Lipan, Tonkawa, and Waco peoples among the early inhabitants. Clear, reliable water from the Comal Springs, where the Balcones Escarpment meets the coastal plain, made this an attractive place to live and travel through for a very long time.
In the 1840s, Texas was an independent republic on the verge of joining the United States. It was also the destination of an ambitious experiment. A group of German nobles formed the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas, often called the Adelsverein, to organize mass emigration to Texas. Germany at the time faced overcrowding, economic hardship, and political frustration, and many ordinary Germans were eager to start over.
Between 1844 and 1846, the society sent more than 7,000 German settlers to Texas. The scale was remarkable, but the organization was not equal to the task. Many colonists suffered greatly from disease and hardship while waiting on the coast and traveling inland. New Braunfels was founded in the middle of this great migration, in 1845, the same year Texas was annexed to the United States.
People & events
Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels led the society's colonists to this spot. On Good Friday, March 21, 1845, several hundred settlers founded their community here. Prince Carl named the town after the German town of Braunfels on the Lahn River, connected to his own family. For a short time it was also called Comal Springs, after the remarkable springs nearby.
The land itself came from Rafael L. and Maria Antonia Veramendi Garza, who sold the society more than 1,200 acres. The Veramendi name belongs to a prominent Tejano family of San Antonio, a reminder that German Texas was built on land that had already been part of Spanish and Mexican Texas. After the settlers arrived, they held a drawing to distribute town lots, a fair way to decide who would live where.
The early years were hard, but the settlers did not give up. In May 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, an astonishing rise for a town only five years old.
What made the town grow was work. Its people included bakers, blacksmiths, butchers, cabinetmakers, carpenters, saddlers, tailors, shoemakers, tanners, tinsmiths, wagon makers, and more. Soon there were brick kilns, cotton gins, flour and grist mills, breweries, a sawmill, a soap and candle house, a door and blind factory, and a woolen mill. New Braunfels became a town that made things.
Its place in the American story
New Braunfels is a cornerstone of German Texas, and German Texas is a major part of the American immigrant story. German immigrants were among the largest immigrant groups in the United States during the nineteenth century, and in Central Texas they created an entire region with its own architecture, food, music, and traditions. The society that founded New Braunfels also helped launch other settlements, including Fredericksburg, extending German settlement into the Texas Hill Country.
The town's founding also shows how layered American history really is. In one place you find Native American homelands, Tejano landowners from Spanish and Mexican Texas, German colonists, and a republic about to become a U.S. state. Few founding stories bring so many threads together in a single year.
New Braunfels also illustrates the importance of skilled immigrant labor in building the American economy. Its craftsmen and early industries turned a frontier settlement into a thriving manufacturing and farming center, the same pattern that made immigrant communities essential to America's growth in the nineteenth century.
If you visit
New Braunfels today is a lively city, but its German roots are easy to find if you look. Watch for German street names, older stone and timber buildings, and institutions that trace their history back to the founding colonists. The marker invites you to see the modern city as the descendant of that 1845 settlement.
The water that drew people here for centuries is still the main attraction. The Comal River, fed by the Comal Springs, is famously clear and cool, and the Guadalupe River runs nearby. Walking along the river helps you understand why both Native peoples and German settlers chose this spot.
New Braunfels is a natural stop on a Hill Country road trip between San Antonio and Austin. Spend time in the historic downtown, sample German-inspired food, and consider continuing west into the Hill Country, where other towns founded by German immigrants carry this same story forward.
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
- · 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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.