Old Scholl House
New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Fachwerk (adobe brick and hewn cedar) section was built about 1847 by Heinrich Scholl, Jr. The newer part is Victorian. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1967.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The oldest part of this New Braunfels house was built about 1847 by Heinrich Scholl, Jr., using the German "Fachwerk" technique of a hewn-cedar timber frame filled with adobe brick. A later Victorian addition reflects how the growing town's tastes changed over the decades while the original immigrant-era core survived.
Why it matters
The Scholl House preserves the earliest German settlement architecture in Texas, a physical link to the immigrant founders who gave the Hill Country its distinctive character.
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Related people
- · Heinrich Scholl, Jr.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Home of Ferdinand Lindheimer
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Ferdinand Lindheimer arrived among the German immigrants who founded New Braunfels, having already taken up arms in the Texas Revolution. He spent decades cataloging the plants of his adopted state so thoroughly that he became known as the father of Texas botany, with numerous species bearing his name. For two decades he also edited the Neu-Braunfels Zeitung, one of the influential German-language newspapers that gave the community its voice.
Texas Germans in the Civil War
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When Texas voted on secession in 1861, ten heavily German counties opposed leaving the Union, an unusual dissent in a Confederate state—though Comal County broke the other way. Many German Texans had only recently taken naturalization oaths and found the doctrine of states' rights hard to parse; some avoided service out of concern for their families while others slipped away to join U.S. units. Still, the majority backed the Confederacy, and three companies from Comal County earned praise for their discipline and morale.
Johann Michael Jahn
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Johann Michael Jahn reached New Braunfels in 1845 as a colonist with the German Emigration Company that founded the town. A trained Tischlermeister, or master cabinetmaker, he built a thriving business in fine handcrafted furniture and served among the city's first aldermen. His son and grandson carried on the trade, raising this building in 1910 and keeping the company going into the 1930s, while examples of Jahn's craftsmanship reached museums including the Witte in San Antonio.
New Braunfels Woolen Mill
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German immigrants August Tolle and Dr. Theodor Koester built a large two-story cedar-timber building in 1864, and in 1868 it became the New Braunfels Woolen Mill, drawing on Comal River water for steam power. The successful mill eventually closed for lack of a protected trademark, and in 1901 the Popp family converted it into the town's first steam laundry, which ran until a 1934 fire. Only the old bell, rock foundation, and part of the chimney remain.