Ottmar von Behr
Sisterdale, Kendall County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Ottmar Von Behr had an influence on German immigration before bringing his family to Texas in 1848. Having toured America in 1846, he published an imigrant’s guide, suggesting the life of a Texas farmer. Although Ottmar was a son of nobility in Germany, he left to farm and raise sheep in Texas. German immigrants were moving to Texas with professional credentials and degrees to seek new freedoms. Ottmar and his neighbors brought with them a distinguished collection of books and a passion for intellectual freedom, attributes that led to the creation of a Latin Colony. The Sisterdale Region was not a platted community, but a series of large farms populated by German immigrants who left behind prestigious recognition in Germany to take up farming. Ottmar was the second regional pioneer to settle in Guadalupe Valley by the Old Pinta Trail. Thus, his entry in 1848 gave him second settler status in future Blanco County (1858) and Kendall County (1862). Ottmar was also responsible for the naming of Sisterdale. He suggested changing the Sisty’s Creeks to Sister Creeks and put Sisterdale on the map when he petitioned for a post office in 1851 and was appointed first postmaster. He was elected justice of the peace in 1851. Ottmar was known for his social skills, hosting visitors, guests and travelers. Ottmar had returned to Germany in 1855 when the Sisterdale Petition was signed to create a new county so his wife, Louise Behr, signed for him. Ottmar never returned to Texas; he died on his return trip back to America. Ottmar only lived in Sisterdale for seven years, but he left a lasting legacy.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ottmar von Behr, a son of German nobility, shaped emigration to Texas with an 1846 guidebook praising the life of a Texas farmer before bringing his own family to settle in 1848. Around Sisterdale he and like-minded neighbors—educated Germans trading prestige for farming—built a 'Latin Colony' famed for its books and its passion for intellectual freedom. Von Behr named Sisterdale, won its first post office, and served as its first postmaster and a justice of the peace before dying on a return voyage from Germany.
Why it matters
The Latin colonies of the Texas Hill Country show how political idealists fleeing Old-World constraints tried to plant learning and liberty in the American frontier soil.
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Related people
- · Ottmar von Behr
- · Louise von Behr
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sisterdale
Sisterdale, TX
Sisterdale sits along the old Pinto Trail, an ancient Native American route linking San Antonio's missions to lands north, at a crossing of the Guadalupe's tributaries. German settlers of the Adelsverein began arriving in the 1840s, and engineer Nicolaus Zink built the first home here in 1847; Ottmar von Behr, who named the village and became its first postmaster, drew the name from nearby Sister Hills. Populated by educated free-thinkers—many refugees of the failed 1848 German revolution—it became one of the Hill Country's 'Latin settlements,' impressing even the traveler Frederick Law Olmsted in 1854.
Beseler Family
Welfare, TX
Carl Joseph and Augusta Beseler brought their family from Germany to Texas in 1848 and settled on a Kendall County land grant, where the community of Welfare took root. The family's story tracks Texas's divided loyalties: their son Ernst died at the Battle of the Nueces, where Confederate forces killed German Unionists, while his brother Carl Philipp went on to build Welfare into a railroad shipping point and hold a string of county offices in the 1880s. The old general store is among the few remnants of the community they founded.
Waring Schoolhouse
Waring, TX
In 1891, Anglo settlers in this heavily German-settled area built the west wing of Waring's first public school on land donated by the town's Irish-born namesake, Robert Percival Maxwell Waring. Neighbors volunteered the labor and materials, and families paid a dollar or so a month in tuition for each child. The building grew with an east wing in 1903 and served until the school closed in 1954.
Nicolaus Zink
Boerne, TX
In 1844, Bavarian-born civil engineer Nicolaus Zink was chosen to lead German immigrants to a Texas land grant under Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and the Mainzer Adelsverein. Finding the granted land deep in Comanche country, Zink persuaded the prince to settle instead at the site that became New Braunfels, and his steady leadership carried the colonists through unrest, disease, and starvation. He later built homes across the Hill Country and helped engineer the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad bed to Kerrville.