Riley-Enderlin House
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This simply designed vernacular home was built in 1909 by Franz Stein for Emil H. and Bertha Riley. In 1912 the home was purchased by Charles Enderlin, Sr. (1846-1931) and remained in the Enderlin family for over seventy years. A German immigrant and Civil War veteran, Enderlin modified the home soon after he bought it to accommodate his large family. Features of the house include its side-gabled roof, shed roof front porch, and two front doors. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1987
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This modest vernacular home went up in 1909 in the German settlement of Fredericksburg, built by Franz Stein for the Riley family. In 1912 it passed to Charles Enderlin, a German immigrant and Civil War veteran who reshaped the house to fit his large family and kept it in Enderlin hands for more than seventy years. Its side-gabled roof, shed-roof porch, and distinctive pair of front doors reflect the plain, practical building traditions of the Texas Hill Country.
Why it matters
Homes like this preserve the fabric of German immigrant life in central Texas, where newcomers built enduring communities that shaped the region's culture for generations.
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Related people
- · Charles Enderlin, Sr.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Christian Kraus Homestead
Fredericksburg, TX
Christian Kraus began this stone home in 1859 after he and his wife Anna Maria settled in the German community of Klein Frankreich, or 'Little France,' near Fredericksburg. Kraus farmed and taught school, and the family raised not only their own seven children but also the seven orphaned children of Peter Burg, who was killed by the Haengebrande, the vigilante band that terrorized Unionist Germans during the Civil War. A pillar of the community, Kraus helped build Fredericksburg's St. Mary's Catholic Church and expanded his vernacular stone home in 1879.
Homestead of Karl Itz
Fredericksburg, TX
Karl Itz left Westerburg, Germany, as a boy and settled among the German immigrants of Gillespie County in 1852, marrying Henrietta Evers a few years later. When the Civil War came, Itz joined fellow German Unionists who refused to fight for the Confederacy and set out for Mexico, only to be overtaken by Confederate forces at the Battle of the Nueces in 1862. Many of his companions were killed, but Itz survived and lived in hiding until the war's end. He later moved his family here and built this stone home in 1875.
Cypress Creek Cemetery
Center Point, TX
Cypress Creek Cemetery holds the nineteenth-century heritage of a German settler community in the Texas Hill Country. Its oldest documented grave, from 1861, belongs to Laura Steves Boerner, whose husband Wilhelm was killed at the Battle of the Nueces in August 1862—a deadly clash in which Confederate forces attacked German Unionists fleeing Texas. Pioneers, children, a respected physician, and even two strangers who died of tuberculosis while passing through rest here.
"Treue Der Union"
Comfort, TX
Erected in 1866, this German-language monument—"Loyalty to the Union"—honors 68 mostly German settlers of the Hill Country who remained loyal to the United States during the Civil War. Fleeing toward Mexico, many were killed by Confederates at the Battle of the Nueces in 1862 and a later fight; their remains were gathered and buried here in 1865.