Union Veteran 2nd. Lt. Adolph Strieber
Yorktown, DeWitt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Co. G, 16th Illinois Cavalry from Apr. 1, 1863 to Aug. 15, 1865. Enlisted as private in Springfield, Ill., after crossing Confederate lines by walking, stagecoach and steamboat. Like many Texas Germans, he felt U.S. should be kept together. Born in Zellerfield, Germany. Came to Texas via Old Indianola with parents in 1846. Married Marie Wagenschien 1866. Pioneer merchant. Prominent citizen. Recorded - 1964
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Adolph Strieber, born in Zellerfeld, Germany, came to Texas as a boy through the port of Old Indianola in 1846. Like many Texas Germans who believed the Union should be preserved, he crossed Confederate lines on foot, by stagecoach, and by steamboat to enlist as a private in Springfield, Illinois, serving in Company G of the 16th Illinois Cavalry from 1863 to 1865. After the war he returned to Texas as a merchant and prominent citizen of Yorktown.
Why it matters
It commemorates the Texas Germans who risked everything to fight for the Union, a Unionist current that ran against the grain of the Confederate South.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1840s, thousands of Germans left the hard times and crowded states of central Europe for Texas, drawn by organized immigration societies and the promise of cheap, abundant land. They came ashore on the Gulf Coast and pushed inland, founding towns and farming communities that would keep their language and customs alive for generations.
Adolph Strieber was part of that wave, arriving with his parents in 1846 through Indianola — then a booming Texas port on the coast, the great gateway for German newcomers, and a town that later hurricanes would erase from the map entirely. He grew up a "Texas German," a member of a distinct community with an outlook of its own.
When secession came in 1861, that outlook mattered enormously. Many Texas Germans opposed leaving the Union — out of loyalty to the country that had welcomed them, and often out of opposition to slavery — a stance that set them against their Confederate neighbors and, at times, placed them in real danger.
People & events
Strieber's convictions carried him on an extraordinary journey. Rather than take up arms for the Confederacy, he slipped out of Texas to fight for the Union, crossing Confederate lines on foot, by stagecoach, and by steamboat, all the way to Springfield, Illinois.
There, in 1863, he enlisted as a private and served in Company G of the 16th Illinois Cavalry until the war ended in 1865, eventually rising to the rank of second lieutenant. It was a long and dangerous road for a young man to travel simply to wear the uniform he believed in.
After the war he came home to Texas, married Marie Wagenschien in 1866, and built a life as a merchant and a respected citizen of Yorktown — a Union soldier returning to live and prosper among the very community the war had torn in two.
Its place in the American story
The Civil War is usually told as North against South, but Strieber's story reveals the war that ran inside the South itself. The Confederacy was never of one mind, and among the Texas Germans there was a stubborn, principled loyalty to the United States.
His willingness to cross hundreds of miles of hostile territory just to enlist puts a human face on that Unionism. He reminds us that immigrants — new Americans, many still speaking German — were among the war's most determined defenders of the nation they had chosen.
That a Texas town would later raise a memorial to one of its own who fought for the other side says something about how the country slowly made peace with its divided past — choosing to honor conviction over the color of a man's coat.
If you visit
This is a memorial marker in Yorktown, in the heart of Texas's German-settled country, and it rewards a moment of reflection more than a long walk.
Read it with a map in your mind: picture the distance from this quiet Texas town to Springfield, Illinois, and the nerve it took to cover that ground in secret, through wartime lines, to reach the recruiting officer.
It pairs well with a wider drive through the German belt of south-central Texas, where town names, old storefronts, and family names still echo the immigrants who, like Strieber, decided this country was worth claiming as their own.
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
- · Adolph Strieber
- · Marie Wagenschien
Themes & tags
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