Waisenhaus (Orphanage)

🏛️The era

New Braunfels was a young town when this orphanage was chartered in 1848. It had been founded only a few years earlier, in 1845, as a settlement for German immigrants brought to Texas by an organized colonization society. Thousands of German families crossed the Atlantic in those years, hoping for land and a better life on the Texas frontier.

The journey and the first years were brutally hard. Immigrants landed on the Gulf Coast and then had to travel inland, often exposed, short of supplies, and vulnerable to sickness. Disease swept through the newcomers in the mid-1840s, and the death toll was heavy. The marker says it plainly: because of severe epidemics, many children were left homeless.

Texas itself was changing quickly. It had been an independent republic and joined the United States at the end of 1845. In this new state, with few public institutions, caring for children who had lost their parents fell to churches, neighbors, and determined individuals.

👥People & events

The man at the center of this story is Louis C. Ervendberg, pastor of New Braunfels. Faced with so many children who had lost their families, he chartered the Western Texas Orphan Asylum in 1848, which is known as the first orphanage in Texas.

This was not an institution with dormitories and a large staff. Ervendberg built a house on this site and started a farm. Here he raised nineteen orphans alongside his own five children. That made a household of two dozen young people, all living, working, and learning together.

The Waisenhaus, German for orphanage, was also a school. Ervendberg held classes and taught farming methods, preparing the children to support themselves on the land. His wife taught housekeeping, which in the frontier economy was skilled and essential work. Together they gave these children both a home and a way to make a living.

The marker records that Ervendberg died in 1863. The house he built still stands, though it has been much remodeled over the years, and it was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1970.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Nineteenth-century America had very little in the way of public child welfare. When parents died, the children's fate depended on relatives, neighbors, churches, or private charity. Orphanages, often founded by religious leaders, became one of the country's main answers, especially after epidemics, wars, and the hardships of migration.

The Waisenhaus shows that story playing out on the Texas frontier. It also captures the immigrant experience at its most painful. Many families who crossed an ocean for opportunity lost loved ones to disease before they could settle, and their communities had to build ways to care for the survivors.

The orphanage's mix of farming lessons, schooling, and household training also reflects a widely held belief of the time: that orphaned children should be raised to be self-reliant through useful work. In that sense, this modest farmhouse is an early chapter in the long American story of how communities care for children who have no one else.

🧭If you visit

New Braunfels wears its German heritage proudly, and this site fits right into that story. Look for the house the marker describes. Keep in mind that it has been heavily remodeled, so what you see today has changed a great deal from the farmhouse where two dozen children once lived.

Try to picture the place as a working farm, with children doing chores, attending lessons, and learning the skills they would need as adults. It is a moving stop if you are traveling with kids, because it puts a child's-eye view on frontier history.

New Braunfels makes an easy base for exploring. Combine this marker with a walk through the town's historic areas, a meal that nods to its German roots, or time along the area's rivers. The surrounding Hill Country offers plenty more for a day trip. Please respect the property if it is privately owned and view it from public spaces.