New Book Explores
the German Roots of the Texas Hill Country
Colonization brought thousands to
Surveying the conditions that spurred German emigration to
North America, Morgenthaler tells of the Adelsverein—the emigration society formed by
idealistic nobles who sought to relieve social pressure by promoting German
migration to Texas. He follows the impossibly romantic and aristocratic Prince
Carl of Solms-Braunfels as he leads the colonists
inland from Matagorda Bay while concocting plans to establish an armed and
independent German colony that would block
Beginning with the work of historians who have gone before, Morgenthaler adds new translations and archival materials,
while integrating colonization material that has surfaced over the years but
that has never been woven into a coherent story of the mass influx that more
than doubled the population of
The book chronicles the founding of New Braunfels under Prince Solms, the advance to Fredericksburg under the leadership of John Meusebach—the former Baron Johann von Meusebach—the establishment of a tenuous peace with the Comanches, and the failure of the Adelsverein colonists to reach the impossibly distant Fisher-Miller Land Grant that was meant to be their home.
Unlike any prior book on the subject, The German Settlement
of the Texas Hill Country follows the German settlers farther, into the
turmoil of the Civil War. Exploring unexpected divisions among Hill Country
Germans, Morgenthaler analyzes the intellectual
underpinnings and life experiences that brought
This is the remarkable story of twenty historic years that
evidence themselves today in German-Texan vernacular architecture, a tradition
of Hill Country sausage-making, lingering turnvereins and schuetzenvereins,
and continued ownership of
Jefferson Morgenthaler is the
author of The River Has Never Divided Us (
The German Settlement of the Texas Hill Country (softback, ISBN 978-1-932801-09-5, $18.95) is published by
Mockingbird Books of Boerne,