A snippet about life in Kerrville in 1880

An illustration showing "Kerrville" from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 1881.

Click on any image to enlarge.

The February 23, 1880 edition of the San Antonio Freie Presse für Texas, a German-language newspaper published in San Antonio, included a short clipping about happenings in Kerrville. 

I’ve been interested in learning more about life here during the first few decades of our community’s existence, even if it means I have to use the German I learned at Tivy High School and various online tools to translate stories about early Kerr County. Any errors in translation are mine alone – but the translation below is my best guess. Apologies in advance to my teacher at Tivy for any mistakes.

It’s not surprising San Antonio had a German-language newspaper, since so many German immigrants settled there. San Antonio was often the first major stop for those immigrants as they traveled from the Texas coast to German settlements such as New Braunfels, Boerne, and Fredericksburg.

By 1880, the German-speaking population was numerous enough to support a separate newspaper. The San Antonio Freie Presse für Texas began publication in 1865, after the Civil War, and continued publication until around 1926, when it was merged with another newspaper and changed its name.

The same legislation which created Kerr County in 1856 also directed that the county seat be located near the center of the county, and be named Kerrsville, in honor of Maj. James Kerr. Kerr likely never visited our area, and he died in 1850, before the county was created. He was an important figure in the Texas War for Independence from Mexico, and was also credited as being one of the first settlers along the Guadalupe, in the DeWitt Colony, which included the town of Gonzales.

News about Kerr County from those early decades is difficult to find. While there were several newspapers in Kerrville as early as the 1870s, most of those issues have been lost to time. To read about our community requires looking to newspapers published in San Antonio, Austin, and, surprisingly, Galveston.

Many of the early settlers of Kerr County spoke German, and many of those Kerr County settlers had family and business connections to San Antonio, so it’s not surprising Kerr Country residents, such as Caspar Real or Charles Schreiner, would occasionally be mentioned in the pages of the San Antonio Freie Presse für Texas.

Here’s the short paragraph about Kerrville published in that newspaper in February, 1880:

“Kerrville. The firm of Faltin & Schreiner has dissolved. ~ There's a carnival in Kerrville, and jester sessions have been taking place for the past three weeks at Schreiner's. ~ The crop prospects look very promising, but the recent frost has caused some damage to the oats. ~ In early March, Charles Schreiner plans to purchase another 2,500 head of cattle to send them to Kansas. ~ The chairman of the Republican Executive Committee, Mr. Caspar Real, has scheduled a meeting for Saturday, the 28th, to select delegates for the Republican State Convention in Austin. ~ Sam Schram arrived here today on his journey from Concho to San Antonio with a broken buggy and a lame horse. He exclaimed, "If God will forgive me for this trip, I’ll never take another.” Oh, poor Schram! ~ Capt. Schreiner, who now continues the former business of Faltin & Schreiner on his own, left us today to make purchases in San Antonio. ~ The 28th of February will be a gala day for Kerrville. In the morning, there will be a gathering of sheep breeders, in the afternoon a meeting of the Republicans, and in the evening an event for the Concordia Singing Club. The latter plans to host a singing festival in May; naturally, it will be held in our neighboring town of Comfort (by Peter). Hopefully, the Beethoven Association will participate. We haven't forgotten the last festival yet.”

While none of these snippets of information are what we’d consider Big News, they do show folks in Kerrville and Kerr County in 1880 were active socially, economically, and politically.

These little stories about Kerrville, when taken individually, don’t give a very clear picture of life here in the late 19th century; however, when considering each item as if it was a single piece of tile, and then putting enough of them together to form a mosaic, a clearer image emerges.

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who enjoys studying local history. This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times October 7, 2023.

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