Germans in Texas History


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Would read again

So Texans bomb the moon around here now?

Good stuff. My dad remembers people in San Antonio in the 1930's still speaking German in stores he visited.

The road west from San Felipe was the "Gotier Trace". The road name is a misspelled take on James Gotcher who was hired by Stephen F Austin to develop the road west from San Felipe on the Brazos towards the newer colony in the Austin area. Along the Gotier Trace, towns developed as German and Czech immigrants arrived: Cat Spring (the Kleberg family), New Ulm (Czechs), Industry (Freiderich Ernst), Nassau Plantation and Round Top (Adelsverein), Serbin (Wendish people from the ship Ben Nevis), through the lost pines and down to the El Camino Real crossing of the Colorado (now Bastrop). It was the sight of Indian raids and battles and is part of Crockett and the TN Volunteers path to the Alamo.

I do a lot of historical research on the Gotier Trace, raise money for local charities, and once a year ride horse from the Brazos to the Colorado (100 miles; about 6 days).

Dolores on the Rio Grande, what a story

Very cool. I really enjoy learning about things like this. Any books you would suggest?

See Norm Macdonald on Germany.

Also, see Mark Twain on the German language.

Ever notice that all the iconic Texas towns are German? There was a big difference in culture between the German settlers and their stone work buildings compared to the Scottish / Irish that settled from the east in their clapboard shacks.

chilimuybueno said:

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Very cool. I really enjoy learning about things like this. Any books you would suggest?

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Read all those related TSHA articles and look at the notes at the end. Those are the primary or best secondary sources. There is a prof at tu named Jim Kearney who teaches a course on 19th c. European migration to Texas and he has a syllabus online with some other good books/articles.

I remember speaking at a field day in Doss back in the 90's and walking up afterwards to a group of older gentlemen who were speaking German. One of the guys, a District Director, stopped the conversation and told the others I didn't speak German. They switched to English. I've always appreciated the manners shown to include me in the conversation.

Will read later. Interesting fact:

German POWs were housed at country campus in Huntsville, TX during WW2. The main reason being that the Geneva convention required prisoners be held in a location similar to their homeland.

Although not sure how the climate factored into that, maybe it was just topography/forests

My grandfather came over from Germany when he was 5 and his family settled in Industry, I always loved the stories he would tell.

https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/when-afrika-korps-came-texas-world-war-ii-pows-lone-star-state

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Arnold Krammer was professor of history at Texas A&M University, specializing in modern European and German history. He authored several books, including Nazi Prisoners of War in America (New York: Stein & Day, 1979, Scarborough, 1983, 1996). His essay, "When the Afrika Korps Came to Texas" examines the history of the nearly eighty thousand German, Italian, and Japanese prisoners of war held in Texas during the Second World War. The essay, which is excerpted here, is included in the book Invisible Texans: Women and Minorities in Texas History (McGraw-Hill, 2005), a collection of eighteen essays exploring those who have been under-represented in previous writings about Texas history.

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When considering places to construct POW camps, Washington looked to the South. First, there was lots of available land in the southern United States, more than could be found in the crowded North.

Second, Texas, in particular, was located far from the critical war industries on the East and West Coasts. Also, the mild climate assured minimal construction and operation costs. Eager Texas businessmen and farmers lobbied vigorously for camps in their labor-starved state, with the idea of using the incoming prisoners to fill the huge gap left by the military's needs.

Finally, there was the precedent of the Geneva Accords of 1929. Created after World War I, the Geneva Accords established the rules of war, and contained guidelines on matters ranging from the prohibition of explosive or dum-dum bullets to the care of prisoners of war.

Of interest to the War Department were the passages that guaranteed prisoners' treatment equal to the conditions of the army in charge, and the recommendation by the Geneva Accords that prisoners be taken to a climate similar to that in which they had been captured. Since the climate most similar to that of Tunisia, where the Afrika Korps surrendered in early 1943, was the American South and, in particular, the state of Texas (although dozens of camps sprang up in Louisiana, New Mexico, and surrounding states), construction began in the Lone Star State.

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World War II Prisoner of War Camps in Texas

Camp Barkeley (SW of Abilene)
Camp Bowie (Brownwood)
Camp Brady (Brady)
Camp Bullis (NW of San Antonio)
Camp Fannin (Tyler)
Camp Hearne (Hearne)
Camp Hereford (Deaf Smith County)
Camp Hood (Killeen)
Camp Howze (Gainesville)
Camp Hulen (Palacios)
Camp Huntsville (Huntsville)
Camp McLean (McLean)
Camp Maxey (Paris)
Camp Mexia (Mexia)
Camp Swift (Bastrop)
Camp Wallace (Galveston County)
Camp Wharton (Wharton)
Camp White Rock (Dallas)
Camp Wolters (Mineral Wells)
Corpus Christi Naval Air Station (Corpus Christi)
Fort Bliss (El Paso)
Fort Crockett (Galveston)
Fort D. A. Russell (Marfa)
Fort Sam Houston (San Antonio)
McCloskey General Hospital (Temple)

wbt5845 said:

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Good stuff. My dad remembers people in San Antonio in the 1930's still speaking German in stores he visited.

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My mother attends a Lutheran church that still has the letter from the War Department during WWI telling them to stop holding services in German. Imagine the government today telling a south Texas Catholic church not to have services in Spanish.

. She was born in 1940 in Solms (south New Braunfels). Up until that point her family still spoke a lot of German, but because of WWII and the paranoia her family pretty much quit speaking it entirely.

My mother's German roots largely go back to Prussia and immigration in the late-1800s. My father's roots generally go back the Thuringia area and immigration in 1845. While they were both "German" they couldn't understand each other's dialects.

Fightin_Aggie said:

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Will read later. Interesting fact:

German POWs were housed at country campus in Huntsville, TX during WW2. The main reason being that the Geneva convention required prisoners be held in a location similar to their homeland. where they were captured (North Africa)

Although not sure how the climate factored into that, maybe it was just topography/forests

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" The main reason being that the Geneva convention required prisoners be held in a location similar to their homeland. where they were captured (North Africa)", same latitude, see also Hearne POW camp.

See previous post..

FIFY

doubledog said:

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Fightin_Aggie said:

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Will read later. Interesting fact:

German POWs were housed at country campus in Huntsville, TX during WW2. The main reason being that the Geneva convention required prisoners be held in a location similar to their homeland. where they were captured (North Africa)

Although not sure how the climate factored into that, maybe it was just topography/forests

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" The main reason being that the Geneva convention required prisoners be held in a location similar to their homeland. where they were captured (North Africa)", same for Hearne POW camp.

FIFY

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They had a German POW Camp in Crystal City………..figure that one out. Some stayed after the war.

B-1 83 said:

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doubledog said:

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Fightin_Aggie said:

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Will read later. Interesting fact:

German POWs were housed at country campus in Huntsville, TX during WW2. The main reason being that the Geneva convention required prisoners be held in a location similar to their homeland. where they were captured (North Africa)

Although not sure how the climate factored into that, maybe it was just topography/forests

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" The main reason being that the Geneva convention required prisoners be held in a location similar to their homeland. where they were captured (North Africa)", same for Hearne POW camp.

FIFY

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They had a German POW Camp in Crystal City………..figure that one out. Some stayed after the war.

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Same latitude as North Africa.

My father's side was from Alsace and settled in Medina County in the 1850s.

I came from the atheistic Guadalupe Valley, German to the max, hard farming and ranching work to the max. Thank God my Irish American mother taught me the faith..My relatives in Comfort were all atheists...

B-1 83 said:

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They had a German POW Camp in Crystal City………..figure that one out. Some stayed after the war.

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I thought the Crystal City Camp was not a POW Camp, but instead an interment camp for Americans of German, Italian, and Japanese descent. You hear a lot about the Japanese camps, but other Axis powers were subject to interment, too.

When Mom was in the nursing home, another man there was a friend of ours. He could speak German so well, he became a translator for the Army during the War. The captured Nazis all accused him of being a traitor, but he explained to them that he loved Germany, but not Hitler. He was very kind to the POWs, BTW...

I took a class as a freshman at UT called "Germans in America," and its focus was the German/Germanic settlers in Texas. It was probably my favorite class in college, smallest class size, and our teacher was a grad student from Leichtenstein. As I recall, we had 18 books assigned, but we only really read snippets of most.

Off the top of my head, I remember reading Jennie Gerheart,which was a historical fiction story about a pioneer family in Texas. I wrote a paper about the Wends in Texas, and I interviewed a lot of Wendish descendents in central Texas. Wish I still had a copy of the paper.

wbt5845 said:

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Good stuff. My dad remembers people in San Antonio in the 1930's still speaking German in stores he visited.

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North of Copperas Cove, a small Lutheran church had a school that taught at least partially in German until WWII. The settlers of the area were Wends and Germans, so they had kept speaking the language. When I wrote my paper, I spoke with people who had gone to school there about their experiences.

Third generation German-American
My Great Grandfather was born in Austria-Hungary (Sudeten land), 10 km from the German border
he spoke fluent German
My Grandfather was 1st gen American He spoke good German
My great uncles (three of them) fought in the trenches of France against the Germans WWI, all of them were interpreters of some kind.
My father knew only German curse words.
He and two of my uncles fought the Germans in WWII D-day to Munich, cursing all the way (I am told)
I can speak no German at all.

God Bless America...

CanyonAg77 said:

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B-1 83 said:

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They had a German POW Camp in Crystal City………..figure that one out. Some stayed after the war.

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I thought the Crystal City Camp was not a POW Camp, but instead an interment camp for Americans of German, Italian, and Japanese descent. You hear a lot about the Japanese camps, but other Axis powers were subject to interment, too.

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That would be news to me, but certainly not impossible. I just always heard it referred to as a POW camp.

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My relatives in Comfort were all atheists...

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Free Thinkers they called themselves.

Have a good friend born (in 1943) and raised at Luchenbach. Still lives on the farm his great grandfather settled. When he started school, he could speak no English.

Those pioneers were a different breed.

My great-great grandfather/grandmother who I share my surname with emigrated to Gillespie county in 1873. Settled northwest of Fredericksburg, towards Doss where they had a ranch/farm. My great grandfather was born in 1880 and probably learned German before English. He was the youngest of the sons, so I'm guessing he decided to go out on his own, moving to Bisbee, Arizona around 1910 to work in the copper mines where he met my great grandmother and where my grandfather and great aunt were born. In the early 1920s they moved to Electra TX to work in the oil fields, then to Del Rio/Eagle Pass area to farm and ranch.

Still have lots of distant relatives in Gillespie County. The original family cemetery is still there, I need to figure out who owns that land now and get permission to visit.

Have you read the "Doss" thread on the Outdoors Board? Check it out.

B-1 83 said:

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CanyonAg77 said:

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B-1 83 said:

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They had a German POW Camp in Crystal City………..figure that one out. Some stayed after the war.

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I thought the Crystal City Camp was not a POW Camp, but instead an interment camp for Americans of German, Italian, and Japanese descent. You hear a lot about the Japanese camps, but other Axis powers were subject to interment, too.

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That would be news to me, but certainly not impossible. I just always heard it referred to as a POW camp.

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https://www.thc.texas.gov/crystalcity

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Housing all three Axis nationalities, Crystal City (Family) Internment Camp was intended to be populated by people of Japanese ancestry and their immediate families. However, on December 12, 1942, the camp's first internees to arrive were a mix of German Americans and German Enemy Aliens. On February 12, 1943, the first group of Latin Americans arrivedalso Germansdeported from Costa Rica. On March 17, 1943, the first group of Japanese American internees arrived. The Immigration and Naturalization (INS) planned to transfer all German internees to another camp, but the German spokesman asked camp officials if they could remain because their living conditions here were far better than at previous confinement sites they were held at.

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Much more at link

I also remember, when growing up in Teague, hearing stories' about a German family that lived between Teague and Mexia that had a produce stand on old US 84. At the beginning of WW II, they changed their name to Smith and quit speaking German. Everyone liked them and just pretended they'd never been German and kept shopping there.

Well $#@&! I learned something…..now I have to forget something to make room.

aggiehawg said:

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My father's side was from Alsace and settled in Medina County in the 1850s.

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My dad spoke Alsatian and German, and had to learn English in school.

Give me a clue AggieHawg, maybe a last name or something, to see if I know your family (probably do if they are still in Medina County).

BoerneGator said:

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Have you read the "Doss" thread on the Outdoors Board? Check it out.

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No, thanks for the heads up!

BoerneGator said:

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My relatives in Comfort were all atheists...

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Free Thinkers they called themselves.

Have a good friend born (in 1943) and raised at Luchenbach. Still lives on the farm his great grandfather settled. When he started school, he could speak no English.

Those pioneers were a different breed.

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My grandfather was born in south Travis County in 1899. Same thing. When he started school in 1906 he didn't speak any English. He found a girl who spoke a little of both and followed her around until he learned enough English to get by. Rode a horse to school on his first day. Sixty years later men walked on the moon. Hell of an era to live.

His wife, my grandmother, was from Comfort. Cousins still own the ranch where she grew up. Tough people out there. The ranch was recognized by the Family Land Heritage Program a few years back.