Fredericksburg: The German Town That Made Its Own Peace
Near Fredericksburg, Texas
In the spring of eighteen forty-six, John O. Meusebach led a column of one hundred twenty German immigrants west from the Texas coast through the Hill Country, following the conditions of a land grant offered to a German colonization society known as the Adelsverein, or Nobility Society. The Adelsverein was a venture organized by a group of German princes and aristocrats who hoped to create a German colony in Texas, acquire land, and profit from the settlement.
The venture itself would eventually collapse in debt and mismanagement, but the settlement it created would survive. Meusebach found a site on the Pedernales River in the Hill Country and named the new town Fredericksburg in honor of Prince Frederick of Prussia on May eighth, eighteen forty-six. What the colonists found when they arrived was a frontier in the fullest sense.
The land they had been granted lay in the heart of Comanche territory, and the Texas government could offer no military protection. Meusebach, a practical and unusually courageous man, did something most Anglo colonizers did not: he negotiated directly with the Comanche bands whose territory he was entering. In early eighteen forty-seven he rode west from Fredericksburg to meet with Penateka Comanche leaders on the San Saba River.
The resulting Meusebach-Comanche Treaty opened more than three million acres to settlement and was the only treaty ever negotiated between Plains Indians and private settlers rather than the federal government. It held. The farms around Fredericksburg were never attacked by Comanche raiders.
The town that resulted from this unusual foundation is one of the most distinctive in Texas. Its German character is not a performance for tourists, though tourists have arrived in large numbers. The limestone architecture along Main Street, the culture of Sunday observance, the Easter fire traditions, the peach orchards, the wine country: these are things that grew from a specific immigrant community planting itself in a specific landscape and holding on through generations.
