Sisterdale, Texas

{{Infobox settlement

|official_name = Sisterdale, Texas

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|image_skyline = Sisterdale Dance hall (1 of 1).jpg

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|pushpin_map = Texas#USA

|pushpin_image = Relief map of Texas.png

|pushpin_label = Sisterdale

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|pushpin_map_caption = Location in Texas and the United States

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|subdivision_type = Country

|subdivision_name = United States

|subdivision_type1 = State

|subdivision_name1 = Texas

|subdivision_type2 = County

|subdivision_name2 = Kendall

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|unit_pref = Imperial

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|population_as_of = 2010

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|timezone = Central (CST)

|utc_offset = -6

|timezone_DST = CDT

|utc_offset_DST = -5

|elevation_footnotes =

|elevation_m = 390

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|coordinates = {{coord|29|58|23|N|98|43|15|W|region:US-TX|display=inline,title}}

|postal_code_type = ZIP code

|postal_code = 78006 (Boerne)

|area_code = 830

|blank_name = FIPS code

|blank_info = 48-68060{{cite web|url=https://www.census.gov|publisher=United States Census Bureau|access-date=2008-01-31|title=U.S. Census website}}

|blank1_name = GNIS feature ID

|blank1_info = 1347179{{GNIS|1347179}}

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Sisterdale is an unincorporated farming and ranching community established in 1847 and located {{convert|13|mi}} north of Boerne in Kendall County, in the U.S. state of Texas. The community is located in the valley of Sister Creek.{{Handbook of Texas | name=Sister Creek| id=rbsbz| retrieved=30 April 2010}} Texas State Historical Association The elevation is {{convert|1280|ft}}.{{cite web | title=Geographical Names Information System, Sisterdale | publisher=U.S. Dept of the Interior |url=http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/f?p=135:3:3940826407867433::NO:3:P3_FID,P3_TITLE:1347179,Sisterdale | access-date=30 April 2010}} U.S. Dept of the Interior

Community

Sisterdale{{cite news |title=Sisterdale Just Spread Out |last=Syers |first=Ed |newspaper=The Victoria Advocate |date=18 October 1964 |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=SDEKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=JksDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5224,2126948&dq=sisterdale+texas&hl=en }} was settled in 1847 by German surveyor and free thinker Nicolaus Zink.{{Handbook of Texas | name=Zinc, Nicolaus | id=fzi01|author=Ragsdale, Crystal Sessie | retrieved=30 April 2010}} Texas State Historical Association Originally part of Comal County, Sisterdale became part of Kendall County when the latter was formed in 1862.

Among the settlers were German pioneers Fritz and Betty Holekamp,Morgenthaler, Jefferson; The German Settlement of the Texas Hill Country; 2011 geographer Ernst Kapp;{{Handbook of Texas | name=Kapp, Ernst | id=fka01|author=Jordan, Terry G. | retrieved=30 April 2010}} Texas State Historical Association Anhalt Premier progeny Baron Ottomar von Behr;{{Handbook of Texas | name=Von Behr, Ottmar | id=fvo02|author=Ragsdale, Paul C. | retrieved=30 April 2010}} Texas State Historical Association journalist Carl Adolph Douai;{{Handbook of Texas | name=Douai, Carl Daniel Adolph | id=fdo30|author=Sibley, Marilyn M. | retrieved=30 April 2010}} Texas State Historical Association August Siemering{{Handbook of Texas | name=Siemering, August | id=fsi06|author=Gold, Ella | retrieved=30 April 2010}} Texas State Historical Association who later founded the San Antonio Express News; author, journalist and diplomat Julius Fröbel; future Wall Street financial wizard Gustav Theissen; and Edgar von Westphalen,{{cite book |title=Cultural Encounters with the Environment |last1=Haarman |first1=Viola | last2=Conzen | first2=Michael P. |year=2000 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc | isbn=978-0-7425-0105-8 |pages=39, 45, 56 }}{{cite web | title=Edgar von Westphalen | publisher=Marxists.org | url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/family/edgar-vw.htm | access-date=30 May 2010}} Roe Hampton University-London{{cite web | title=Jenny von Westphalen | publisher=Marxists.org | url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/family/jenny-vw.htm | access-date=30 May 2010}} Roe Hampton University-London brother to Jenny von Westphalen who was married to Karl Marx.{{cite web | title=Marx, Karl-Julius Fröbel, Julius | publisher=Roe Hampton University-London |author=Simon, B. | url=http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/staff/kevin%20j.brehony/web/Julius_Froebel.html | access-date=30 April 2010}} Roe Hampton University-London

The first child born in Sisterdale (and in Kendall County) was Julius Holekamp on June 10, 1849, to Fritz and Betty Holekamp.Ransleben, Guido E.; A Hundred Years of Comfort in Texas; 1954

One notable early colonist was Edward Degener, future Republican congressman from Texas during the Reconstruction era. Degener's sons Hugo and Hilmar died during the American Civil War in the Nueces massacre. To honor their memory, Degener along with Eduard Steves and William Heuermann purchased land for the establishment of the German-language Treue der Union Monument, which was built in 1866 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.{{cite web|title=National Register of Historic Places-Kendall Co, Tx|url=http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/TX/Kendall/state.html|publisher=U.S. Dept. of Interior, the National Park Service|access-date=2 February 2011}}

Also among the settlers was Julius Dresel (or Dressel), a member of the German Chambers of Deputies,{{cite web | title=Wine Industry Pioneers | publisher=The Wine Institute | url=http://www.wineinstitute.org/company/library/specialcollections | access-date=30 May 2010}} The Wine Institute who was the first to plant a Sisterdale vineyard. His brother Emil Dresel and partner Jacob Gundlach later established the Rhein Farm Vineyard in Sonoma, California. Julius later moved to San Antonio. Upon the death of brother Emil, who bequeathed Julius his share of the Sonoma vineyard, Julius moved his family to California.{{cite book|last=Guinn|first=James Miller|title=History of the State of California and Biographical Record of Coast Counties, California: An Historical Story of the State's Marvelous Growth from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eMoPo5ce3IIC&pg=PA1050|year=1902|publisher=Chapman Publishing Company|page=1050}}

The community received a post office in 1851, and Ottomar W. Behr was the first postmaster.{{cite web | title=Sisterdale Postmasters | publisher=Jim Wheat | url=http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txpost/comal.html | access-date=29 April 2010}}Jim Wheat

Sisterdale eventually had a school house, a gas station-garage, a general store, a cotton gin, and a factory for making cypress shingles. The old 1885 cotton gin in Sisterdale has been restored and is today home to Sister Creek Vineyards.{{cite web | title=Sisterdale Creek Vineyards | url=http://www.sistercreekvineyards.com/ | access-date=29 April 2010}}

Historical population

{{US Census population

|1880= 150

|1910= 26

|1920= 50

|1970= 63

|1980= 100

|1990= 60

|2000= 25

|2010= 110

|align=none

}}

Source: Texas Escapes {{cite web |title=Sisterdale, Texas. |url=http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasHillCountryTowns/Sisterdale-Texas.htm |website=www.texasescapes.com |access-date=26 February 2022}}

Free thinkers

Sisterdale was one of the Latin Settlements, resulting from the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states. Those who came were Forty-Eighters, intellectual liberal abolitionists who enjoyed conversing in Latin and believed in utopian ideals that guaranteed basic human rights to all.{{cite web | title=Freethinkers of the Early Texas Hill Country | publisher=Freethinkers Association of Central Texas | author=Scharf, Edwin E | url=http://www.freethinkersact.org/articles.htm | access-date=9 May 2010 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090219213619/http://www.freethinkersact.org/articles.htm | archive-date=19 February 2009 }} Freethinkers Association of Central Texas They reveled in passionate conversations about literature, music and philosophy.{{cite web | title=German Intellectuals on the Texas Frontier | publisher=TexFiles |author=Kennedy, Ira | url=http://www.texfiles.com/texashistory/castell.htm | access-date=30 April 2010}}

The free thinkers petitioned the Texas Legislature in 1853 for a charter to operate a German-English college to be built at Sisterdale, but the petition did not come to fruition.{{cite web | title=Freethinkers of the Early Texas Hill Country | publisher=Free Thinkers Association of Texas | author=Scharf, Edwin E. | url=http://ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/1998/april98/scharf.html| access-date=30 April 2010}}

Irene Marschall King, granddaughter of John O. Meusebach, remembered how her grandfather enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of visits to Sisterdale, where a man of his aristocratic background could relate to such cultured free thought discourse, and where the air filled with concert music, singing, dancing and an ambience of general Gemütlichkeit.

In 1853, August Siemering was elected secretary, and Ernst Kapp the president, of the freethinker abolitionist organization {{langx|de|Der Freie Verein|label=none}} (The Free Society),{{cite book | last = Goyne | first =Minetta Algelt | title = Lone Star and Double Eagle: Civil War Letters of a German-Texas Family | publisher =Texas Christian Univ Press | year = 1982 | page =14 | isbn =978-0-912646-68-8}}{{Cite web | title=Bexar County Chief Justice August Siemering, 1830–1883 | author=Puglisi Jr., Richard L | publisher=University of the Incarnate Word | url=http://www.uiw.edu/sanantonio/AugustSiemerling.html| access-date=9 May 2010}} University of the Incarnate Word which called for a meeting of abolitionist German Texans{{Handbook of Texas | name=German Attitude Toward the Civil War | id=png01 |author=Biesele, Rudolph L. | retrieved=9 May 2010}} Texas State Historical Association in conjunction with the May 14, 1854, Staats-Saengerfest (State Singing Festival) in San Antonio. Wilhelm Victor Keidel was elected vice president of the convention, which adopted a political, social and religious platform,{{Cite web | title=The Texas State Convention of Germans in 1854 | author=Biesele, R L | publisher=The Texas State Historical Association | url=http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101090/m1/273/| access-date=22 November 2010}} The Texas State Historical Association including:

1) Equal pay for equal work; 2) Direct election of the President of the United States; 3) Abolition of capital punishment; 4) Slavery is an evil, the abolition of which is a requirement of democratic principles...; 5) Free schools – including universities – supported by the state, without religious influence; and 6) Total separation of church and state.

One of the most tragic episodes in the history of Kendall County happened in 1862 after Texas joined the Confederacy. The Confederacy considered the free thinkers of Sisterdale and like communities to be a threat. A number of Kendall County Germans became conscientious objectors to the military draft. Confederate authorities reacted by imposing martial law on central Texas. 61 conscientious objectors attempted to flee to Mexico. Confederate irregular James Duff{{Handbook of Texas | name=Duff, James | id=fdu06|author=Shook, Robert W. | retrieved=30 April 2010}} Texas State Historical Association and his Duff's Partisan Rangers pursued them. At the Nueces River, 34 were killed, and some executed after being taken prisoner. In 1866, Kendall County erected the Treue der Union Monument ("Loyalty to the Union") monument{{cite web | title=Treue der Union Monument | publisher=Texas Escapes – Blueprints For Travel, LLC. | url=http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasHistory/Treue-Der-Union-Loyalty-to-the-Union.htm | access-date=30 April 2010}} Texas Escapes – Blueprints For Travel, LLC.{{cite web | title=Treue der Union Monument | publisher=TexGenWeb, Kendall Co | url=http://www.txgenweb2.org/txkendall/treue.htm | access-date=30 April 2010 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120226175800/http://www.txgenweb2.org/txkendall/treue.htm | archive-date=26 February 2012 }} TexGenWeb, Kendall Co dedicated to the German Texans slain at the Nueces massacre.

Darmstadt Society of Forty

Some of the early settlers in Sisterdale migrated from the collapsed Fisher–Miller Land Grant experimental colonies of the Darmstadt Society of Forty.{{further|List of Darmstadt Society of Forty}}

Sisterdale Valley District

{{Infobox NRHP

| name = Sisterdale Valley District

| nrhp_type = hd

| image = Sisterdale12.JPG

| caption = Sisterdale Bed and Breakfast

| location = FM 1376, Sisterdale, Texas

| added = January 8, 1975

| area = {{convert|2893|acre}}

| refnum = 75001996{{NRISref|version=2010a}}

}}

The Sisterdale Valley District is a {{convert|2893|acre|adj=on}} historic district in Sisterdale, Texas that was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1975. It included 15 contributing buildings and six other contributing structures. The historic buildings include an 1890s dance hall.{{cite web |url=http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/viewform.asp?atlas_num=2075001996&site_name=Sisterdale+Valley+District&class=2002 |title=Sisterdale Valley District }}

Various sources discuss Sisterdale.{{cite web|url=http://voicesofthetexashills.org/vthtown0008.htm |author=Joe Cooper |year=2009 |title=Sisterdale}}{{cite web|publisher=RootsWeb.com |title=Sisterdale |url=http://www.rootsweb.com/~txkendal/sisdle.htm}}{{cite web|title=Handbook of Texas Online: Sisterdale, TX |url=http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hns51 |author=Glen E. Lich |access-date= September 8, 2013 |publisher=Texas State Historical Association}}{{cite web|url=http://www.texasescapes.com/TexasHillCountryTowns/Sisterdale-Texas.htm |title=Sisterdale}}{{cite web|title=Sisterdale Cemetery |url=http://www.rootsweb.com/~txkendal/csis.htm}}