Sisterdale, Texas. (original) (raw)

History in a Pecan Shell

Nicolaus Zink, the man who surveyed New Braunfels for Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels is credited with founding the town. The name comes from Sister Creek. The tiny population grew with the arrival of "Forty-Eighters" - dissidents (many of them intellectuals) leaving Europe after a failed revolution.

Frederick Law Olmsted (noted landscape architect and creator of NYC's Central Park) visited Sisterdale on his cross-country trip. Sisterdale was granted a post office in 1851.

The community was open on its anti-slavery and pro-Union policies - it's relative isolation probably protecting it from Confederate reprisals. When the war was over, Sisterdale lived in blissful tranquility - its population comprised of an estimated 150 people (1884).

Sisterdale had a store, gin and a factory for making Cypress shingles - an important industry at that time.

In 1914 there were only 25 residents which doubled by the mid-20s. In 1968 the estimate was sixty-three - the same number that appears on the 2010 state map.

Sisterdale Landmarks - Photo Gallery:

Schoolhouse hand water pump
Photo courtesy Barclay Gibson, December 2007

The schoolhouse in 2002
TE Photo

Sisterdale Dancehall
Photo courtesy Michael Barr August 2016

Sisterdale Chronicles

• Sophisticated Sisterdale by Michael Barr
  "The earliest settlers in Sisterdale drank fine wine from tinkling glasses. They listened to Mozart played on the piano in the library lined with classical literature. Their lively after dinner conversation, mostly in Latin, turned to Voltaire, Kant, Goethe, and Hegel.
  The scene was surreal and without parallel on the Texas frontier where most settlers lived a dark, meager existence...." more
• August Seimering and the Forty-Eighters by Michael Barr

"... The Forty-Eighters supported the democratic revolution that swept across Europe in the 1840s. But the revolution failed, leaving the Forty-Eighters between a rock and a hard place.

About 4,000 Forty-Eighters came to the United States. About 100 came to Texas. Most of them, including August Siemering, settled in Sisterdale.

Joining him were such notables as Otto von Behr - the son of a German prime minister, Carl Daniel Adolph Douai - the man who introduced the kindergarten system to the U.S. and Edgar Gerhard Julius Ludwig von Westphalen - the son of a Prussian Baron and Karl Marx's brother-in-law...." more

Kendall County 1907 postal map showing Sisterdale
From Texas state map #2090
Courtesy Texas General Land Office

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