The Dangers of Texas
There are dangers to be encountered along the modern day route to Nassau. Strangers met in secluded spots down along the river give most people pause. An accident on the road can happen to the safest of drivers. In 1849-1850 there were the dangers of the storm at sea, the bogging down with a wagon, thunderstorms threatening to flood creeks, taking wrong turns and getting separated, and others which were not mentioned in any of the family's letters.
Some of us may be less familiar with the other dangers present in the mid 1800's. Nassau was the site of bloodshed not long before Peter Carl moved onto his 800 acres of land. When the Verein society (mentioned earlier in Why Texas?) went bankrupt they decided to lease Nassau to a Dr. Schubert who, as it turned out, was bankrupt himself. Once evicted for failure to pay his rent, he returned with someone impersonating a sheriff and regained access. Only after a battle in which two men lost their lives was Schubert finally successfully evicted.
As the Washington steamed into San Felipe, many of the passengers were taken aback. "The miserable San Felipe" were Amanda's words. Mexicans had burned the community down. There were "only a few partly destroyed buildings... When one is in Felipe one must really hunt Felipe, as one can't believe a Felipe exists." Peter Carl wrote. While this war with Mexico had ended, the sight of such damage was sobering.
a Petri
watercolor
I must continue. There were more than just fears of conflicts not presently threatening. Hermann Lungkwitz and those who had settled around Fredericksburg (a significant distance further west) had heard tales of horrid Indian atrocities. People had been kidnapped, some had been scalped, but there were some Texans who had had good experiences with the Indians. Hermann's friend Richard Petri was one of them. He was an artist and had done a watercolor of one of the Indians.
One afternoon from a small log cabin in Fredericksburg, Hermann noticed a large number of Indians approaching. While most of those in the cabin really began to worry (duly whisking Hermann's sleepy son Max away to bed to keep him out of sight), Richard glanced out and thought he recognized some of them. Thinking that maybe they had come to see some of his drawings, he got out his easel, set out some of his works, threw open the cabin door, and sat down with his back to the open door to put some finishing touches of paint on one of his sketches. The Indians were fascinated. One of them was invited to sit for his portrait. When they departed, Richard waved a friendly goodbye and the others breathed a sigh of relief.
This need on the Texas frontier to stick together and protect one's community (which had so graciously and unconditionally accepted us as new immigrants when we arrived from Germany) led some of my ancestors to fight for Texas in the Civil War. Peter Carl was too old to fight, but he rallied conscripts in Round Top dressed in the uniform he wore when fighting Napoleon as a Prussian Uhland. William became a topographical engineer in the Confederate Army and his brother Johannes served with him. Other brothers served in other capacities one of them losing his life to typhoid fever contracted in an army camp in Brownsville.
Of course not all Texans swore allegiance to the Confederacy. Governor Sam Houston was removed from office when he refused to do so. Hermann Lungkwitz and his wife's brother-in-law, Jacob Kuechler, were against secession. In danger of being drafted, Jacob fled Texas with a group of sixty-five other Germans into Mexico and was attacked by a "hanging mob" enraged against the Union, the North, and these German Unionists. Jacob, unlike many others in the group, was lucky to escape with his life and arrived in Mexico to become fast friends with and a confidant of the emperor Maximilian. Those who remained in Texas continued to face the rage of "hanging mobs" and the increased Indian activity which followed the departure of young men heading to battle, but times of danger pass and those who survive move on with their lives.