Immigrants from Germany and Alsace Lorraine settled New Fountain and its vicinity during the late 1840's. New Fountain lay somewhat centrally on Verde Creek about 2 miles west of Quihi in an area known as Soldaten Kemp, or Soldiers Camp. In 1858, Reverend F.A. Schaper organized the Ebenezer of New Fountain, a Methodist society begun with 15 charter members at the home of John and Aaike Wiemers, where meetings were often held under the famed Wiemers Oak in their backyard. The first sanctuary was a small pole style building about 16 by 20 feet with a crude adjacent shelter for the parsonage, and it also served as the area school with the pastor as teacher. Heavy rains flooded the area sloughs and creeks, damaging the building and washing away part of the nearby cemetery, and time and weather destroyed all remains of this first sanctuary. In the late 1800's, the Muennink Cotton Gin was built about one hundred yards south of the first sanctuary toward Verde Creek. One of the first gins in the county, it greatly advanced agriculture and the prosperity of local farmers, who had previously hauled cotton to Cibolo for baling. Farmers agreed to plant 200 acres of cotton if Fredrich Muennink would build a gin, and in 1870 more than a bale of cotton per acre was produced. The gin is said to have been the first building with a tin roof, electricity, and telephone. Its lumber was hauled from San Antonio, and during construction C.V. Neumann and two other men were reportedly watched by Indians, who surrounded the building and shot arrows at it until the sound of arrows striking the tin roof scared them off. The building was remodeled in 1891, but the arrival of the boll weevil halted cotton production in the area during the early 1900's, and the historic building was destroyed by a windstorm in 1983.