Erected in 1866, this German-language monument honors sixty-eight men, mostly Germans from the region, who remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. About forty of them, trying desperately to reach U.S. Federal troops by way of Mexico, were killed by Confederates in the Battle of the Nueces on Aug. 10, 1862, and in a later fight on Oct. 18, while others drowned swimming the Rio Grande; their bodies were left unburied until a group of Germans gathered the bones of their friends and buried them at this site in 1865. On August 20, 1865, a procession of three hundred people, led by the fathers of four of the victims and accompanied by Federal troops, carried the remains under the Union banner to the grave, where E. Degener, father of two victims, delivered an emotional oration and the troops fired a salute. The town lot had been purchased the previous day by Eduard Degener, Eduard Steves, and William Heuermann for the purpose of erecting a monument, and local stonemasons, likely including Emil Serger, built the limestone obelisk. The twenty-foot monument, dedicated on August 10, 1866, bears a thirty-six-star United States flag representing the banner in use at the time, after Kansas, West Virginia, and Nevada had joined the Union.

Photo: TeamOHE

Photo: Richard E. Miller

Photo: Richard E. Miller

Photo: Richard E. Miller

Photo: Richard E. Miller

Photo: Richard E. Miller

Photo: Richard E. Miller

Photo: Richard E. Miller

Photo: Richard E. Miller

Comfort, Texas · USA