The Pioneer Spring Branch Community

Texas's German settlement began with Johann Friedrich Ernst, a native of Lower Saxony who arrived in 1831 and settled in Industry, Texas. Ernst encouraged many settlers to follow, including Jacob Schroeder, who settled in Spring Branch in 1839. Immigration to Texas increased in the late 1840s as many families fled Germany's Revolution of 1848. The families of Wilhelm and Carolina Rummel and Siegismund and Christiana Bauer arrived in Galveston in 1848 and were met by Jacob Schroeder and two other recent immigrants, Karl Kolbe and Daniel Ahrenbeck. The Rummels and Bauers moved to Spring Branch Creek, joining other new immigrants, Louis and Henry Hillendahl, who lived nearby. The settlers held a thanksgiving service under those trees in December 1848, and by 1854 had built a log cabin church at that site. That building was replaced with a frame church in 1864, which still stands at Long Point Drive and Campbell Road as St. Peter Church. The church and a school built there became the social and spiritual heart of the community. When urban development began in the 1940s and early 1950s, many descendants of these early German families sold their farms and left the area, although some remained. An attempt to incorporate the old rural community of Spring Branch was unsuccessful. Later, six Memorial Villages were incorporated in the mid-1950s, and the rest of the area was annexed by Houston. The pioneer German community is still recalled in the German names of many area streets.

Hedwig Village, Texas · United States