| Notes |
- From John E. Campbell, correspondent, note of June 15, 2009
http://www.tshaonline.org/shqonline/apager.php?vol=063&pag=377
A click on the link above will take you to The Southwestern Historical Quarterly of January 1960. You will find a translation of an article written in 1886 by my g-g-grandmother, Emma Murck. She describes her 1850's arrival in Texas from Germany. It includes her first impressions of cornbread, sleeping on the ground (snakes as bedmates!), her suitor, chasing cows and their hidden-away calves, and an encounter with raiding Indians. It was quite an adventure for the daughter of a former army officer serving as the city's police commissioner who died in 1836 at the age of thirty-three in Barmen, Prussia. The following is an excerpt:
...
After about forty-Four days, we approached our destinaion. Before us lay the longed-for coast, but without the avenues of oleanders that had been described to us. A hurricane had just recently caused terrible destruction, uprooting trees and washing them away. Galveston, for Texas a big city, looked ot the Europeans like a set-up of paper toys. The houses stood on posts ready to be moved from one place to another.
As soon as we landed a crowd of people, mostly Germans, rushed aboard ship to welcome the newcomers, to hear the news from the fatherland and, what soon became apparent to me, to find out if there were any girls aboard, at that time a rare article, and one reason why most of the young men traveled back to Europe to get a wife. I distinctly remember the following incident. A middle-aged man, a baker by trade, looks over the passengers. He spies a pretty blond peasant girl. At firs he tries to hire her as a cook, offers her 8, 10, then 12 dollars a month salary, which to us seemed very high, according to our notions. In vain, The young German girl declared she was going inland to her brother who sent her traveling expenses. "I want to marry you right now," the baker replied. Whereupon, to my secret satisfaction he got his answer, "To be married is exactly what I do not want."
Other similar incidents occurred with different endings, which did not impress me very favorably. Among the cabin passengers there was a schoolteacher who had been sent by a Methodist institute in Switzerland to become the wife of an unknown preacher. After having been with liberal-minded people for weeks, she had been influenced to the extent that she promised Miss Raabe (the captain's sister) and me to take the man in question only if she did not dislike him. When I saw her amoug the brothers and sisters in Christ a few days after we had landed, I thought it was time to remind her of her word. Thereupon an elderly Methodist lady replied, "Children of the word think differently; we deem it our duty to he useful to a servant of God, ...
From John E. Campbell, correspondent, note of June 16, 2009
From Handbook of Texas History Online: ALTGELT, EMMA FRANZISKA MURCK (1833-1922).
Emma Franziska Murck Altgelt, pioneer, teacher, and author, daughter of Friedrich D. E. and Ambrosine (Reinbach) Murck, was born at Barmen (now in Wuppertal), Prussia, on December 4, 1833. Her father, a former army officer serving as the city's police commissioner, died of typhoid at age thirty-three, when she was only 3½. Her only sibling soon followed him. Before Emma was five, her maternal grandmother and aunt assumed her upbringing in Heinzberg, near the Dutch border. A precocious pupil and the lone girl in a supplementary evening class with forty boys, she studied algebra, history, literature, and French twelve hours weekly. Before Emma left for Liège to prepare herself as a teacher of German and English, her family moved to the Cologne area.
Charmed by stories her kinsmen the Brachts told of Texas, she sailed from Bremen on the Franziska in October 1854 and landed in Galveston just days before her twenty-first birthday. Her mother settled in Texas also. Emma's determination never to marry did not survive Ernst Hermann Altgelt'sqv wooing. After their marriage (July 23, 1855), their home for some twelve years was Comfort, which Altgelt had founded. For 2½ years, starting when the eldest Altgelt child was barely seven, Mrs. Altgelt conducted the Comfort school in their home. During the Civil Warqv in 1863, Altgelt, ardently Confederate in a town of strong Union sentiments, left for Germany at his wife's urging to preserve his fragile health and visit his aging father. After his return in 1865, the family could not rejoin him until a cholera epidemic had subsided in San Antonio, where he soon became the law partner of D. Y. Portis. For a brief time their residence in the city was the neglected Spanish Governor's Palace, which Altgelt had purchased and attempted to renovate. When he acquired a tract on which he laid out what he named King William Street (see KING WILLIAM HISTORIC DISTRICT), the family moved into a home constructed for them there. Hoping Altgelt's health would benefit, they next lived on their farm, Wassenberg, near Boerne. Almost immediately (1869) an infant son died of a childhood illness. In 1878 another small son's fatal fall hastened the father's death. Soon daughter Antonia's husband Adolph Benner was murdered and the Benners' infant died. For forty-four years a widow, Emma Altgelt had to sell properties disadvantageously. Nevertheless she helped her six remaining children to become educated.
Two visits to her homeland during the 1880s revived her wish to become a writer. She visited California and also studied Spanish intensively. At age seventy she was visiting close friends and grandchildren in the interior of Mexico. She lived briefly in New Braunfels, then returned to San Antonio, home of most of her children. Late in life her devoted companion was a longtime family servant, Virginia, a former slave. When Emma Altgelt died on July 19, 1922, twelve of her twenty surviving grandchildren were men named Altgelt. Some of her reminiscences, observations, and sentimental descriptive verses have been published, occasionally in translation (her recollections of the early years in Texas are especially prized). Her published works include a collection entitled Beobachtungen und Erinnerungen ("Observations and Memories"), published in 1930 by the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung (see NEW BRAUNFELS HERALD-ZEITUNG), and "Schilderungen aus texanischem Leben" ("Descriptions from Texas Life"), translated by Guido Ransleben and published in the Comfort News weekly from May 22, 1969, through August 5, 1970.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Henry B. Dielmann, trans., "Emma Altgelt's Sketches of Life in Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 63 (January 1960). Ethel Hander Geue, New Homes in a New Land: German Immigration to Texas, 1847-1861 (Waco: Texian Press, 1970). Crystal Sasse Ragsdale, ed., The Golden Free Land: The Reminiscences and Letters of Women on an American Frontier (Austin: Landmark, 1976). Guido E. Ransleben, A Hundred Years of Comfort in Texas (San Antonio: Naylor, 1954; rev. ed. 1974). San Antonio Express, June 29, 1977.
Minetta Altgelt Goyne
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From Handbook of Texas History Online: SPANISH GOVERNOR'S PALACE.
The Spanish Governor's Palace, at 105 Military Plaza in San Antonio, was constructed in 1749. The name, something of a misnomer, is traditional; the building was not the home of the Spanish governor but served as the residence and headquarters for the local presidio captain. The one-story masonry structure is built in the Spanish Colonial style; in the rear is a large patio. A keystone above the entrance bears the date of construction and the Hapsburg coat of arms. After the end of Spanish sovereignty, the building passed into private ownership. In the late 1860s it was purchased by E. Hermann Altgelt,qv founder of Comfort in Kendall County. He and his family lived there at various times, and the property was held by his widow, Emma Murck Altgelt,qv until the early 1900s. Then the building fell into a state of disrepair. In 1928 voters in San Antonio passed a bond issue for the purpose of purchasing and conserving the building, and in 1929-30 the building was restored under the supervision of architect Harvey P. Smith.qv Members of the San Antonio Conservation Societyqv aided in restoring and furnishing the historic structure. In 1962 the building was registered as a recorded Texas historic landmark and is now a national historic landmark. The Spanish Governor's Palace is maintained by the city of San Antonio as a museum and is open to the public.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Comfort News, January 1, 8, 1970. San Antonio Conservation Society, Conservation in San Antonio since 1924 (San Antonio, 1970). San Antonio Express, August 31, 1936. Texas Historical Commission, National Register Files.
Name: Mrs. Emma Altgelt
Death date: 19 Jul 1922
Death place: San Antonio, Bexar, Texas
Gender: Female
Race or color (on document): White
Age at death: 88 years 7 months 15 days
Estimated birth year:
Birth date: 04 Dec 1833
Birth place: Germany
Marital status: Widowed
Spouse name:
Father name: Hugo Murck
Father birth place: Germany
Mother name: Ambrosina Von Renpack
Mother birth place: Germany
Occupation: Retired
Residence:
Cemetery name: Private Guard
Burial place:
Burial date: 22 Jul 1922
Additional relatives:
Film number: 2074546
Digital GS number: 4166818
Image number: 3167
=====
Reference number: cn 19406
Collection: Texas Deaths, 1890-1976
Name: Emma Altgeld
Residence: San Antonio, Bexar, Texas
Birth date: 1834
Birth place: Germany
Relationship to head-of-household: Self
Spouse name:
Spouse birth place:
Father name:
Father birth place: Germany
Mother name:
Mother birth place: Germany
Race or color (expanded): White
Ethnicity: American
Gender: Female
Marital status: Widowed
Age: 46 years
Occupation: Keeping House
NARA film number: T9-1291
Page: 207
Page letter: D
Entry number: 4430
Film number: 1255291
Collection: 1880 United States Census [2, 3]
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1833 - 1922 (88 years)
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