FREETHINKERS ON THE TEXAS FRONTIER

By Ira Kennedy

 The Texas frontier of the 1840s would seem an unlikely place to find utopian communes with a passion for literature, philosophy, music, and Latin. But exist they did. The circumstances that brought about this unusual episode in Texas history began with two men who cared little for such refinements.

Henry Francis Fischer and Burchard Miller received a land grant located between the Llano and San Saba Rivers from the Republic of Texas in 1842. The contract stipulated Fisher and Miller colonize the area by 1847 or forfeit their claim. The two men were nothing if not resourceful. In 1844 they convinced the Verein, or Society for the Protection of German Immigration in Texas, to fork over $9,000 for land that cost them nothing. Apart from other financial considerations, Fisher and Miller would receive an additional $14,000 if the Germans failed to colonize the Grant. What the two men kept to themselves was that the land was occupied by hostile Comanche and had been for the past 150 years.

Fisher and Miller probably thought the $14,000 was as good as made. But they didn’t envision the energy and determination of John Meusebach, founder of Fredericksburg, whose assessment of the situation was clear. "With the buying of that grant the doom of the [immigration] company was sealed," Meusebach wrote. "They did not know what they bought. They undertook to fulfill what was impossible to fulfill. They did not have the means nor the time to fulfill it. Neither of the contracting parties nor their agents has ever seen a particle of the land in question. The territory set aside for settlement was more than three hundred miles from the coast, more than one hundred and fifty miles outside of all settlements, and in the undisturbed possession of hostile Indians. The government had promised no aid to take it out of the hands of the Indians. It had to be conquered," Meusebach concluded, "by force or by treaty."

With the deadline fast approaching, John Meusebach, accomplished the impossible. On January 1847, surrounded by a few thousand Comanche, Meusebach entered their encampment and ordered his forty men to discharge their guns into the air, leaving them defenseless. This display of courage and peaceful intent inspired the Comanche to sign a treaty and induct Meusebach into the tribe. Now all that was remained was to occupy the Grant.

Lacking a realistic assessment of the situation a small group of German idealists agreed to establish the communities of Castell, Schoenburg, Bettina, and Leiningen in 1847 on the north bank of the Llano River, barely inside the land grant.

Called Freethinkers, these early settlers established communistic colonies based on brotherly love and good will, which they believed could replace civil law. They also had little use for any Deity and were in general opposition to clerics and churches of any stripe.

Members of the Germany’s cultured classes, this elite group was ill prepared for the hard work of pioneer life. After a year, financial support and supplies from the Verein ran out and the communities dissolved. Many of the Freethinkers preferred to live closer to Fredericksburg, while others helped settle the communities of Sisterdale, Boerne and Comfort. Among the first settlements in the Fisher-Miller Grant, only Castell remains today although it was moved to the south bank of the Llano River after the original colony was destroyed by flood.

A New England journalist, Frederick Law Olmsted, made a tour of the state in 1854 and recounted the events in A Journey Through Texas. On his way to Fredericksburg, Olmsted visited Sisterdale also known as the Latin Settlement due to the desire of residents in the community to make Latin their official language.

"In speaking of his present circumstances," Olmsted wrote, "[the host] simply regretted that he could not give [his sons] all the advantages of education that he had himself had. But he added that he would much rather educate them to be independent and self-reliant, able and willing to live by their own labor, than to have them ever feel themselves dependent on the favor of others. If he could secure them, here, minds free from prejudice, which would entirely disregard the conclusions of others in their own study of right and truth, and spirits which would sustain their individual conclusions without a thought of the consequences, he should be only thankful to the circumstances that exiled him...

"After supper," Olmsted continued, "there were numerous accessions of neighbors, and we passed a merry and most interesting evening. There was waltzing, to the tones of a fine piano, and music of the highest sort, classic and patriotic."

Freethinkers at heart, Meusebach and wife Agnes who lived in Loyal Valley between Mason and Fredericksburg shared with their friends in Sisterdale, Boerne and Comfort a fondness for the arts, sciences and Latin. Irene Marschall King, the couple’s granddaughter, wrote in John O. Meusebach: German Colonizer in Texas, "a trip with her husband to the ‘Latin Settlement’ at Sisterdale was a stimulating experience. The men and women constituting the settlement were cultured and intelligent; so conversation was on an intellectual level. Merriment prevailed, too, and they enjoyed waltzing, and singing, and concert music on a fine piano."

At his home in Loyal Valley, John Meusebach built a trellis-shaded structure for bathing out of native stone and cement with a fresh coating of whitewash. "When Meusebach would emerge from his frequent baths in this retreat," King wrote, "wearing a white shirt as was his custom, he would recite verses in Latin." Even Meusebach’s tombstone carries the Latin inscription: Tenax Propositi-Texas Forever.