Browse Exhibits (15 total)
Bacon - Steubing Dairy Farm
The Bacon-Steubing Dairy Farm is in danger of being totally obliterated! After much research and preparation, it was presented to HDRC for a Finding of Historical Significance. The vote was 7 to 1 in favor or it. Then it went to City Council and was not approved. Although the building is not much to look at currently, it seems to be the only remaining vestige of the early dairy industry in the northwest quadrant of the city of what was once a thriving dairy industry.
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Ball, Joseph and Salome House
The Joseph and Salome Ball House and Farmstead dates back to c1898. It has been restored by the current owner.
Joseph Ball, Jr. immigrated from Alsace/Germany in 1852. In May 1867 he married Salome Keller of Castroville, Texas, who was also Alsatian.
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Beauregard Ranch
The Beauregard Ranch was created from land previously owned by Spanish mission ranches. In1852, Augustin Toutant-Beauregard consolidated the initial 7,971 acres of the Beauregard Ranch by recording two purchases from Henry and Francis Radaz with the Bexar County Clerk. The first purchase of 2,951 acres was executed in 1849. The second purchase of 5,000 acres was executed in 1852. The establishment of the approximately 8,542-acre Beauregard Ranch predates the
creation of Wilson (1860) and Karnes (1854) Counties.
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Braun, Friedrich House and Barn
Philipp Friedrich “Fritz” Braun (b. July 9, 1832-d. December 25, 1915) made his first purchase of land in Bexar County on July 8, 1865, for which he paid $700 to H.J. and Maria Inselmann. This land was described as the lower half of the 640 acres of the Colden Denman Survey and was said to be on the Los Ricos, a tributary of Leon Creek.
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Crenwelge / Braun Complex
German immigrant Theodore Crenwelge built the stone farmhouse for his bride, Katherine (Katie Rumpel) in 1895. Originally the farm consisted of about 156 acres.
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Harrison, John S. - House
The John S. Harrison Homestead, located in northeast Bexar County along the Cibolo Creek at the rear of Forest Creek Subdivision on the access road of IH-35, consists of four historic structures/features. The house was built in the early1850’s by stage master, John S. Harrison and his wife, Martha Jane Harrison. Harrison ran three Star Routes (mail and passenger routes) through Central Texas from the mid-1840’s through the mid-1860’s. He died in Waco, Texas in December 1864. The house is owned by the City of Selma and has been restored as a community center and city park. It was officially opened in August 2016.
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Heidemann Ranch Complex
Nine Historic Structures built in the 1860s: Log cabin, barn, smokehouse, water well, workshop, Heidemann-Barrera house, storage house, cemetery, possible early kiln.
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Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, July 6, 2011.
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In 2014, Professor Frances Gale of the University of Texas At Austin, School of Architecture, took the Materials Conservation Laboratory class to the Heidemann property to analyze the building materials of the log house and the barn.
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A Building Award was given to Mr. Roy R.Barrera, Sr. and Mr. Gilbert Barrera by the San Antonio Conservation Society in March 2016 for the restoration of the cabin, the barn and the smokehouse by Gilbert Barrera.
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In 2016, the Heidemann Family Cemetery was dedicated and designated as a Historic Texas Cemetery (HTC).
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Herff / Rozelle Farm
The Herff Farm is an excellent example of a Texas Hill Country farmstead built by pioneer German families who settled in and near Boerne in the mid-to-late 1800s. Located on the eastern outskirts of Boerne in Kendall County, the farm is part of a larger tract purchased by pioneer physician Ferdinand Herff in 1852. Herff’s holdings eventually expanded to some 10,000 acres which were used for ranching and as a retreat for his large family. After an earlier house burned, Ferdinand and Mathilde Herff built a two-story limestone house on the site. The property remained in the family until 1935 when it was acquired by George and Erma Rozelle who farmed and raised livestock. The house, farm, and domestic structures and surrounding fields remain remarkably intact in light of the rapid urbanization of Kendall County. Since the Cibolo Nature Center purchased 68-acres of the property in 2007, the Herff house has been restored and the surrounding land is conserved as open space. The farm was entered in the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
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Hoffmann, Caroline and Jacob
Few women owned property in their own right in the nineteenth century. In the Helotes settlement, Carmel Marnoch owned her own carriage, 20 horses and 15 head of cattle; and Teodora Martinez owned 130 acres. However, by 1881, Caroline Hoffmann owned more than 4,000 acres, including horses and cattle, in her
own right. By 1890, Caroline and her husband, Jacob, had amassed more than 7,500 acres. By 1908, five years after Jacob’s death, the Hoffmann estate included 12,667 acres, a substantial portion in present day Government Canyon State Natural Area.
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Jones, Enoch Farmstead
Enoch Jones, land speculator, son of Thomas Griffith and Susan (Jones) Jones, was born in 1802 in Wooster, Ohio. He immigrated to Texas sometime before 1837 and in partnership with John William Smith acquired a vast amount of land, which he sold at a profit when he returned to Detroit. Eventually he acquired almost 175,000 acres on the Medina River and built a large mansion, which Count Norbert von Ormay bought in 1885.
(See "Handbook of Texas Online: JONES, ENOCH")
[Special note:The name Norbert von Ormay is NOT misspelled. The Count’s family name was spelled with an “a”. When the people of Von Ormy decided to name their community after the Count they dropped the “a” from Ormay. The property was sold by the heirs of Enoch Jones to Count Norbert von Ormay.]
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Featured Exhibit
Alig - Tampke House
It is undetermined as to who built the house and in exactly what year it was built. However, based on...