Fredericksburg Pioneers -- Der Stadt Friedhof Cemetery, Fredericksburg TX
N 30° 16.220 W 098° 51.652
14R E 513382 N 3348749
A memorial to those who settled this area and who died in the difficult early eyars and are buried in unmarked graves stands at Fredericksburg's Der Stadt Friedhof Cemetery
Waymark Code: WMQR8W
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 03/22/2016
Views: 3
This evocative cemetery holds far more dear departed than it appears. Many of Fredericksburg's pioneers are buried in unmarked or mass graves due to epidemics or tragedies like floods.
This simple memorial is a tribute to these folks who came before, and who persevered on the wild Texas frontier.
The carved red granite memorial and its plaque reads as follows:
"IN MEMORIAM
TO THE FOUNDERS AND PIONEERS OF FREDERICKSBURG
AND GILLESPIE COUNTY
Who are buried here in marked and unmarked graves, many died during the terrible plague that beset the colonists in the early years."
From the handbook of Texas online: (
visit link)
"The first wagontrain of 120 settlers arrived from New Braunfels on May 8, 1846, after a sixteen-day journey, accompanied by an eight-man military escort provided by the Adelsverein. Surveyor Hermann Wilke laid out the town, which Meusebach named Fredericksburg after Prince Frederick of Prussia, an influential member of the Adelsverein. Each settler received one town lot and ten acres of farmland nearby. The town was laid out like the German villages along the Rhine, from which many of the
colonists had come, with one long, wide main street roughly paralleling Town Creek. The earliest houses in Fredericksburg were built simply, of post oak logs stuck upright in the ground. These were soon replaced by Fachwerk houses, built of upright timbers with the spaces between filled with rocks and then plastered or
whitewashed over.
The colonists planted corn, built storehouses to protect their provisions and trade goods, and prepared for the arrival of more immigrant trains, which came throughout the summer. Within two years Fredericksburg had grown into a thriving town of almost 1,000, despite an epidemic that spread from Indianola and New Braunfels and killed between 100 and 150 residents in the summer and fall of 1846. . . "