Ottilie Fuchs Goeth was an alert seventy-nine years old when she completed her memoirs in the German language for her family. Born the year of the Texas revolution, 1836, she migrated with her family in 1845, eventually settling in the Cypress Mill community near the Pedernales River west of Austin. Daughter of the pastor of a parish church in Germany, Mrs. Goeth was nurtured in family life, literature and music and her writings reflect a keen observation of life in Texas from the beginning of statehood to past the turn of the century. The original German was published in 1915.

A crack shot, expert skinner and tanner, seamstress, sculptor, and later writer—a list that only hints at her intelligence and abilities—Ella Elgar Bird Dumont was one of those remarkable women who helped tame the Texas frontier. First married at sixteen to a Texas Ranger, she followed her husband to Comanche Indian country in King County, where they lived in a tepee while participating in the final slaughter of the buffalo. Living off the land until the frontier was opened for ranching, Ella and Tom Bird typified the Old West ideals of self-sufficiency and generosity, with a hesitancy to complain about the hard life in the late 1800s. Yet, in one important way, Ella Dumont was unsuited for life on the frontier. Endowed with an instinctive desire and ability to carve and sculpt, she was largely prevented from pursuing her talents by the responsibilities of marriage and frontier life and later, widowhood with two small children. Even though her second marriage, to Auguste Dumont, made life more comfortable, the realities of her existence still prevented the fulfillment of her artistic longings. Ella Bird Dumont’s memoir is rich with details of the frontier era in Texas, when Indian depredations were still a danger for isolated settlers, where animals ranged close enough to provide dinner and a new pair of gloves, and where sheer existence depended on skill, luck, and the kindness of strangers. The vividness and poignancy of her life, coupled with the wealth of historical material in the editor’s exhaustive notes, make this Texas pioneer’s autobiography a very special book.

Wilhelm Wagner (1803-1877), son of Peter Wagner, was born in Dürkheim, Germany. He married Friedericke Odenwald (1812-1893). They had nine children. They emigrated and settled in Illinois. His brother, Julius Wagner (1816-1903) married Emilie M. Schneider (1820-1896). They had seven children. They emigrated and settled in Texas.

This book is a continuation of an effort began in 2015 by a handful of individuals with an interest in the history of the German settlements at Cat Spring and Millheim in Austin County, Texas. Three of the early literary works by Millheim settlers have been republished — Experiences and Observations and A History of Austin County by William Andreas Trenckmann, and A Boy’s Civil War Story by Charles Nagel. Obscure books, newspaper and periodical articles, literary novels and plays written about the area by former residents a century or so ago have been identified. An inventory of all such documents and their current status as to public availability has been developed. This book presents a brief history of the extended Cat Spring–Millheim community in western Austin County, along with reproductions of several articles written by early area pioneers such as Robert Kleberg, Rosa von Roeder Kleberg, Caroline Ernst von Hineuber, Adalbert Regenbrecht and Ottilie Fuchs Goeth. We provide brief biographies of many of the early settlers including Elemenech Swearingen, Ludwig von Roeder, Robert Kleberg, Carl Amsler, Friedrich Engelking, Andreas Trenckmann, Robert Kloss, Gustav Maetze, Dr. Herman Nagel, Adalbert Regenbrecht, Rev. Arnost Bergmann and Louis Constant. Also summarized are the significant literary works created by early settlers in the area, including William Andreas Trenckmann, Charles Nagel, Johannes Christlieb Nathanael Romberg and Adolph Fuchs. Several of these long out-of-print works are reproduced herein.

In the nineteenth century, Texas’s advancing western frontier was the site of one of America’s longest conflicts between white settlers and native peoples. The Texas Hill Country functioned as a kind of borderland within the larger borderland of Texas itself, a vast and fluid area where, during the Civil War, the slaveholding South and the nominally free-labor West collided. As in many borderlands, Nicholas Roland argues, the Hill Country was marked by violence, as one set of peoples, states, and systems eventually displaced others. In this painstakingly researched book, Roland analyzes patterns of violence in the Texas Hill Country to examine the cultural and political priorities of white settlers and their interaction with the century-defining process of national integration and state-building in the Civil War era. He traces the role of violence in the region from the eve of the Civil War, through secession and the Indian wars, and into Reconstruction. Revealing a bitter history of warfare, criminality, divided communities, political violence, vengeance killings, and economic struggle, Roland positions the Texas Hill Country as emblematic of the Southwest of its time.