Boerne - Morgenthaler

Boerne: Settlement on the Cibolo.  By Jefferson Morgenthaler.  Boerne:  Mockingbird Books, 2005.  paperback, photos, maps, bibliography, photo credit list, index, 125 pages.  ISBN 1-932-80108-1 $14.95  http://www.mockingbirdbooks.com   Jefferson Morgenthaler , a former attorney and now independent historian (degrees from UT- Austin) and publisher, and his family moved to a farm on the outskirts of this Central Texas community, began researching his homestead and its surroundings.  Boerne is his story of the town, and the first in his Mockingbird Books publications that reveal the historical stories of Central Texas and elsewhere.   One of the earliest matter of record for the area is the squabble, over land on Cibolo Creek about 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, between Ludovic Colquhoun, a Czech descendant, and Sam Maverick in 1842 based on an 1837 certificate.  Settlement eventually followed.  Boerne, plotted in July 1852 via John James ownership, grew slowly and wasn't surrounded by your typical collection of settlers.  They were intellectual socialists, German freethinkers, independent religionists, radical political theorists, idealistic Unionists, and other such unique individualists tired of the chronic warfare of central Europe at the time. Morgenthaler focuses on the early times up to the early twentieth century, but he occasionally adds comments on the modern times to update a line of discussion, even to the 1980's.   Morgenthaler's research results in a book that is detailed in its following farmers along their property lines, artisans along the trails, the milkman Fabra on his delivery route, families to an occasional religious event, cattle along the streams, and merchants to and from San Antonio, but it is casual in the way a fellow would talk with neighbors.   After settlement the community found its first big challenge during the Civil War that was roundly opposed by the non-slave-holding freethinkers.  The tight-knit nature of the folks is revealed as Morgenthaler says, "The Boerne Gesangverein became more than a singing club; it became a gene pool."  And today, although anybody and swim in the public pool, the life-guard can likely to have German ancestors.