Texas German Intellectuals: How “Latin” Were the Latin Colonies?

Between the years 1845 and 1860, about 250 German Intellectuals and their families immigrated to the Texas Hill Country.  In their five settlements (Millheim, Bettina, Latium, Sisterdale, and Tusculum (later Boerne)), meetings were often conducted in Latin or Greek - causing their bemused German neighbors to label these settlements “The Latin Colonies.”  This paper will present evidence that on the gravemarkers, anyway, the Latin language had little influence.

SLIDE 01

TEXAS GERMAN INTELLECTUALS:

HOW “LATIN” WERE THE “LATEINERS”?

Starting in the 1560s, various people settled bits and pieces of Texas land, then – to the astonishment of the quasi-nomadic Indian tribes - sometimes “legally” and sometimes “illegally” claimed ownership.  The three largest numbers of these “settlers” came from the west and south (Mexico), east from the Gulf South (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia), and north from the Upper South (Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky).  Present-day English language dialects reflect these major movements of people: San Antonio English exemplifying the South Texas dialect, Houston English the Eastern Texas dialect, and Dallas the North Texas Dialect (Carver, 226).

During the mid-nineteenth century numerous central Europeans emigrated to Texas.  In Central and South Texas, particularly, significant numbers of Germans, Czechs, and Poles settled separate, geographic enclaves.

Texas German Immigrants

            By far, the largest number of these ethnic settlers was the Germans.

SLIDE 02

TEXAS GERMAN IMMIGRANTS

#          1836-1845 Republic of Texas

·                     1845-1860 GERMAN IMMIGRATION

·                     1861-1865 American Civil War

            In 1831 Friedrich Ernst, a German nobleman, received permission from the Mexican Government to create a settlement about sixty miles northwest of present-day Houston. He called the settlement “Industry.”  The town still exists today.  Over the years, Ernst convinced other German immigrants to establish other settlements in that same general area. 

SLIDE 03

German Map of Texas

After the Republic of Texas separated itself from Mexico, a group of German businessmen founded a group called the Adelsverein short for Verein zum Schutze deutscher Einwanderer in Texas (The Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas). While historians tend to belittle the direct actual achievements of the Society, its influence apparently encouraged a steady immigration from German, between 1845 and 1860 (Lawrence, 14-15). Texas had become the 28th State in the United States of America, by 1860. 

SLIDE 04

English Map of the Hill Country

These German immigrants settled what we now call the Hill Country, in Central Texas.  They, however, referred to the region as West Texas. Two of their more successful settlements were Fredericksburg and New Braunfels (Biesele, v-vi).   So numerous were

SLIDE 05

The Sophienberg

the German speakers that they (and the language) formed the foundation of a fourth present-day English-language dialect today.  Dialectologist Craig Carter terms t it the “Central Texas” dialect (Carver 226).

A separate immigration movement attracted settlers from the Alsace-Lorraine area (between Germany and France).  This group settled west and northwest of San Antonio.

Intellectuals – Lateiners – Freethinkers

            The focus of this paper is upon a small minority of these German immigrants – a group of intellectuals. The core of these intellectuals consisted of two distinct groups: the “Forty” and the “Forty-Eighters.”

The Forty, or the Fortiers, were a fraternity of German students.  Included among the group were “two musicians, an engineer, a theologian, an agriculturalist, two architects, seven lawyers, four foresters, and a lieutenant of artillery” (Lawrence 10). The Forty arrived in 1847.

A couple of years later a second influential group of “intellectuals” arrived.  The Forty-Eighters, a group of farmers, received their name because they had arrived in Texas after fleeing “the aborted 1848 revolution in Europe” (Lawrence, 5).  This group included a dozen men who became influential in the development of the culture of the Texas Germans; included in their number was Baron von Wesphal, a brother-in-law of Karl Marx.

Among other accomplishments, these professional (i.e. non-farmers) formed the German Free School Association of Austin, Chartered by the Texas legislature on January 19, 1858.  It was the first chartered school in Austin (Lawrence, 13-14).  They also helped form an informal club - a colloquium that gradually evolved into the “Sophienberg” (Knowledge Club).  That club has, in turn, evolved into the present-day Sophienberg Museum, a research library and German-culture museum located in New Braunfels.

SLIDE 06

INTELLECTUALS – LATEINERS - FREETHINKERS

            Among other settlements, these intellectuals formed five communities that were referred to as the Latin Colonies.  Pinning down just who coined that term and who used it started the research for this paper.  According to historian Don Lawrence “The name came about because in the German culture of the time the knowledge of Latin was considered to be both prerequisite for higher learning and a sign of educational attainment” (2-3).  Lawrence sites three other scholars in his reference to the term: Biesele; Regenbrecht; Reinhardt; and Romberg.  All five scholars, however, only refer to the term as did Lawrence: the term Latin Colonies “came about.”

The working hypothesis (the concept is still too weak to be termed a theory) of this paper is that the term was a derogatory term – used about, not by the intellectuals.  In other words, the term – and its personalized version Lateiner (Latin ones)--was terms used by the German farmers to separate themselves from those who could not farm.

The Latin colonies consisted of Millheim, Latium, Bettina, Sisterdale, and Tusculum.

Millheim  In 1834 two families moved from Industry (the first German settlement, started in 1831) and established Millheim.  Reports written to home enticed others to join them.  Relatives started another settlement across the river – a settlement they called Catspring.  According to Adelbert Regenbrecht, descendent of the second group, the “bookfarmers at Millheim and the practical farmers of Catspring exchanged their knowledge.”  He also writes that Millheim created and ran one of the best elementary schools of Texas and had a well-known signing society.  The first post office was entered under the name Millheim-Catspring.  At present the post-office is listed under the name Catspring.

Latium pronounced (“Latcham”) was founded by Forty-Eighters, in (yes) 1848.  It was located about 30 miles northwest of Millheim.  The Lateiners did not stay long. Czech Immigrants arrived at Latium in 1868.  Most of the Forty-Eighters had found San Antonio more attractive.  A post office was established in 1884, discontinued in 1907 (Lawrence, 16). 

SLIDE 07

Bettina

Bettina  (the seventh and last successful settlement sponsored by the Adelsverein, was founded in 1847.  Among other accomplishments of the Adelsverein, they had formed a treaty with the Comanche – a treaty that both sides honored.  The settlement was named “after Bettina Brenano von Arnim, a German liberal and writer” (Lawrence 4).  In Bettina members of the Forty seriously experimented with communal living.  The attempt was short-lived; the settlement closed within a couple of years. Bettina was located north of San Antonio on the Llano River.  Much more is known about Bettina than about Millheim and Latium because members of the Forty (and their descendants) have written detailed accounts of its existence – among them Dr. Ferdinand von Herff, an eminent San Antonio physician and surgeon, who wrote a political treatise in which he touches on the colony and generalizes on the founding principles; Vera Flack, who wrote a twentieth-century account of the acculturation of one of the Bettina families;  the journalist Chrisoph Flack (whose family five generations later still advocated Forty concepts of freethinking, liberalism, and ethics); journalist Emma F. Murck Altgelt; and geologist Ferdinand von Roemer (Biesele, Flach, von Herff, Hertzberg, Lawrence, Lich, Lich and Reeves, Reinhardt).

SLIDE 08

Roemer’s Shellfish

Sisterdale, located north of San Antonio, Sisterdale, was founded in 1847 by Nicolaus Zink, a Lateiner surveyor and town planner.  The settlement attracted may Forty-Eighters. 

SLIDE 09

German Folk Houses in Texas

“Sisterdale became one of the centers of German abolitionism and Unionism before and during the Civil War.  After the conflict it became a quiet.”  In 1884, the population of Sisterdale was about 150, today about 60 (Lawrence, 5; Biesele; Lich & Reeves).

Tusculum In 1849 a group of German colonists from Bettina camped on the north side of Cibolo Creek, about a mile west of the site of present Boerne.  They called their new community Tusculum, after Caesar’s home in ancient Rome. In 1852 they laid out a town site and changed the name to Boerne in honor of Ludwig Boerne, a German author and publicist.  A post office was established in 1856.   “Many of the residents of these settlements were sometimes referred to as Lateiner (“Latin ones”).” (Handbook of Texas Online).

            An extremely controversial subgroup of the Lateiners, the Freidenker (Freethinkers), confounded their religious countrymen – especially those countrymen in Boerne and in Fredericksburg.  The Freethinkers were clearly the “intellectuals’ intellectuals,” embracing concepts of democracy in Germany, rejoicing in the concepts of democracy as expounded in the Constitution of the United States, rejecting the constraints of established religion, advocating abolition of slavery, expounding the teachings of Karl Marx.  Initially meeting in the “Freethinkers’ Society” in Sisterdale, they also founded the town of Comfort, just north of San Antonio.

SLIDE 10

Music Festival Poster

SLIDE 11

Robert Justius Kleberg (Founder of Cat Spring)

SLIDE 12

Ernst Hermann Altgelt (Founder of Comfort)

SLIDE 13

Dr. Ferdinand von Herff

            The presence of these Intellectuals/Latiener/Free-Thinkers still lingers in Present-Day San Antonio, a settlement that attracted many of them as the city became the prominent city in Texas up to the mid-nineteen twenties.  Their descendants today still enjoy name-recognition and honor: Altgelt, Bergemann, Berger, Beyer, Boerner, Brandt, Bruns, Dieter, Douai, Dresel, Flach, Friedrich, Froebel ,Giesecke, Groos, Hagedorn, Hanisch, Hasenkampe, Herbst, Herf, Hoerner, Kapp, Kendall, Kibling, Klepper, Meckel, Pfeiffer, Philips, Reinhardt, Rosenthal, Scherz, Schilling, Schleicher, Schmidt, Schulze, Schwarz, Seewald, Seidensticker, Shaeffer, Siemering, Vogt, Voigt, Von Behr, Von Herff, Weiss, Williams, Witte, Zink.

            So prevalent is their presence that one would think that their early gravemarkers might have (non-Catholic) Latin language included in their inscriptions.  A major drawback, however, lies in the collective aura of the names listed above: old-money, conservatism, class awareness, establishment.  Attempts to approach these people (and they are indeed approachable) more often than not led to incredulous denial.  Same name, perhaps, but certainly not my ancestors.

            So even before initiating an enormous fieldwork expedition, serious genealogical research had to be undertaken.  That research has, indeed, verified the Lateiner origins of the above-listed people.  (Of biggest help has been the Sophienberg Museum staff, in New Braunfels) That research has also uncovered other scholars interested in the same Latin-on-gravemarker inquiry.  We all share the same desire to find at least one such marker; we all share an awareness of the enormity of the problem; we all share, unfortunately, that the Lateiners were not particularly receptive of being called Lateiners.

            A look at Social Identity Theory may help explain our explanation.

Social Identity Theory

SLIDE 14

SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY

            As a linguist, my entry into the study of Social Identity Theory has come through the door of one of our sub-fields: Sociolinguistics.  The most recent update on our sociolinguistic insights is in Miriam Meyerhoff’s 2006 book Introducing Sociolinguistics. Basically, social identity theory started in the field of social-psychology, trying to understand the multiple identities that each of us hold: in my case, I’m Scott, Kansas-born, college-educated, (Trinity) University professor, linguist, gravemarker researcher, Texan, old man, Renee’s husband, Tania’s father, Calvin’s grandfather, lover of Dixieland music, etc. etc.).  The theory argues that some of these identities are group-centered, some personal, some idiosyncratic.  No matter how we label them, most people see differences among themselves “in terms of competition, and seek to find means of favouring the co-member of the group they identify with over others.” [Meyerhoff 295]

SLIDE 15

Nigger – Negro – Colored – Black – African-American pianist

            The Social Psychologist Henri Tajfel was the first to argue that perception of these differences even carry into the realm of linguistics.  If members of a social group, say American slaves, do not perceive inequalities and biases against them to be legitimate or stable, those slaves may seek to effect not only social change but language change as well.  Thus along with the gradually emerging civil rights has occurred a simultaneous linguistic labeling of the group – initiated both by the perpetrators and the victims.  Picture, for example, the New Orleans jazz musician contrasted with his/her contemporary descendant playing a solo in the rotunda of the Texas State Capitol: the Nigger, Negro, Colored, Black, African-American pianist.  “Once [such a] matrix is contested and renegotiated, all practices sustaining the system of inequalities, including linguistic practices, become candidates for renegotiation and contestation.  The words used to refer to or address a group are especially likely to be subject to scrutiny and reanalysis.” (Meyerhoff 63-64)

SLIDE 16

Every Guest enjoy HIM-self

            “The anthropologist David Aberle distinguished four types of social movement in terms that parallel Tajfel’s continuum of personal-group identities. Aberle (1966) talks about transformative movements (which aim for a total change in supra-individual systems), reformative movements (which aim for partial change in supra-individual systems) redemptive movements (which aim at a total change in individuals) and alterative movements (which aim for partial change in individuals" (Meyerhoff 64).

            The ever-changing appellates that our pianists have had to undergo would fit the reformative group and alterative individual changes – incrementally trying to change bits and pieces, but not the whole.  On the other hand, attempts to replace the generic pronoun HE would fit the transformative group and alterative individual movement.

SLIDE 17

Intellectuals (Baird & Olsen)

            Think, then, about our status, here in San Francisco, at this academic conference.  How do we react to being labeled “Intellectuals”?  It matters, doesn’t it?  Who is doing the labeling?  Who the name-calling?

            Not being able to pin down the source of the term Lateiner, then - especially when intellectuals constitute the only source for documenting that term, especially when no intellectuals have been documented as coining the term – makes those of us trying to find Latin on gravemarkers, well, . . It makes us uncomfortable.  It makes us squirm.

Gravemarker Language – memorials

SLIDE 18

GRAVEMARKER LANGUAGE: Memorials

            I am making my claim, then, based on the absence of evidence.  Not being able to find Latin inscriptions on Lateiner gravemarkers might very well mean that the presence of Latin would not memorialize- it would belittle.

            The purpose of markers, it should be understood but in this case needs to emphasized, is to memorialize; to praise.

SLIDE 19

The Catholic Cemetery is a Holy Place

This Catholic Cemetery is a Holy Place.  It is blessed by the Church and dedicated to God as a place for worship, prayer and reflection upon divine truth and the purpose of life.  It is the resting place until the day of resurrection for the bodies of faithful departed, once temples of the Holy Spirit, whose souls are now with God.  It is a final and continuing profession of faith in God and of membership in the Church by those who have chosen to be buried with fellow believers of “The Household of the Faith.”  “Eternal rest grant them O lord.”  (San Fernando #1, San Antonio, Texas)

The Catholic Church elevates this memorializing process into a holy realm:  The cemetery is a holy place; a place for worship, prayer and reflection; people’s souls are with God.

SLIDE 20

Funeral of German Patriots at Comfort, Texas, August 20, 1865

            The procession of three hundred people, headed by the fathers of four of the victims, old men of sixty and seventy years, preceded the funeral car drawn by four white horses.  Under the Union banner lay the remains.  A detachment of Federal troops accompanied the cortege.  At the grave, E. Degener, father of two victims, pronounced an oration which brought tears of grief to the eyes of the mourners.  He concluded thus:

            “The sacrifice that we, the fathers of the slaughtered, made to our country and to liberty, is great and dolorous.  We shall, however, console ourselves; we shall be proud of having offered our sons to the Union, if the glorious victory of its arms bear all the fruits that the nation and the whole of humanity justly expect to reap.”

            The Federal troops fired a salute over the grave.  The little remote site where they rest must be to the nation as sacred as those places where thousands are deposited.  Small in number, far away from the patriotic and the strong arm of the loyal North, surrounded by fierce enemies of the Union, those brave and devoted Germans offered their lives.

            War memorials praise the sacrifice of those killed: Under the union banner lay the remains; sacrifices of both the dead and the living have been made; yet we are proud; troops fired a salute; the site is sacred.

HARPERS’S WEEKLY New York, January 20, 1866

Foundation 2004

SLIDE 21

In Loving Memory of Jovanie Ochoa

In Loving Memory

Jovanie Ochoa

September 1, 1999

December 25, 2000

            The markers that mourners erect for individual carry the same loving memory.

SLIDE 22

Back of Ochoa Marker

JOVANIE God’s finger touched him and he slipped away from earth’s dark shadows to a brighter day; God saw the road was getting rough, and the hills were hard to climb; He gently closed his weary eyes, and whispered, “Peace be thine”   To a beautiful garden this child has gone, to a land of perfect rest; though he is gone, in our hearths he lives on.  His memory will be our test of how we cherish all our little ones….  All daughters and all sons.

SLIDE 23

Mikus (Czech)

Zde adpaciya

Manzelka

Veronyka Mikus

Nar. July 16, 1860

Zem. Dec. 4. 1902

V Horni

Jasenka U vsertina

Na Morave

MIKUS

            Moreover, such memorialization is universal; it matters not that it be written in Czech . .

SLIDE 24

Treu der Union

…or in German.    Latin, were it used to memorialize – not belittle, we would expect to find on the gravemarkers of German immigrants who prided themselves on their use of Latin.  If, indeed, they did pride themselves on their use of Latin.

Lateiner gravemarkers

SLIDE 25

LATIN GRAVEMARKERS

SLIDE 26

Sisterdale Cemetery

The most obvious cemetery in which to start searching for Lateiner gravemarkers was in Sisterdale; still a thriving town.  Armed with our list of over 200 names, we searched for matches among the over 200 gravemarkers in the Sisterdale Cemetery.  No matches.

SLIDE 27

Comfort Cemetery

            The second most obvious cemetery was Comfort.  The Comfort cemetery was larger that the Sisterdale one, about 300 markers instead of 200.  The best find in the Cemetery, though, was not a marker, but a fellow marker-researcher.      

SLIDE 28

Anne and Mike Steward

After spending the morning reading through a couple of rare books I had previously ascertained were in the Comfort library (see Overstreet), I telephoned Anne Stewart, more or less as a courtesy.  I had emailed Anne months earlier; several other sources had indicated that she was an outstanding journalist and published scholar on the history of the Freethinkers (see Stewart).  Anne, however, had not responded.   (She had changed eddresses; had never received my email.)

Less than one hour after I telephoned her, she and her husband Mike met me at the Cemetery – with a complete map of the cemetery in hand.  Anne had compiled a book of such maps, all of the Boerne area.  Mike had published the book.   While Anne and I sat on some curbstone exchanging the findings of our scholarship, Mike walked around the cemetery with my list of names.

In brief, Anne and Mike had visited Sisterdale and several other cemeteries on the Latin-on-Lateiner gravemarker quest.  They had the same results, although their list was not as complete as mine.  They agreed that we still had hope of finding such gravemarkers, since the Lateiners had scattered all the way from California to Boston (and Germany) number of cemeteries.  And they agreed that the term Lateiner was most likely derogatory.  “The locals would call you a Lateiner, Scott.  You are an intellectual – and from that rich school “Trinity!”

Anne also added credence to the lack of evidence as being telling evidence.  She had written two articles on the lack of Sunday Houses in Comfort (Stewart 1999, 208).  In the latter half of the nineteenth century, area German farmers had built very small Sunday houses in the local towns.  The families would travel to town late Saturday, crowd into the small houses, and attend church services on Sunday.  These Sunday houses were especially prominent in New Braunfels and in Fredericksburg – strong German Catholic towns.        

Comfort had no such houses.  It was a town of Freethinkers, of “atheists.”  No churches.

Mike located a dozen or so markers for me; Anne quickly added some more names to my list.  The left and I took pictures.  The markers were written in the expected German and mixture of German and English.  They had no Latin.

SLIDE 29

Seidenstiker

Hier ruhen die

Kinder von

H. & J. Seidensticker

Selma, Helene,

Hedwig, Otto,

Julian Louis

SLIDE 30

Helene Flach

Hier Ruht

HELENE

Tochter von

O. & J. Flach

Geb.

Maerz 22, 1886.

Gest.

Aug. 21, 1886

Ruhe Sanft

SLIDE 31

Christoph Flach

Christoph Flach

Geb.

Dec. 31, 1826

Gest.

Nov. 7, 1904

[rose & scroll]

FLACH

            Present plans call for more research, of course.  The Stewarts and I have already exchanged several communications, basically consolidating our two divergent strands of scholarship and making plans to work together – and enticing others to join us. 

When I stopped by their house after my first visit, Anne’s parting words were “I hope that I am the second person to find a Latin gravemarker.”  I responded:  “Or the first.”

Works Cited

Aberle, David F.  (1966) The Peyote Religion among the Navaho. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research..

Biesele, R.L.  (1930).  The History of the German Settlements in Texas, 1831-1861.  Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones; rpt. 1964). [Latin Settlements], [Bettina], [Sisterdale]

Carver, Craig.  (1989). American Regional Dialects: A word geography.  Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Flach, Vera.  (1973).  A Yankee in German-America: Texas Hill Country.  San Antonio: Naylor.  [Bettina]

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “Boerne, Texas,”  http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/BB/hgb9.html (accessed March 17, 2008)

Hertzberg, H. T. Edward, trans.  (July 1988).  “A Letter from Friedrich Schenck in Texas to His Mother in German, 1847,”  Southwestern Historical Quarterly 92. [Bettina]

Lawrence, Don.  (November 19, 2000)   “Freethinkers in Texas” Austin: The Atheist  4:11.

Lich, Glen E. and Dona B. Reeves, eds.  (1980).  German Culture in Texas.  Boston: Twayne.  [Freethinkers], [Sisterdale]

Meyerhoff, Miriam.  (2006). Introducing Sociolinguistics.  London/New York: Routledge.

Overstreet, Carolyn Lindemann. (nd) Flack Family. (np).

__________ (1984).  On the Flack Family Trail (translation of Auf den Spuren der Familie Flach). Austin, Texas: Eakin Press 1984.

Regenbrecht, Adalbert.  (July 1916)  “The German Settlers of Millheim before the Civil War,”  Southwestern Historical Quarterly 20. 

Reinhardt, Louis.  (July 1899).  “The Communistic Colony of Bettina,” Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 3.

Romberg, Annie.  (July 1948).  “Texas Literary Society of Pioneer Days,”  Southwestern Historical Quarterly 52. 

Stewart, Anne.  (Fall 2002).  “The Burgerkrieg in German West Texas: 1861-1865.”  The Comfort News.

__________.  (Winter 1999).  “Comfort, Texas: The Town with No Sunday Houses.”  The Comfort News.

__________.  (Fall 2003).  “Hering Zalat: Food in a Freethought Community.”  The Comfort News.

__________.  (February 2008).  “The Town with No Sunday Houses: Comfort, Texas.  The Comfort News.

Stewart, Anne and Mike Stewart. (1993).  Comfort Women in Comfort History.  Self published.

__________.  (1977). Texas in the Civil War: The Minna Stieler Stories.  Self published.

Tajfel, Henri.  (1978) Interindividual behaviour and intergroup behaviour.  In Henri Tajfel (ed.) Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations.  London/New York: Academic Press, 27-60.

Von Herff, Ferdinand (1978).  The Regulated Emigration of the German Proletariat with Special Reference to Texas, trans. Arthur L. Fincks, San Antonio: Trinity University. [Bettina]

Works Consulted

The Comfort News.  (Friday, January 31, 1919).  “A Pioneer Woman Dead.”  Comfort, Texas, 15^th year, No. 47.  (The Sophienburg Archives)

Felger, Robert Pattison.  (1935).  Texas in the War for Southern Independence, 1861-1865.  Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas.  [Battle of the Nueces]

First Founder Biographies. (ND).   P. 621.  The Sophinburg Archives.

Geiser, S. W.  (February 16, 1944).  Recipient of an unsigned letter.  (The Sophienburg Archives)

Jordan, Terry G.  (July 1978).  “Perceptual Regions in Texas.”  Geographical Review 68.

Jordan, Terry G.  (Sept. 1970).  “The Texas Appalachia.”  Annals of the Association of American Geographers 60.

Lich, Glen E.  (1981)  The German Texans.  San Antonio: University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures.  [Freethinkers]

Maverick, Maury.  (April 24, 1994).  “Douai showed revolutionary spirit.” San Antonio Express News.  (The Sophienburg Archives)

Wulstein, Martin.  (October 16, 1990) Letter to Clyde T. Blackman.  New Braunfels: The Sophienburg Archives.

Ransleben, Guido E.  (1954).  A Hundred Years of Comfort in Texas.  San Antonio: Naylor. Rev. Ed. 1974.   Vertical Files, Barker Texas History  Center, University of Texas at Austin.  [Comfort], [Battle of the Nueces]