The Schroeder Family and Hedwig Village

The Schroeder Family and Hedwig Village. . , Jacob and Dorothea Schroeder built their log cabin a few hundred feet from this site, in about 1839. They brought two sons with them from Germany, Frederick (Fritz) and Heinrich. Theirs was a subsistence farm, and all the labor was provided by the family. Most Germans did not practice slavery. By 1860, over twenty years after their arrival, their landholding Images courtesy of Evelyn Schroeder Kingsbury was worth $100, and they owned three horses, ten milk cows, four oxen, thirty-six sheep, and ten swine. They raised eighty bushels of corn per year., The Schroeders and their neighbors operated a frontier communications system whereby a white flag was posted on their fence if emergency help was needed. Jacob scanned the prairie horizon with a telescope twice a day to look for these flags., Jacob and his sons bought and sold land in the surrounding area, allowing many more German families to move to Spring Branch. Both sons were enlisted in the Confederacy, along with nearly all young men of the area. Fritz and his wife built a frame house in about 1865 near Smithdale Road. The house was later moved to 435 Piney Point, where it stands today., Fritz' son Henry Schroeder inherited some of the family land, and married Hedwig Jankowski, who came from Germany in 1906. Hedwig was still alive when Houston's suburbs arrived in the 1940s and 1950s, and is the namesake of modern Hedwig Village. She passed away in 1983, a last living link to the pioneer settlers of the area., Captions , Jacob Schroeder , Images courtesy of Evelyn Schroeder Kingsbury, Jacob Schroeder's telescope , Images courtesy of Evelyn Schroeder Kingsbury, German settlers 'going visiting' by Texas pioneer artist Friederich Richard Petri , Courtesy of the Dolph Biscoe Center for American History, Austin, Henry Schroeder and his wife Hedwig Jankowski on their farm, near modern Smithdale Road, in the late 1930s