Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home

56. Private Georg Wilhelm Schwarting

Schwarting 439 $2,500 (1870) or $2,000 (1871). In 1872 he moved to a farm of 200 acres near Boerne, and in 1878 both he and his wife died within less than a month of each other.20 Ernst Cramer fell back on his family’s expertise and established himself as a miller in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras. As of 1868 he also assumed the post of U.S. customs collector in Eagle Pass, Texas, across the river. In the mid1870s he returned at least briefly to Comfort. Later he went back into business in Santa Clara, California. Finally, he moved to the future state of Idaho. In 1881 he built the first house in the town of Hailey, and then he ran a mill, built a store, and remained there until his death in 1916, surviving his wife Charlotte by two years.21 20. Bexar Co. Tax Rolls, 1865–71; Kendall Co. Tax Rolls, 1872–1878; Kendall Co. Probate Records, vol. D-2, pp. 1–14; all microfilm, Texas StateA. No one in the family appears in MC 1870. In 1880 daughter Minna had married a doctor from Prussia, and her brother Leopold (age fourteen) and sister Bertha (age eleven) were living with her; MC 1880: Kendall Co./Tex., e.d. 88, #174. 21. Telephone interview with Cramer’s descendants Charlotte and Leo Brown, January 9, 1989; letter of appointment as collector of customs, April 14, 1868, copy in NABS; according to MC 1870: Maverick Co./Tex., #189, Cramer still had $1,800 of property, despite his losses during the war; MC 1900: Blaine Co./Idaho, e.d. 26, #311; MC 1910: Blaine Co./Idaho, Hailey Pct., p. 215. According to the census, his daughter Ottilie (MC 1900: Blaine Co./Idaho, Hailey Pct., e.d. 26, #110) was born in Mexico in 1874 and came to the United States the same year. Cramer appeared in the Comfort area in 1874 posting bond in an orphan guardianship and from 1875 to 1877 as the owner of approximately 2,625 acres; see Kendall Co. Probate Records, vol. D-1, pp. 285–86; Kendall Co. Tax Rolls, 1875–77; both microfilm, Texas StateA. Transcripts and copies of documents from Lee Brown; transcript of obituary in [Boise] Idaho Statesman, July 11, 1916. 56. Private Georg Wilhelm Schwarting In 1855, at the age of twenty-three, Georg Wilhelm Schwarting made his way to Texas on his own, but he certainly knew what to expect when he got there. A compatriot from Oldenburg, Friedrich Ernst, had founded the town of Industry, the first German settlement in what would soon become the Republic of Texas. Prior to 1836, at least two people from Schwarting’s immediate neighborhood near the mouth of the Jade River, followed Ernst. Schwarting’s brother Gerhard also came over in the mid-1840s, but he moved on to California during the gold rush a few source note: Schwarting’s ‘‘good education’’ may not have included economics, since he keeps writing ‘‘creditor’’ when he means ‘‘debtor,’’ but it shows in his penchant for technical terms rarely found in private correspondence. His use of language is terse and unembellished, but his spelling and syntax, apart from a few lapses, are correct. Not included here are the letters in the series from the time before 1860 (three) and after 1865 (thirty-seven) and two additional letters from 1860 and 1864. For this series, only transcripts of the original letters are available. 440 Schwarting years later. Georg lived in the small settlement of Round Top, twelve miles west of Industry, and in 1860 no fewer than fifty-five Germans from Oldenburg were living there. Georg Schwarting had received a ‘‘good education’’ in Germany and probably did not arrive with empty hands; his brother had taken 500 talers* with him when he emigrated. By 1859 Georg had bought some farmland and cattle, and he did some import trading on the side via his brother in Germany. His entrepreneurial spirit is evident even in his first letter.1 Schwarting returned to Germany in the spring of 1860, but this had nothing to do with the threat of civil war. Instead, he took over the ‘‘administration’’ of his father’s large farm and apparently tried to find a wife. He had sold his land in Texas for $900 before he left, but he kept the money invested in Texas. When his father dismissed him in the spring of 1864, he borrowed some...