Nassau Plantation: The Evolution of a Texas German Slave Plantation

Chapter 14. A Clouded Title

207 ChaPter 14 A Clouded Title “ From 1850 on the affairs of the Society suffered very much due to a combination of factors. Many lawsuits were filed against the Society in 1847, 1848, and 1849, and judgments entered. The Society’s property, which according to an inventory of 1847 would have had a value of approximately $250,000, was sold, mortgaged, lost, wasted and gradually disappeared until almost nothing was left. Its claim on money owed it in Texas, estimated to be $75,000, was blocked by the statute of limitations. Its right to lands in the grant, namely to 208 James C. Kearney the half-shares to come from the emigrants were lost from view and prejudiced in every conceivable way. Their debts did not diminish; rather they increased through such things as the cost of litigation until it would be almost impossible to say exactly what the Society owed. The worst thing about the whole affair was that neither the Society, nor its creditors, nor the emigrants derived any benefit from this situation, since the first quickly lost, one after the other, all their property as well as their right to property in the grant, and the creditors received no payment for their demands. Indeed, the prospects for it grew slimmer by the day. Only Fischer and Miller were partially satisfied on account of a judgment in 1848 they had against the Society for a substantial amount. “And for the majority of emigrants in respect to the grant and the prospect of finally obtaining valid titles, they were led astray by speculators and ended up selling their certificates at artificially low prices. The largest number of these certificates were bought up in the districts of San Antonio, Comal, and Gillespie by speculators, who, after at first having shown little sympathy for the plight of the emigrants by acquiring their certificates at a price far from their true worth, and not satisfied with this, casting an eye over the entire land, sought to prejudice the rights of the Society and the creditors of the same to the half-shares due them from the emigrants through an act of the legislature and other means.”1 The above summation by Henry Francis Fischer gives a grim but accurate picture of the situation of the German Emigration Co. in Texas after 1850. This process of disintegration cast a cloud over the plantation even though, ostensibly, it had passed out of the Society’s hands in 1850 when the Society signed it over to Otto von Roeder. Once Otto von Roeder gained complete ownership, he began selling it off to defray the debts he had incurred. The sale of 800 acres to Peter Carl von Rosenberg was followed in March 1850 by the sale of 361 acres to Hamilton Ledbetter, one of the more prosperous Anglo farmers in the area. Otto von Roeder also sold several smaller tracts to fresh German immigrants and financed the transactions. Hamilton Ledbetter may well have provided some of the grain that Otto von Roeder had delivered to New Braunfels in 1845, 1846, and 1847,2 and Nassau Plantation 209 the land in question may have served as partial or complete payment for this arrangement. In April 1853, he sold 1,400 acres of undeveloped land to John R. Robson3 for $3,600 and in May 1854, 1,600 acres to J. A. and W. F. Wade for $15,000.4 The rest of the plantation was sold off in smaller tracts to newly arriving German immigrants. By 1859 Otto von Roeder had divested himself entirely of the acreage comprising Nassau Plantation. With the sale to the Wades, Otto von Roeder vacated the plantation , for this tract included the overseer’s house in which he and his family had resided since 1850, as well as other improvements. Von Roeder took his family and slaves south, moving to DeWitt County near Meyersville where his brother, Albrecht, and his brother-in-law, Robert Justus Kleberg, had located in 1847. In May 1855, with all his debts paid off, cash in his pocket, and a coffle of thirty slaves—the original Nassau slaves and their increase plus five slaves received from Wade in partial payment for the land— von Roeder purchased 1,100 acres in the José Maria Escalara survey adjoining the Mission League about 12 miles north of Victoria on the west side of the Guadalupe River. He...