Conrad's Stories

Emma is the youngest child of Philipp and Marie Peters Bauer.  She grew up on the family farm in Kendall County, Texas, with her siblings Bertha, Otto, Louise, and Ernst.  Her older brother Otto died between 1870 and 1880.  No records are available listing Otto’s exact death date or where he is buried, but she remembered him as she used Otto as her oldest son’s middle name. 

Emma was born on 27 February 1868 on the family farm in Spring Branch. The farm was located about halfway between Boerne and New Braunfels on what is now Highway 46.  Her father, an experienced carpenter, built the house.  Two generations of Bauer descendants lived there.  The Max Hofheinz family purchased the farm in the 1930s when her sister-in-law, Rosa Bender Bauer, sold it. The house is located in Guadalupe State Park.

On 14 December 1889, Emma married Henry Schuetz.  Henry purchased their marriage license in Kendall County. Charles Ohlrich, the Justice of the Peace for Precinct 3 in Comal County, officiated the marriage ceremony.  Ph. Acker and L. Willke witnessed the marriage.  Henry, the son of Carl and Katharine Fries Schuetz,  was born near Bear Creek, close to New Braunfels, in Comal County in 1864.

In January 1895, Henry and Emma purchased land from his aunt and uncle, Joe and Annie Saunders, for $500.00.  The “…tract of land being on Curry’s Creek about 9 ½ miles West of the Twin Sisters and 33 miles N. 55 W from New Braunfels…” They sold this property containing 190 acres to William Schuetz, Henry’s oldest brother,  in 1898 for $800.00.   In June 1899, they purchased land next to the Blanco River in the town of Pittsburg in Blanco County.  On the 1900 Federal Census, the Henry Schuetz family is living there.

In 1910 they live in Kendall County on the Karl Schuetz homeplace along Curry’s Creek in Kendalia.  Karl, Emma’s father-in-law, age 71, is living with them.  His wife died the year before.  Emma is 42 years old and has had four children with three living, Alex Otto (1890), Lillie Katherine (1895), and Harry Charles (1898).  Her husband, Henry, is farming, and her father-in-law, Karl, had his own income.

On 4 May 1916, Emma purchased a Beneficiary Fund from the Supreme Forest Woodmen Circle for $333.33.  If she died after owning the policy for three years, the beneficiaries would receive $1000.00.  The beneficiaries were her husband Henry and the children Alex, Lillie, and Harry.  The fund would also pay $100.00 toward  the “erection of a monument in memory of the member.”   Emma belonged to Fern Grove, No. 1400 in the Supreme Forest Woodmen Circle in Texas.  Clerk Minnie Davis witnessed the policy.  1916 may have been the year that Emma learned she had tuberculosis.  Her obituary states she died “after an illness of some duration.”

In 1918 Texas women tried to convince the governor of Texas that they should have the right to vote in elections.  Governor William P. Hobby agreed to allowed them to vote in the upcoming Texas Primary.  Emma registered to vote on 5 July 1918, just in time for the Democratic Primary on 27 July.

Two years later, Henry, Emma, and their youngest son, Harry, live on a farm and ranch along Welfare Road or Fredericksburg Road.  The 1920 census lists both roads next to their name. Henry sold this farm to Willie Rust in October of 1920, and they moved to a small farm along Johns Road.  The disease must have progressed since they decided to move so close to town and near Dr. John Nooe, her physician.

Emma Bauer Schuetz, age 59 and one month,  passed away at her home near Boerne on 27 March 1927.  Rev. George Belsey performed the funeral service.  Pallbearers were Gus. Bower, Chas. Pfeiffer, Chas. Dienger, Max Richter, Joe Vogt, and Ernst Haufler.  She was buried in the Boerne Cemetery.

Emma was my dad’s grandmother.  She died when he was two years old, so he did not remember her.  He always understood she died in a house on the corner of Turner and San Antonio Streets in Boerne.  The house was a small sanitarium or hospital.  Years later, my maternal grandparents, Paul and Ame Richardson bought the house, and they would sometimes mention this story.  Now that I reread the obituary and it states she died in her home, I wonder if maybe she stayed at the house to receive extra care and then went home?

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Blanco County Deed Records, Vol )R, p 63-64. County Clerk’s Office, Johnson City.

Blanco County Deed Records. Vol 17, p44-46. County Clerk’s Office, Johnson City.

Kendall County Deed Records. Vol 15, p137-139. County Clerk’s Office, Boerne.

Kendall County Deed Records. Vol 17, p154-156. County Clerk’s Office, Boerne.

Kendall County Deed Records. Vol 35, p60-61. County Clerk’s Office, Boerne.

Kendall County Marriage Records, County Clerk’s Office, Boerne, Texas.

Obituary, The Boerne Star,  March 1927.

1900 Blanco County Census, Ancestry.com.

1870, 1880, 1910, 1920 Kendall County Census, Ancestry.com

Women’s Voter Registration Receipt #16, Kendalia 1918.