About the Gillespie County Historical Society
The Gillespie County Historical Society grew out of a single building project. In the mid-1840s German emigrants, reading reports of Texas as a land of limitless opportunity, risked everything to cross the Atlantic and found Fredericksburg in the Hill Country in 1846. Their first public building, raised in 1847, was the Vereins Kirche, or Society Church, an octagonal structure that served for decades as church, school, and community hall. The original was torn down, and the campaign to build a replica on the town square, completed in 1935, is what launched the historical society. The society still operates the replica Vereins Kirche in Marktplatz at 100 W. Main Street, where it houses exhibits on the town's founding and a changing schedule of temporary shows.
The society's main site is the Pioneer Museum, a combination museum and historic site on 3.5 acres along Main Street in the Uptown blocks of downtown Fredericksburg. Its eleven buildings, two of which stand on their original sites and date from as early as the 1850s, are filled with hundreds of everyday objects used by local families from the 1840s through the 1930s. The society describes its purpose simply: two sites solely dedicated to preserving and telling the story of the pioneers.
Visits begin with a twelve-minute film, "Finding Fredericksburg," on the colony's origins. Each building then has a two-minute audio interpretation, some narrated by descendants of the original owners, and a self-guided walk through the grounds takes most people about an hour. The society also runs a Wednesday-afternoon historical and architectural walking tour of downtown, guided group tours by arrangement, a German heritage program, and an annual spring fundraiser.
Collections and Research Services
The society keeps an archive of documents and photographs on Gillespie County families and the history of the area, and its staff will help search those files for family historians and local-history researchers. Research is by appointment; call (830) 990-8441 to arrange a time. The archive is not cataloged online, so bring whatever names, dates, and property descriptions you already have. Because many Fredericksburg families kept records in German, pairing a visit with church and courthouse sources is worthwhile; our guides to free family history research and finding out when a house was built explain where to look.
Planning Your Visit
The Pioneer Museum at 325 W. Main Street is open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The website lists admission at $5 for adults and $3 for ages 6 to 17, with children 5 and under free; confirm current prices at pioneermuseum.net before you go. The Vereins Kirche, two blocks east in Marktplatz, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and is free, with donations welcome. Free parking is available along Main Street in front of the museum and on Milam Street beside it; restrooms are in the gift shop. The grounds are outdoors between buildings (the museum lends umbrellas), and not all of the historic buildings are wheelchair accessible.
For a second look at German Texas, the Sophienburg Museum and Archives in New Braunfels, about 70 miles southeast, holds a large archive on the other major German settlement of the 1840s, and the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin places the colony in the broader story of the state.
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