Kendall of Kendall

Editor’s note: First of a two-part series chronicling the history of the forming of Kendall County and its namesake, George Wilkins Kendall. Everything included in this story was taken from Bryden Moon’s March 5 presentation at the Patrick Heath Public Library.

K endall County celebrated its 160th anniversary earlier this year without much pomp and circumstance. But last Saturday, the Patrick Heath Public Library played host to a special presentation from Bryden Moon titled “Kendall of Kendall” in which the history of the county and its namesake were shared.

Moon is a local historian and a member of the Kendall County Historical Commission. He started by saying the presentation regards the life of the county’s namesake, George Wilkins Kendall, as well as the early years of the county’s development leading up to its organization in 1862.

Prior to the German immigration, the Texas Hill Country was considered a “no-man’s land” because of the Native American presence, Moon said. But in the mid-1840s, the big bang of the Adelsverein’s colonization efforts created New Braunfels in 1845 and Fredericksburg in 1846 … “two isolated communities in formally unpopulated frontier land.”

“With a massive land void of over 60 miles between the two outposts, the Verein’s foundations also set in motion the opportunity for land ownership past the fringes of civilization. German immigrant pioneers slowly filled in the land between the Adelsverein’s instant-city anchors,” Moon said.

Originally, the land that now is Kendall County was entirely in the large Bexar Land District until Comal County was established in1846. At that point, the land was divided with the western third in Bexar County and the eastern two thirds in Comal County.

“In 1847 our first pioneer, Nicholas Zink, carves out a homestead where the Pinta Trail crossed the Guadalupe River,” Moon said. “By the 1850 Census, out of Comal County’s 1,723 residents, almost 50 settlers were in the “Mountains” region of Comal County, which became Sisterdale when Ottmar von Behr received confirmation in 1851 that he was postmaster of the Sisterdale Post Office. At the time it was only the third post office in the entire Hill Country.” Zink, von Behr and George

Zink, von Behr and George Frederick Holekamp are considered the first settlers of future Kendall County.

“By the early 1850s, the settlements in our future county included Sisterdale, a pre-Boerne communal farm on the Cibolo, scattered ranches and farms in the Sabinas Creek, Curry’s Creek and the Spring Creek regions, and pre-Comfort pioneers along Cypress Creek,” Moon said. “With exception of a unique enclave of American settlers in the Curry’s Creek region, all settlements were heavily populated by German immigrants.”

In 1852, Boerne became the first platted community. Comfort followed in 1854. In 1855, the future Kendall County was split between Bexar and Comal counties.

“Most historical accountings reference an 1859 petition by regional citizens to form a new county,” Moon said. “But they missed an earlier petition. The first initiative to form a new county was actually launched in 1855 when five individual petitions from future Kendall County citizens were submitted to the Texas Legislature.

“As it turns out all fivepetitions were written by the same man and matched Gustav Theisen’s script. For those who don’t know, just three years earlier, Mr. Theisen partnered with surveyor John James and began selling lots in the newly platted town of Boerne.”

In 1856, going against the wishes of the petitioners, Comfort was rolled into Kerr County when it was created in 1856, and the remainder of the future Kendall County became part of Blanco County in 1858.

“After one more unified petition in 1859, indignantly protesting the extremely rough ride to their new county seat of Blanco and a wait of over two more years, Kendall County was finally carved out of Kerr and Blanco counties when it is established on January 10, 1862,” Moon said. “And as it turns out, Kendall County was the only Texas county out of 254 that was created during the Civil War.”

Moon then went on to talk about George Kendall and how he ended up being the namesake of the county.

“(It’s) rare the county is named for a living, incumbent resident,” he said. “What is even rarer was George Wilkins Kendall’s path to fame. He was not from a founding family of Texas. He was not a politician, a Texas Ranger, a lawyer nor a war hero. His career enterprise was located in Louisiana. New Hampshire was his birth state.

“Yet, George Wilkins Kendall had unique talents and an incredible life. He was a man who dreamed and then lived his dreams.”

Moon said George Wilkins Kendall was bright, well-written, adventurous, driven, curious and creative with great sense of humor.

“So, how does a man from the Northeast, with his lifelong business headquartered in the South, wind up having a newly formed Texas county named after him?” Moon said.

See the Friday, March 18, Boerne Star for the second part of this series.