Caching Around the Columbus, TX Area 4/24/2010

This morning we left about 9:00 and headed west to our first cache which was nothing to speak of near a very pretty pond and picnic area. We drove in Weimar, TX next for a cache on a railroad caboose next to the old train depot, which is now a library. Then it was on to our first of 3 caches at what is called "The Painted Churches of Texas". Many Czech and German settlers came to Texas in the mid-1800s looking for economic opportunity and religious freedom. Most of these men and women worked hard to establish themselves and to develop communities similar to their hometowns. A main component of what they wanted to recreate was a strong place to worship. The painted churches were often the second or third church building these communities erected. The churches embody the aspirations of immigrant communities that had reached a certain maturity. From the outside, they look like many American country churches built around the turn of the last century -- arched Gothic Revival windows, facades clad in white frame siding or in stone, lone steeples rising up into the Texas sky. From the outside, they look like many American country churches built around the turn of the last century -- arched Gothic Revival windows, facades clad in white frame siding or in stone, lone steeples rising up into the Texas sky. Built by 19th century immigrants to this rough but promising territory, these churches transport the visitor back to a different era, a different way of life. Inscriptions on the walls read not in English, but in the mother tongue of those who built them: German and Czech. The story of these buildings is the story of a people striving to succeed in a new country and still preserve the values and culture of their homelands. In 1984, 15 of these churches, with their unique style of art, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Once taken for granted, the painted churches of Texas, and the people who built them, are now capturing the interest of designers, historians and ordinary tourists, both in Texas and out of state. We visited 3 of them to do the caches there and they were St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church and St. Mary Roman Catholic Church. The term "Painted" comes from the elaborate faux-finished interiors - painted by itinerant artists who advertised in church bulletins and newspapers. Several were resident artists in San Antonio. Gold-leafed, stone and polished marble columns and ceilings are actually finely-fitted woodwork. The paint - mixed on site - is still vibrant and bright - even after all these years.
St. John the Baptist Catholic church opened in 1890. Destroyed by the hurricane of 1909, the church was rebuilt. It burned shortly thereafter and had to be rebuilt a second time. Fred Donecker and sons began painting the interior of Ammansville’s St. John the Baptist Catholic Church 1919. This sweet little painted church is pretty in pink, with delicate stencils throughout. The banister and newel details are painted faux-finished marble. A window at the side entrance was installed in an arch shape with clear panes, making views outside appear as the stained glass.
Saints Cyril and Methodius Church in Shiner. Unknown artists began painting Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church in 1909. If you take a self-guided tour, you can only peek into the church, as it remains locked unless open for regular services. The design inside is simple stenciling that frames the Stations of the Cross. Examples of pounce, a variation of infill painting, are hand-painted throughout the church. The ceiling and nave are sky blue, accented by organic stenciling.
St. Mary’s at High Hill Know as the “Queen of the Painted Churches,” St. Mary’s High Hill boasts the most extensive and elaborate painted interior in the state. Two San Antonio painters executed the painting in 1912. The ceilings and walls combine freehand painting and stenciling, while wooden columns showcase skillful marbling. The spandrel above the apse features the Lamb of God, set in a quatrefoil flanked by kneeling angels. Rich, red carpet contrasts the gold tones of the ornate ceiling paintings.
All these churches were quite beautiful and ornate inside as you can see by the pictures. Next it was on to Hostyn, TX and the Queen of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church. On this site is the church, several shrines, monuments and a memorial chapel. It was on this site on March 24, 1889, a group of Czech immigrants gathered to form the Katolicka Jednota Texaska (KJT), or Czech Catholic Union of Texas. A fraternal benefit society, the KJT was chartered on July 4, 1889, with six individual lodges. Through programs such as life insurance, financial aid to members, churches, and educational scholarships, the organization has served people throughout the state and has grown to number over one hundred lodges. Built from part of an old church wall and stones gathered from the banks of the Colorado, the Hostyn chapel to our Lady of Lourdes is often the scene of weddings and provides a haven of rest to passers-by. Desiring to create something beautiful out of the unattractive old rock wall which surrounding the Holy Rosary Church, the Rev. Paul D. [Kasper] of Plum had the wall torn down and with it laid the foundation of the now famous Grotto located at Hostyn, Texas. The Grotto is an exact reproduction of the world-renowned shrine of miracles in Lourdes, France. An interesting story from this stop is as we were walking around the church looking at the memorials and other things we came upon 2 cannons with plaques on them (see pictures). As we were looking at them an elderly gentleman came over to us and related the story of them to us. He told us that one cannon was in rememberance of a father and the other of his son both who fought in the Civil War against each other on opposite sides and the gentleman that told us this was the great grandfather.

Next we were on our way to Cedar Cemetery a small cemetery out on a country road where the earliest marked grave dates to 1857. All records were kept in German until 1931. German cultural influences are evident on many tombstones. Burials include veterans of the war for Texas Independence, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.

Next it was a cache out on a country road with a lovely view that someone has called The Little Grand Canyon. Wasn't quite that nice as far we were concerned. Next it was on to the Kreische Brewery State Historic Site and Monument Hill. The park sits on a sandstone bluff above the Colorado River. Monument Hill is a crypt and memorial to the men who died in the Dawson Massacre and the Black Bean Death Lottery of the failed Mier Expedition. The Kreische Brewery site commemorates the contribution European immigrants made in Texas, specifically German immigrant, stonemason and brewer Heinrich Kreische, whose house and brewery ruins are in the park. The Kreische Brewery and house were listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 16, 1975. On September 18, 1848, the remains of Texans killed in the Dawson Massacre and the Black Bean Death Lottery, which had been retrieved from their original burial sites, were reinterred in a common tomb with a sandstone vault at the location now known as Monument Hill. Over 1,000 people came for the ceremony including Sam Houston. On January 17, 1849, Heinrich Ludwig Kreische, a recent German immigrant, purchased 172 acres (70 ha) of land, which included the tomb. He built a three-story house and, in 1860, began building a brewery. By 1879, it was the third largest brewing operation in Texas, with its flagship product being "Kreische's Bluff Beer." Kreische maintained the tomb for the rest of his life, but the tomb and Kreische Brewery began to deteriorate after his death in 1882. The brewery closed in 1884. The Kreische family made several requests to have the tomb removed from their property, as it was frequently vandalized. On April 15, 1905, a new law passed by the Texas Legislature authorized acquisition, by purchase or condemnation, of 0.36 acres (0.15 ha) of land that the grave was on. The state acquired the land by condemnation on June 24, 1907. In 1933, the State Highway Commission fenced the .36 acres and agreed to maintain it as a state park. In the same year, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas purchased a new granite vault for the tomb. For the 1936 Texas Centennial, the Texas Centennial Commission erected a 48-foot (15 m) shellstone monument with an art deco mural to prominently mark the mass grave.

The Dawson Massacre (also called the Dawson Expedition) was an event in the history of the Republic of Texas, in which 36 Texans were killed by Mexican soldiers and Texas Cherokee Indians with cannons on September 18, 1842 outside San Antonio, Texas. On April 21, 1836, the independence of the Republic of Texas was secured by a decisive victory over the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto. Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its southern border but had sufficient military power to control only land north of the Nueces River. Although Antonio López de Santa Anna, the ruler of Mexico, signed the Treaties of Velasco ceding Texas territory from Mexican control, the treaty was never ratified by the Mexican Government and Santa Anna repudiated the treaty once he was released from Texan custody. Therefore, Mexican forces and Cherokee guerillas under Vicente Cordova and Chicken Trotter continued to resist Texan attempts to occupy the area between the Rio Grande and Nueces River. For the Cherokees it was a war of vengeance following the massacre of Cherokee and Delaware Indians by Texas Army regulars in the summer of 1839. For the Mexicans it was to prove they could return to Texas at will.
On September 11, 1842, a Mexican force of almost 1,000 entered San Antonio and took control of the city, with minimal resistance from the Texans. When the news of the fall of San Antonio reached Gonzales, Mathew Caldwell formed a militia of 225 men and marched toward San Antonio. Caldwell's troops made camp about twenty miles east of San Antonio near Salado Creek and planned their attack on the Mexicans.
On September 18, Caldwell sent a small band of rangers to draw the Mexicans toward the battlefield he had chosen. An estimated 850 Mexican soldiers moved out of San Antonio to attack the Texans.
A separate company of 54 Texans, mostly from Fayette County, under the command of Nicholas Mosby Dawson, arrived at the battlefield and began advancing on the rear of the Mexican Army. The Mexican commander, General Adrian Woll, afraid of being surrounded, sent between 400 and 500 of his soldiers and one or two cannons to attack the group. The Texans were able to hold their own against the Mexican rifles, but once the cannons got within range, the Texan fatalities mounted quickly.
Dawson realized the situation was hopeless and raised a white flag of surrender. In the fog of war, both sides continued to fire and Dawson was killed. The battle was over after a little more than one hour. It ended with thirty-six Texans dead, fifteen captured and three escaped. At the front, Caldwell's men had repelled several Mexican charges and inflicted heavy casualties. Woll was forced to retreat back to San Antonio.
The next morning Caldwell's troops located the Dawson Battleground and buried the dead Texans in shallow graves. The dead Mexicans were not buried. Caldwell then unsuccessfully pursued Woll's forces south as they retreated from San Antonio. Caldwell returned to San Antonio, after the Mexicans successfully recrossed the Rio Grande.
In late summer of 1848, a group of La Grange citizens retrieved the remains of the men killed in the Dawson Massacre from their burial site near Salado Creek. These remains and the remains of the men killed in the failed Mier Expedition were reinterred in a common tomb in a cement vault on a bluff one mile south of La Grange.

The Mier Expedition was a failed raid by a Texian militia on the Mexican border settlement of Ciudad Mier on December 26, 1842. The attack was partly in hopes of financial gain and partly in retaliation for the Dawson Massacre, in which 36 Texans were killed by the Mexican Army.
Although Antonio López de Santa Anna, the ruler of Mexico, was defeated at the Battle of San Jacinto and signed the Treaties of Velasco in 1836, ceding Texas territory from Mexican control, his forces continued to invade the Republic of Texas hoping to regain control.
On September 18, 1842, Texan and Mexican forces engaged at Salado Creek, east of San Antonio. A company of 54 men, mostly from Fayette County, under the command of Nicholas Mosby Dawson, began advancing on the rear of the Mexican Army. The Mexican commander, General Adrian Woll, sent 400 to 500 of his soldiers and one or two cannon to attack the group. The Texans were able to hold their own against the Mexican soldiers, but once the cannon were within firing range the Texan fatalities mounted quickly. The battle was over after a little more than one hour. The battle ended with 36 Texans dead and 15 captured in what became known as the Dawson Massacre.
On November 25, 1842, 700 men under the command of Alexander Somervell left San Antonio on to punish the Mexican Army for raids in Texas. The Somervell Expedition recaptured Laredo and then, with a reduced force of 500, took the Mexican town of Guerrero. Without serious backing for the expedition from the Republic of Texas, Somervell ordered his men to disband and return home. Five captains and their men disobeyed and continued on to Ciudad Mier.
On December 20, 1842, the 308 Texan soldiers who ignored orders to pull back from the Rio Grande to Gonzales approached Ciudad Mier. They camped on the Texas side of the Rio Grande. 261 soldiers participated in the raid on the town, while the others remained behind as the camp guard. The Texans were unaware that 3,000 Mexican troops were in the area. Although they inflicted heavy casualties on the Mexicans (650 dead, 200 wounded), the Texans were forced to surrender on December 26. 243 Texans were taken prisoner and marched toward Mexico City via Matamoros for punishment.
On February 11, 1843, 181 Texans escaped, but the lack of food and water in the mountainous Mexican desert forced 176 to surrender or be recaptured by the end of the month. When the prisoners arrived in Saltillo, Coahuila, they learned an outraged Santa Anna ordered the execution of all the escapees but the commander, General Francisco Mejia, refused to follow the order and was replaced. The new commander, Colonel Domingo Huerta, moved the prisoners to El Rancho Salado. By this time, diplomatic efforts on behalf of Texas by the foreign ministers of the United States and Great Britain led Santa Anna to compromise that only one in ten would die.
To help determine who would die Huerta had 159 white beans and 17 black beans placed in a pot. In what came to be known as the Black Bean Episode (or Black Bean Lottery), the Texans were blindfolded and ordered to draw beans. Officers and then enlisted men, in alphabetical order, were ordered to draw. The 17 men who drew a black bean were allowed to write letters home and then were executed by firing squad. On the evening of March 25, 1843, the Texans were shot in two groups, one of nine men and one of eight. According to legend, Huerta placed the black beans in last and had the officers pick first, so that they would make up the majority of those killed.
The white bean survivors, including Bigfoot Wallace, finished the march to Mexico City and were imprisoned at Perote prison along with the 15 survivors from the Dawson Massacre. Some of the Texans escaped from Perote or died there, but most remained captive until they were released, by order of Santa Anna, on September 16, 1844.
In 1847, during the Mexican-American War, the United States Army occupied northeastern Mexico. Captain John E. Dusenbury, a white bean survivor, returned to Rancho Salado and exhumed the remains of his comrades. He traveled with the remains on a ship to Galveston, Texas, and by wagon to La Grange in Fayette County, Texas. La Grange citizens then retrieved the remains of the men killed in the Dawson Massacre, from their burial site near Salado Creek. The remains of all the men were reinterred in a common tomb in a cement vault on a bluff one mile south of La Grange.

We walked through the park and found our cache and saw the Colorado iver from the Overlook and as you can se by the pictures the view was fantastic. We saw the monument and read all the plaques and historic markers and were off to the next cache which was in a tree outside the LaGrange Town Hall. Next was a cache at the Old Jail in LaGrange. In the early 1880s, the county issued twenty-two bonds at $1000 each to build a new first-class jail. An iron fence was ordered from Philadelphia for $2,074. It managed to survive the scrap drives of WWII and it's still keeping livestock off the lawn 120 years later. So far, that comes to only $17 a year. The building's limestone came from nearby Muldoon, Texas. The stone was in demand for it's unusual blue color and it was used in many notable buildings around the state. The jail is also said to be haunted. One of the suspected spirits is said to be that of a Fayette County woman who murdered a hired hand and then committed suicide by staging a successful hunger strike. Another legend says the skeletons of several hapless prisoners remain chained to the walls under sand and silt from a flooding of the Colorado River. The sheriff couldn't - or didn't - get them out in time. Another convenient feature were the two exterior “drunk blocks.” These freestanding cement cells on the jail lawn came with their own “bath.” These cells were for prisoners too drunk (or rowdy) to climb the four-step staircase of the entrance. One of the cells has been kept for display.

Next it was on to the LaGrange M-K-T (Katy) Railroad Depot. The La Grange M-K-T (Katy) Railroad Depot is located at its original site adjacent to the tracks at the intersection of North Washington and Lafayette Streets. The building, which has waiting rooms, an office and a freight area, was completed in November 1897 by the Taylor, Bastrop and Houston Railway Company to replace the town’s first station, which burned in March of that year. The T,B & H was soon taken over by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. Passenger service continued until the 1950s and the depot received and dispatched freight as late as the 1970s. Highlights of the museum exhibits include the original pot-belly stove, M-K-T safe, and stationmaster’s desk, in addition to numerous historic photographs and a gold-headed can presented to James Converse in 1880 in appreciation of his successful efforts to bring a railroad to La Grange.

Next was a 2 part multi-cache at a small cemetery on the outskirts of LaGrange. First we had to find the grave site of a member of the Prussian Army who later became a early pioneer of Texas whose name was Gebhard von Blucher. On Sunday, June 18, 1815 near Waterloo, Belgium, forces of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte and Michel Ney were defeated by those of the Seventh Coalition. The Seventh Coalition included a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher and an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the British Duke of Wellington. It was the decisive battle of the Waterloo Campaign. The French defeat at Waterloo put an end to Napoleon's rule as emperor, and marked the end of Napoleon's Hundred Days of return from exile. Upon Napoleon's return to power in 1815, states that had opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition and began to mobilize armies. Two large forces under Wellington and von Blücher assembled close to the northeastern border of France. Napoleon chose to attack in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the Coalition.
Napoleon delayed giving battle until noon on June 18th to allow the ground to dry. Wellington's army, positioned across the Brussels road on the Mont St Jean escarpment, withstood repeated attacks by the French, until, in the evening, the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. At that moment, the British counter-attacked and drove the French army in disorder from the field. Pursuing Coalition forces entered France and restored Louis XVIII to the French throne. Napoleon abdicated, surrendering to the British, and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. We got the information, figured out the final cache coords and found the final cache container which was also in the cemetery.

Our next 2 caches were NRV caches, one being a puzzle cache where we had to figure out a Sudoku puzzle to get the cache coords. The cache ended up being out on a country road behind a tree and the last cache was at a gas station under a light post skirt. Then we drove back to the coach for the rest of the afternoon and did our usual afternoon rituals. We had our Texas beef for dinner and it was fantastic. Well that's about it for today so until tomorrow we love and miss all you guys. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick