Galveston Historic Overnights: The Wharf Worker's Cottage
Built in 1890 by Julius Lobenstein.
Originally owned by Julius Lobenstein, this one-time one-bedroom, one-bathroom cottage was used as a rental property for local port and wharf workers. Built five years after the Great Galveston Fire of 1885, it was resourcefully constructed from the remains of structures that burned. All the walls and ceilings—mismatched wood and paint colors—come from houses built between 1860 and 1885.
Parts of the owner biography below were researched and written by Jami Durham, historian at the Galveston Historical Foundation.
About the Original Owners
Julius Lobenstein was born in Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Germany and came to Texas as an infant in 1828 after his father, a gardener by occupation, moved them from Germany to the New Braunfels area.
When Julius was 18, he and his father came to Galveston and purchased 14 acres of land on the island to farm. After several years, young Julius went to work for Gilbert Winnie, receiving $15 a month for services as a stable hand and mail carrier. He married Pauline Werner, also a German immigrant, in 1852 and the couple had seven children: Louis, Bertha, Julius, Julia, Frederick, Wilhelmina, and Pauline.
He remained employed by Mr. Winnie for 11 years, until the beginning of the Civil War, during which he carried mail between Galveston and St. Louis, Texas, near Dallas. After the war, Julius went back to farming, but by 1881, he was finished with the agricultural business and lived out a comfortable life on Avenue L, just around the corner from this house. The house remained in the Lobenstein family until 1943.
Both Julius, who died in 1905 and Pauline, who died in 1892, are buried in Galveston’s Evergreen Cemetery.
More About the Found Moxie Bottle
It began with a Hutchinson soda water bottle labeled "Forsgard, Waters & Co," discovered in one of the interior walls during a renovation of the Lobenstein rental house. Once commonplace, these bottles, called "hutch" bottles for short, are a kind of antique soda bottle that are now considered valuable collectors' items. Known for its unique shape, a hutch bottle relied on a spring-loaded wire stopper which was inserted into it and then pulled up through the neck to make a seal. To open it, one had to push the stopper back down into the bottle. This action made a signature popping sound and is where the phrase "soda pop" originated!
A search of the 1888 Galveston directory indicates that James W. Forsgard was the bottler and agent of Moxie Nerve Food, a patented “medicine” sold across the United States, which advertised a cure-all for everything from “softening of the brain” to “loss of manhood.” Beginning in 1884, it was carbonated and sold as a soft drink, advertised as giving the user “spunk.”
Forsgard took over the business in 1887 after J.J. Schott sold his Moxie bottling business to buy back his drug store. Forsgard was in partnership with Waters during at least part of 1887, but that partnership had dissolved by 1888. Forsgard probably had already ordered bottles with the Forsgard and Waters names and thus used them for the Moxie business.
This is an extremely rare Galveston hutch soda bottle as well as a great piece of Moxie history!