Stagecoach Stop
This small, unassuming house has the distinction of being the oldest surviving residence in Mason…
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Historic Overnights: Mason
This neighborly town in the northern hill country is as quaint as they come with a nostalgic town square and surrounding countryside boasting some of the state's best hunting (deer and topaz). But if you were here more than a century and a half ago, you wouldn't dare call this place charming, unless you were a bandit lying in ambush, waiting for the next stagecoach to pass by...
Into the Frontier
The trip along Highway 29 between Llano and Mason, conducted at any point before the modernization of the automobile, is almost impossible to fathom. The scenery is all scrub and mountains (or at least, what passes for them in the hill country), as beautiful as it is unforgiving.
Out of the rocky landscape emerges a charming small town with a picture-perfect courthouse square and sturdy buildings constructed of a distinctive red sandstone. You think, "What salvation this town must have been for those trekking through the countryside a century and a half ago!"
But you would be dead wrong.
Back then, this frontier had a reputation for violence, and the town's first decades were marked by tension, fear, and frequent bloodshed.
About this Project
Launched in 2023, Historic Overnights is an initiative of the Texas Historical Commission's Heritage Tourism Program. This unique community partnership brings together preservation professionals and property owners to research the stories and people that bring these historic buildings to life.
Local partnerships are essential to this project, and many of the stories that follow would not have been discovered without the help of our partners at the Mason County Historical Commission—in particular, local historian and author, Scott Zesch—and the Mason Chamber of Commerce.
Danger Abounds!
Once the territory of Apache and Comanche tribes, the establishment of Fort Mason soon brought soldiers' families to the territory, followed by German Texans expanding north from Fredericksburg. With so many different peoples descending upon this area, its no wonder that violence dominated the area in the middle of the 19th century. When a stagecoach line was established between San Antonio and San Diego in 1857, the route through Mason became the stomping ground of outlaws and bandits.
Settling in Comanche Territory
Though the wilderness of Mason County persisted well into the 19th century, by the mid-1840's German settlement of Texas was making its way north from Fredericksburg. Despite being a Comanche hunting ground, a new colonization grant covering the area of present day Mason County offered German farmers large tracts of land (640 acres for a family, 320 acres for a single man) which were, to some, worth the risk of attack. Source.
Meusebach’s German Settlers
In 1847, Wilhelm Kothe (far right) was among the forty or so men who ventured with John O. Meusebach into Comanchería to seek out a peace treaty that would assure the safety of German settlers in Comanche territory. Source.
The year prior, Kothe had traveled by boat from Germany to Indianola, where he secured a ride via oxcart to New Braunfels and then on to Fredericksburg. Since he elected to travel alone and spare his fiancé the long, uncomfortable journey, he was only granted the 320-acre plot allotted to single men.
A Daring Expedition into Comancheria
This new settlement was largely facilitated by the Fisher-Miller Land Grant, a colonization grant bestowed to Henry Fisher and Burchard Miller in 1842 by the Republic of Texas to help establish a German colony in the land between the Colorado and Llano Rivers, or about three-million acres. Perhaps because it took several years for the grant to be fulfilled (Fisher and Miller were hard pressed to find a surveyor or government official willing to venture so deep into Comanche territory) they eventually sold their interests to the Adelsverein (the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas), an organization established by German elites to foster the preservation of German values and traditions within German emigrant communities. Source. Eventually, an 1847 armed expedition led by John O. Meusebach, a representative of Adelsverein, was able to strike a deal with Comanche Chiefs Buffalo Hump, Santa Anna, and others. The terms of their treaty stipulated that Meusebach's settlers could go unharmed into Comanche territory, and likewise, Comanche could safely enter German settlements. Source.
The Raids Continue
Despite Muesbach's treaty, raids and attacks on isolated German settlements continued as Native groups responded to the rapid encroachment upon their land and hunting ground. Without the guarantee of immunity, many of the German settlers who had received tracts through the Fisher-Miller Land Grant eventually sold their plots and settled in safer territory, closer to Fredericksburg. Source.
With the advent of the California Gold Rush in 1849, even more settlers, these ones argonauts or "gold seekers," found themselves trekking west on the Upper Emigrant Road, straight into Comanchería. To protect these travelers as well as stagecoaches carrying both passengers and mail to and from western territories, a series of military forts were established along the route. On July 6, 1851, Fort Mason was established on Post Oak Hill near Comanche creek, so named for the surrounding hills in which Comanche were said to lay in ambush. Source. This military post would serve as the area's front-line defense against raiders that targeted coaches and wagons on their way deeper into the western frontier. Source.
Progress in Fits and Starts
After the fort's establishment, German immigrants felt safer moving north from Fredericksburg to the Llano River, establishing a line of scattered settlements. From the southeastern states, descendants of old American families were drawn here by the open grasslands with their ever-flowing springs, ravines, and creeks. Though its violent episodes weren't over with—indeed, one of the greatest feuds in Texas history would engulf the area in the years after the Civil War—Mason had at least the semblance of a path to progress.