Meusebach, John O. b. May 26, 1812; Dillenburg, Duchy of Nassau d. May 27, 1897; Loyal Valley,Texas
Successor to Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels in 1845 as director of the Texas operations of the Association for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas (Adels- verein). Meusebach overcame the administrative failures of his predecessor but was unable to offset many of the consequences of policies dictated by the profit-seeking orientation of the Adelsverein.
He never received adequate funds for the association’s activities in Texas. His success in keeping the organization operating owed much to his ability to adapt to a new environment. Emblematic of this ability was his change of names upon arrival overseas. He dropped the title “Baron” (Freiherr) and changed his given names from “Otfried Hans” to a simple “John O.”Meusebach came from a family of high civil servants. His father served as president of the Royal Court of Review in Berlin. After attending the Mining and Forestry Academy in Clausthal, Meusebach studied at the University of Bonn. Obtaining his first post in 1836, he embarked upon a career in law and public administration. Like his father, he also pursued wide-ranging intellectual interests, including the natural sciences. But Meusebach was too much of a child of his times to remain a Prussian administrator. Through his family, he came into contact from an early age with many of the literary and intellectual luminaries of Biedermeier Germany, and he was caught up in the intellectual and political ferment of the 1840s. When he accepted an offer by the Adelsverein to become its commissionergeneral in Texas, he was motivated by several considerations, including—characteristically—an opportunity to study nature, help less-favored Germans, and promote German commerce with Texas.
Reaching Texas in May 1845, he witnessed chaos and misery. Hundreds of Germans had arrived in Galveston and Carl- shafen (now Indianola), the harbor established by Solms-Braunfels on the Gulf Coast southwest of Galveston.
The immigrants remained on the coast without adequate supplies and without the prospect of transportation to the Adelsverein’s interior lands. The association in Texas had run out of money and credit. The basic responsibility for the debacle lay with the princely leaders of the association in Germany. They had underbudgeted the expenses of operations in Texas, purchased unsuitable land from unprincipled speculators, and sanctioned the dispatch of settlers at times of the year inappropriate for arrival in Texas. The directors had made poor use of the funds received from thousands of people for passage to Texas, transportation within Texas to a German settlement, and farming land or a town lot.Meusebach deserves his reputation as the man who turned the situation around. But as is often overlooked, he was aided by the good sense of his assistants, and even more by the energy of the German immigrants themselves. He obtained credit in Texas to pay for essentials, while he waited month after month for a letter of credit from Germany simply to pay debts incurred by his predecessor. Critical to his success was his ability to convince Englishspeaking Texans that the association’s plans were sound.
Solms-Braunfels had sensibly concluded that the still unexplored, vast tract known as the “Fisher-Miller grant,” the largest and farthest from the coast of the association’s lands, was too remote to be reached without a base between it and the coast. To this end, he acquired a large area in which he founded New Braunfels. Meusebach realized that another intermediate base was needed. While negotiating an invaluable treaty with the Comanche Indians in 1847, he founded Fredericksburg, the second major Adelsverein settlement in Texas. Peaceful relations with the Comanche facilitated rapid surveying of the association’s lands and preparations for settlements. Above all, Meusebach managed to get a stream of Germans flowing from the coast to the new settlements before an incipient rebellion of desperate colonists reached serious proportions.
Lack of trust in the leaders of the Adelsverein in Germany prompted his resignation, which became effective at the end of 1847.Meusebach eventually entered Texas politics, and his first official act following his election to the Texas state senate in 1851 was to introduce a resolution requiring translation of the governor’s address into Spanish and German. In 1854 the
governor appointed him one of four commissioners for the German Land Company, a successor to the bankrupt Adels- verein. In this office Meusebach issued land certificates to former colonists of the association. Many got an unexpected boon. The acreage promised by the Adelsverein was doubled because the association did not receive its half of the land granted by Texas to adult male immigrants.
With this activity Meusebach’s high- profile public service came to a virtual end forty years before his death. He withdrew to private life. In 1852 he married the daughter of an Austrian immigrant. The couple had eleven children, seven of whom survived early childhood. In 1867 he sold the store he had operated in Fredericksburg and lived with his family in a succession of rural homes. Continuing his scientific pursuits in geology and botany, he devoted much of his time to his collections of Texan fossils and fauna.
Walter Struve
See also Adelsverein; Fredericksburg, Texas; New Braunfels, Texas; Solms-Braunfels, Prince Carl of; Texas
References and Further Reading
Biggers, Don H. German Pioneers in Texas.
Fredericksburg, TX: Press of the Fredericksburg Publishing Co., 1925.
King, Irene Marschall. John O. Meusebach: German Colonizer in Texas. Austin: University of Texas, 1967.
Wurzbach, E. F. Life and Memoirs of Emil Frederick Wurzbach: To Which Is Appended Some Papers of John Meusebach. Trans. Franz J. Dohmen. San Antonio, TX: Yanaguana Society, 1937.