The Vogel Sunday House

By Dawn Kyle Donalson

“Say it Fvogel, Dawn”, coaches Frederick Kraus, long-time massage client and member of the family who had the Coca Cola Bottling Company on Main Street in Fredericksburg, my German language coach along with Frances Hartmann who runs the Turner Hall where people dance and play dominoes.  They never give up on me, though I’m originally raised in South Texas instead of the Burg.

They tell me jokes in German first, then repeat them in English when I only catch a few words and don’t laugh.  “It just sounds better in German,” they explain, shaking their heads at my Irishness.

I’ve lived among them and written the stories of their historical buildings and families since 1979.  I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. 

When you come to visit us all at Above and Beyond Day Spa, you may hear us joking and laughing and telling stories with our local customers.  We’re real.  It is our little town, and we welcome you to experience it with us.  “Willkommen” (welcome) to Fredericksburg, Texas.

The Vogel Sunday House (Haus) sits on a quiet street just off the wide Main Street of Fredericksburg in the historical district, although one might say all of town is historical.  In what used to be the Catholic side of town, as opposed to the Lutheran side of town, West Austin Street is a now haven of bed and breakfasts and businesses.

The spa is just across the street from the parking lot of the Zion Lutheran Church (how’d they get over here in the old days?)…and on the back way to the Post Office.  That’s local directions, sans the wondering bout the Lutherans.  One of the first things that Erna Dietel Heinen, my newspaper “mother”, taught me when I got here was not to wonder too many things out loud because everybody was related.  “They can talk about each other, but you can’t talk about them,” she said.  Sage advice for a small town newcomer.

Things have changed around here some in my time.  There’s lots of newcomers now and wonderful businesses everywhere.  But West Austin Street is still a clean and quiet place, like it was when Elizabeth Weber Vogel took care of her eight grandchildren in the house.  One of those granddaughters became a nun.

The Germans in Fredericksburg are the only ones who have Sunday Houses, a term for a small house in town where ranch families come for the weekend to shop and go to church…or for Oma (Grandma) to raise the kids so they can walk to school.  Sunday Houses are distinguished by their outside staircase to the half stories upstairs.  The kids slept upstairs and could run outside to play in the morning without tromping through the grownups.

You can read the information on the historical marker from the front of the building for some of the data on the house and the Vogel family. 

Lots of our tourist clients at the spa photograph the historical marker and enjoy seeing the old wooden ceiling in the front massage room.  It is almost like you can feel those old timers going about their chores, but it is probably just us spa gals dragging the laundry out to the wash haus these days.

I’m looking at the Family Records of the Vogels right now, obtained from church records in Nieder-Elbert bei Montabaur, Nassau, Germany and submitted for the historical marker by the nun who grew up in the house, Sister Mary Dolorine Vogel:

“The Vogel Family sailed from Nieder-Elbert, Nassau, Germany on the vessel, Riga, landing at Indianola, Texas.  From 1850 census, John and Anna and five children came to Texas, but parents and children; Maria Magdalena and Margarethe, did not reach their destination.  From hearsay, it is that Barbara and Elizabeth were taken in by the John Priess Family.”

“H. Christian Vogel, born Sept. 9, 1824 in Nieder-Elbert, Nassau, Germany, and married to Maria Magdalena Hambach in Fredericksburg, Texas on March 23, 1851.” 

Five kids are listed in the 1860 census as products of that marriage...guess farmer Christian Vogel built the Austin Street house for them.  One of the children, son Amandus who also was a farmer, married Elizabeth Weber in 1880.  They had six kids.  We named the living room at the spa “The Elizabeth Room” after her, but probably should have called it “Oma’s” like half the businesses in town.

Second-born Armand (born May 1881) became a rancher (which meant he was out in the country) and lived until 1971.  His wife was Josephine Klier…she died in 1968.  They are the ones who had the eight children, one of whom was Paula, born Jan. 14, 1913…and reborn to the Holy Mother Church as Sister Mary Dolorine.  She had a twin sister, Clara.  Those eight kids went to Omie’s haus on West Austin so they could hot foot it into school instead of coming in from the ranch.

Sister Mary Dolorine was also auntie to George Vogel, who is a peach farmer to this day over in Stonewall.  He was born in 1951, five years after the Vogels sold the house just after the War.  Elizabeth had passed away in ’44, and the kids sold the house.  It went from Weiershausen to Kordzik (who rented it out to many tenants, some of whom have come by the spa to say hello), then to the Rendons.  Then Joe and Von Bolin got it…I knew them from their restaurant Immigrant’s Landing, a popular spot when I landed here as a hungry reporter.

I’ll bet sometimes George wonders what happened to the house in town and who is in it now.  Perhaps he’d feel better if he knew my family had a log cabin in Kyle near San Marcos that is now a country historical site.  I got to spend one night in it when I was in my twenties, and I go there each September to eat fried chicken with the locals and listen to gospel music at a historical event.  I’m just as displaced as ol’ George, but I respect history.  I think Frances Hartmann approves of me being in the Vogel Haus…and she sort of has a right to have a say since her Tante (Auntie) lived next door.

Fast forward from 1947 when the Vogels sold the house to 1977, a year after everybody in town started restoring things because of inspiration and some funding from the US Bicentennial.  Marilynne Cox, an art teacher newcomer, and her industrial arts teacher husband Randy, renovated the house.  One of the men who worked on the house was Alois Nebgen, a grandson of Amandus and Elizabeth Vogel.

Marilynne and Randy Cox got the Texas Historical Commission to approve the historical marker in 1982 with the help of local historian Glen Treibs, who may be cringing at my stream of consciousness rendition of the Vogel story.  (Glen and I met at Founder’s Day at the Pioneer Museum when I first moved here and were both friends of the recently departed Bill Marschall, (the great great grandson of town founder John O. Meusebach, a man who'd been a Baron in Germany before he became a Texas pioneer.) 

God Bless Ya, Bill.  And Meusebach, too, or Fredericksburg wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t made peace with the Comanches.

Marilynne Cox and I were original members of the Pedernales Creative Arts Alliance in 1979 or 80, the group that started the Oktoberfest here in Fredericksburg.  I knew her and Randy, and then her second husband King Ransom, who was a Cherokee and helped me and others with the Fredericksburg pow wow and commemorating the unbroken treaty with the Comanches, but that’s another story.

By now, you are getting the drift that everyone and everything is connected in Fredericksburg, whether you were born here or not.  My favorite postcard used to read, “I saw the world from Fredericksburg, Texas” and it was black…or was that the one that read “Fredericksburg Night Life?”  Ha

You gotta be interested in history or beer if you live in Fredericksburg, and I gave up beer.

Mr. Karl, an oilman originally from Laredo is the current owner of the Vogel Sunday House.  He’s a history buff, well traveled in Germany and knowledgeable about European spa treatments.  But that’s not how I got to know him.  His foreman’s sister was a friend and former co-worker of mine…but the connection goes beyond that.  Karl and I were both friends of one of the last Comanche Code Talkers from World War II, Carnie Saupitty.

I’d interviewed the Navajo Code Talkers at the Nimitz Museum when I was a reporter, but didn’t know about the Comanche Code Talkers till I became friends of the old medicine man Mr. Tommy Wahnee.  I was in the tipi with Mr. Wahnee when I met Carnie.

Carnie didn’t like whites or women too much, but kinda took to me because I’d studied the old ways and knew history.  His picture is in the spa living room with “Mr. Karl”, as we call our landlord in the Southern way of elevating the first name to respectful status.  Carnie and Mr. Wahnee are both gone now…and Comanches don’t talk about the departed.

But to tell the story right, you need to know that I got the spa because of the Germans and the Indians.  As they say in the Native world, all things come together in the hoop of life.  My kinfolk were down here in Comancheria, too, in the old days. 

Uda (Comanche for thank you), Mr. Karl.  And all you other folks who took good care of the Vogel Sunday House.  We spa girls sweep the porch and think about you and are thankful for the opportunity to share our gifts with the world.