Benedict and Anetta Kaderli Family

The Kaderli farm survived because it was stone and because the ranch that later held it kept it. The two-story house, a barn, hand-stacked stone fences and an open artesian well were still standing when the Nordans ran the land, and the Nordans preserved them alongside the Haas and Bremer homesteads. Swiss settlers were few in Texas, and some made a mark: Johann Jacob Rahm, a Swiss member of John Coffee Hays's rangers, aided Prince Solms's party when the New Braunfels site was located in 1845 and was killed in a duel there the next year.

What the plaque says

Benedict and Anetta Kaderli Family Benedict and Anetta Kaderli were early European settlers to north Comal County. Benedict was born September 7, 1832 in Mülchi, Canton Bern, Switzerland. Anetta Zund was born May 7, 1839 in St. Gallen, Canton Appenzell. The two married in 1862. Benedict worked as a "sticker" or embroiderer. Two of Benedict's brothers, Johann and Jacob Kaderli, had immigrated to Comal County in 1845. On September 15, 1873, Benedict, Anetta, and their four children, Alma, Albert, Emil and Emilie, boarded the vessel Hamburg and landed in New Orleans, and traveled via a smaller vessel to Indianola. In Texas, Benedict and Anetta welcomed two more children, Louis and Frieda. In 1877, Benedict obtained a preemptive land grant from the State of Texas. He claimed 160 acres in northern Comal County. The family built a two-story stone house near Bates Creek, now known as Suche Creek. The home was sited over an active spring, and a large round hole in the floor provided safe spring access without needing to go outside. On their new farm, they raised cattle and goats and grew their own food. In 1883, the family received the deed for their farm. Five years later, Benedict's oldest son, Albert, claimed 80 acres bordering the family farm and in 1889 married Elizabeth "Betty" Spangenberg. Benedict died in 1893 from a snake bite. Anetta lived with her adult children until her death in 1923. For several subsequent generations, the Kaderli descendants remained near the family homestead and greater Comal County, becoming business owners, teachers and law enforcement officers, and serving in government and civic organizations. The original Kaderli land grants were later replatted as part of the Mystic Shores subdivision. (2023)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Natural Bridge Caverns — 18 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.
• Gruene Historic District — 20 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 21 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park — 23 mi
  The Johnson City district of the national park: the Victorian house where Lyndon Johnson grew up, and the stone barns his grandfather built in the Johnson Settlement.

More markers nearby

• Julius Bremer Family and Rebecca Creek School — 1.7 mi
• 711 Ranch — 3.1 mi
• Fischer Homestead — 3.8 mi
• Agricultural Society of Fischer — 4.1 mi