Birthplace of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, USN

After two years as a passed midshipman on the Ohio, he commanded the old Spanish gunboat Panay in the Philippines; moved to the destroyer Decatur, he ran her aground and was court-martialed, reprimanded and sent to submarines. In four undersea commands he became a leading authority. In 1913 he studied diesel engines in Germany and Belgium, then supervised installation of the first diesel engine to power a U.S. Navy vessel. After World War I he built the Pearl Harbor submarine base, and at the Naval War College in 1922-23 he worked out a theoretical Pacific war.

What the plaque says

Birthplace of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, USN Typical early Fredericksburg home built 1866 by Carl Basse. Property of the Henke family since 1873. Heinrich Henke, early settler, Confederate freighter, had butcher counter on front porch; meat processing was done in back yard; there the horses that pulled meat vending cart were stabled. Shop later built on foundation of stone walls surrounding lot. He and his wife Dorothea (nee Weirich) added the long dining room and kitchen with sloped roof to accommodate their twelve children. Many of their furnishings are preserved by Udo Henke, a descendant. In small room to rear of front bedroom, on Feb. 24, 1885, their daughter, Anna Henke Nimitz, gave birth to Chester William Nimitz, destined to command the greatest naval armada in history. A 1905 honor graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy, Nimitz was chief of staff to commander, Atlantic Submarine Fleet, W.W.I. Installed first Naval ROTC unit in U.S. Navy, 1926; selected Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet after attack on Pearl Harbor; appointed Fleet Admiral, U. S. Navy, 1944. As representative of the U. S. he signed Japanese surrender documents on his flagship, USS Missouri, Sept. 2, 1945 in Tokyo Bay. Admiral Nimitz died in San Francisco on Feb. 20, 1966. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Museum of the Pacific War — steps away
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 0.3 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• Fort Martin Scott — 2.1 mi
  An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.
• Luckenbach — 9.3 mi
  A store, saloon and dance hall on Grape Creek that a humorist bought in 1971, declared a free state of mind, and turned into a pilgrimage for Texas music.

More markers nearby

• Nimitz Hotel — steps away
• Old Central Drugstore — steps away
• Market Square (Mark Platz) — 0.3 mi
• Gillespie County — 0.3 mi