Gun Cap Factory

Engelbert Krauskopf, born in Bendorf in 1820, trained as a cabinetmaker but gave up that trade and a promised inheritance to become a gunsmith. Arriving in Texas early in 1846, he hunted for John O. Meusebach and went with him to Fredericksburg and Comanche Springs. The Comanche chief Santa Anna often visited his workshop and once gave him a peace pipe. He ran one of the town's first sawmills, owned the county's second cotton gin, made a gun for Robert E. Lee and improved Winchester rifles without credit. A red-flowered yucca he found in West Texas bears his name.

What the plaque says

Gun Cap Factory In the Civil War, at this site, E. Krauskoff, gunsmith, and Adolph Lungkwitz, silversmith, made gun caps. Inventing machinery, they rolled copper thin and cut it to cap-size pieces. Saltpetre and quicksilver went into the caps, to detonate rifle and pistol ammunition. Saltpetre came from nearby bat caves. Quicksilver and copper had to be brought through neutral Mexico or the coastal blockade. Rifles, cannon, gunpowder and pistols were made at Austin, Houston, Bastrop, Waxahachie, san Antonio, corpus Christi, Burnet, Lancaster, Rusk and Tyler. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 0.2 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.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 0.6 mi
  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.
• Fort Martin Scott — 2.7 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 — 9.8 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

• Dambach-Besier Home — steps away
• Sunday Houses — steps away
• First Methodist Church of Fredericksburg — steps away
• Gillespie County — 0.3 mi