Homestead of Karl Itz

Gillespie County's Unionism made the war hard. Some fifty-four county men had joined the Confederate Army by March 1862 and about 300 served in six home-defense units to avoid conscription, but pro-Confederate neighbors still distrusted the county. On May 30, 1862, Gen. Philemon T. Herbert imposed martial law on Central Texas, and the irregular James Duff was put in charge of Gillespie and Kerr counties. Some 2,000 people took to the hills to escape his reign of terror, and robberies and murders swept the county through the war. Afterward most residents raised little objection to Reconstruction.

What the plaque says

Homestead of Karl Itz Karl Itz (ca. 1838-1908), a native of Westerburg, Germany, arrived in Texas in 1852 and settled in Gillespie County. He married Henrietta Evers (1839-1923) in 1856. At the outbreak of the Civil War Itz joined a group of German immigrants in support of the Union. Marching toward Mexico in August 1862, the men encountered Confederate forces at the Battle of the Nueces. Though many of the Germans were killed, Itz was not injured and lived in hiding until the war ended. He moved his family to this site and built a stone home in 1875. A log house was later added. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1987

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 4.0 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 — 4.1 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 — 5.5 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 — 12 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

• Cross Mountain — 2.7 mi
• Jacob Neffendorf — 2.8 mi
• Fredericksburg Social Turn Verein — 3.8 mi
• Bethany Lutheran Church — 3.9 mi