Johann Michael Jahn

Jahn's craft was learned the hard way. Born at Barth in Pomerania in 1816, he served a five-year apprenticeship with a Prague cabinetmaker who, during an argument, threw a tool that struck and permanently injured his hip; he then worked six years as a journeyman in Switzerland. He reached Galveston on the Herschel in December 1844. His furniture followed the Biedermeier style, letting the grain and color of native walnut, cherry, cypress, pine and mesquite carry the design. Demand grew so strong that by 1866 he was also importing machine-made furniture.

What the plaque says

Johann Michael Jahn (1816-1883) came to New Braunfels in 1845 as a colonist with the German Emigration Company. He married Anna Klein Bellmer in 1850. A "Tischlermeister" or master craftsman, Jahn established a business making fine hand-crafted furniture. Active in civic affairs, he was elected one of the first alderman of the city. After Jahn's death, his son and grandson operated the business, and built this building in 1910. The company continued until the 1930s. Jahn's works have been displayed locally and at the Witte Museum in San Antonio. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 0.3 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.
• Gruene Historic District — 2.8 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.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 13 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.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 18 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.

More markers nearby

• Home of Ferdinand Lindheimer — steps away
• Texas Germans in the Civil War — steps away
• Sophienburg Hill — 0.3 mi
• Hermann Seele — 0.3 mi