New Braunfels Academy

The academy's first stone building was dedicated on April 17, 1856, with a room added the next year. Its twenty-year charter of February 5, 1858, put it under six trustees, the mayor and the county judge, and the town is said to be the first in Texas whose citizens voted unanimously to tax themselves for a school. In 1876 the academy received help from the Peabody Fund. When its charter neared expiration, Governor O. M. Roberts vetoed a renewal in 1878 as out of harmony with state law. The long one-story building came down in 1913.

What the plaque says

New Braunfels Academy The first German settlers here in the 1840s were assured by their sponsor--The Society for the Protection of German Immigrants to Texas--that schools would be provided in their colony. The society hired its first teacher in 1845, and classes began that August. State legislation in 1845 authorized the creation of county school districts, and the city of New Braunfels became Comal County School District One. But in 1856 the legislature retracted school laws supporting local districts and special school taxes. In response, the city persuaded the legislature to create the New Braunfels Academy in 1858 and to grant authority for a city property tax and tuition to fund the school, thus making the academy one of the first tax-funded schools in Texas. Public school property and equipment were transferred to the academy, including the 1856 schoolhouse on this site and textbooks in German and English. The academy provided education and examined students and teachers alike through 1871. That year the state finally established an education system, and a public school occupied the building here. The academy trustees fulfilled their debts by renting the school building to the state before their charter expired in 1879. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 0.4 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 — 3.0 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

• First United Methodist Church — steps away
• International & Great Northern Railroad in New Braunfels — steps away
• The Church of Saints Peter and Paul — steps away
• Phoenix Saloon — 0.2 mi