Nicolaus Zink

Zink moved often after New Braunfels. In the fall of 1847 he and his wife Louise divorced over "unhappy differences," and he settled on Sister Creek, where his two-story log house was the first building of Sisterdale. He became known as a good farmer who held his own against the Comanches and got good prices for wheat sold to army quartermasters. In 1850 he and his second wife, Elisabeth, sold the house to Edward Degener and ran a gristmill on Baron Creek south of Fredericksburg. The 1870 census found him a shinglemaker of fifty-nine with an English wife, Agnes.

What the plaque says

Nicolaus Zink In 1844, Bavarian-born civil engineer Nicolaus Zink (1812-1887) was selected to lead a group of German immigrants overseas to establish settlements on a Texas land grant. This colonization effort was headed by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and financed by a German corporation known as the Mainzer Adelsverein. Upon arrival in Texas in late 1844, Zink realized that the grant to be settled by the colonists was in the heart of Comanche Indian territory. He persuaded Prince Solms to settle at an alternate site, which became the town of New Braunfels. Zink's leadership in the face of unrest, disease, starvation, and monetary problems was vital to the survival of the colony. He eventually was responsible for the supervision of about one-half of the German immigrants bound for New Braunfels. After 1847, Zink built homes in a variety of places, including Sisterdale, Comfort, and an area south of Fredericksburg. In 1868, he acquired this property and built the central portion of the limestone house southeast of this site. He later gave land for and helped engineer the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad bed to Kerrville. Zink lived here until his death and is buried in an unmarked grave near this site. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Treue der Union Monument — 9.4 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 15 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Luckenbach — 20 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.
• Frontier Times Museum — 20 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.

More markers nearby

• Beseler Family — 1.3 mi
• Ottmar von Behr — 6.0 mi
• Pinta Trail Crossing of the Guadalupe River — 6.6 mi
• George Wilkins Kendall — 6.7 mi