Philipp Hartmann Family Cemetery

Live Oak Creek, which shares its name with the Hartmanns' Live Oak area, rises a mile northwest of Weinheimer Road in central Gillespie County. Intermittent in its upper reaches, it runs southeast for fifteen miles to the Pedernales River, a mile south of Fredericksburg's Lady Bird Johnson Park. Rising in limestone hills on the eastern edge of the Edwards Plateau, it crosses flat to rolling country with soils that range from shallow stony and clayey ground to deeper sandy and clayey loams. Brush and grasses grow along it, with open stands of live oak, Ashe juniper and mesquite.

What the plaque says

Philipp Hartmann Family Cemetery Philipp Hartmann and Elisabeth Crenwelge were married in their homeland of Bruchweiler, Prussia in 1853. They and their two children immigrated to Texas in 1855, arriving at the Port of Galveston. They settled in the Live Oak area near Fredericksburg, where Philipp became a farmer and butcher. Nine more children were born to the family; the four who died in infancy and early childhood are a testament to the hard conditions of 19th century life. The family established this cemetery 100 yards north of their homestead in 1859. Elisabeth died in 1877 and Philipp remarried the following year. His new wife, Rosina Hildebrand, bore four children; two died young. Philipp died in 1911 and Rosina died in 1913, leaving a large and prosperous family. The Hartmann Cemetery remains a fine example of a German immigrant family graveyard. (1999)

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 — 4.4 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 — 6.0 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 — 13 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

• Baethge-Behrend Homestead — 0.5 mi
• Wunderlich Houses — 3.2 mi
• First Methodist Church of Fredericksburg — 3.7 mi
• Sunday Houses — 3.7 mi