The German Texas Frontier in 1853

Ferdinand Lindheimer was already renowned as the father of Texas botany when, in late 1852, he became the founding editor of the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, a German-language weekly newspaper for the German settler community on the Central Texas frontier. His first year of publication was a pivotal time for the settlers and the American Indians whose territories they occupied. Based on an analysis of the paper’s first year—and drawing on methods from documentary and narrative history, ethnohistory,