FROM GERMAN VILLAGE TO TEXAS RANCH

Jakob and Theresia Weinheimer and their six children left the Hessian village of Übernthal (north of Frankfurt) in 1845 to start anew in what within a few years would become Gillespie County, Texas. They and scores of other families had purchased the land from the German Emigration Co. Today, 175 years later, the couple’s descendants still run the 2,200-acre Weinheimer Ranch, headquartered in Stonewall, east of Fredericksburg. Roy Weinheimer, 94, is the current steward and president and lives in the 1878 ranch house where both he and father Herman were born.

Roy, granddaughter Lexus and nephew Rex recently shared memories about their large-as-Texas family story. Across the decades