A journey from Galveston to New Braunfels today is considered a pleasure trip. At night you enter a comfortable Pullman; next morning you enjoy a good breakfast in San Antonio; this ended, you step on a train going northeast and in about an hour�s time you arrive safely at your destination. Like a fairy tale, though, sounds the description of such a trip made in the year 1845-1846.
Perhaps the younger generation has heard of the hardships and trials that our forebears had to undergo; but at the same time they can never fully realize the conditions as they actually existed then.
In the following I will try to describe a trip of those bygone days. I was then merely a boy of eleven years but even now the tragic details of such a trip live undimmed before my eyes.
My father was a wine grower on the banks of the River Rhine. The immigration fever, so prevalent at that time all through Germany, also struck my father- partly after going through half a dozen poor crop years and probably because the unrest of the year 1848 was already in the air.
Duped by promises of the Nobility Club of Nayence, of whose true worth no one had a clear conception, my father finally decided to go to Texas under their terms. It was in the month of October 1845 that our family embarked on the two-masted schooner Neptune for our overseas trip which lasted fifty-eight days.
As the sailing lasted longer than intended, we began to suffer for want of water. When we first sighted land we got a good impression of our new country, as the boat sent out to meet us brought a pilot and some fresh meat.
After a stay of a couple of days, the company chartered a steamboat to take passengers of the Neptune, and also the passengers from the Hercules, which had arrived in the meantime, to land them at the port of Indianola.
As the steamer was nearing Pass Cavallo, a strong wind was blowing making the passage of the Pass very dangerous. Not taking in consideration the steamer was almost overloaded with human beings and their belongings, the pilot attempted, with true American daring, to cross the channel. The steamer stranded on the reef, sprang a leak, and was slowly filling with water.
But as Lady Luck would have it, the water was not deep enough to submerge the steamer. The passengers and their belongings were hurriedly landed on the Island of Matagorda. The workers, when they finally got through, were waist deep in water, and the goods were piled together in one location and a guard put over them at night.
We soon sighted a schooner coming our way loaded with cotton which after an agreement was made, hastened to unload the cotton on shore, taking in its place all the first class passengers of the Neptune and Hercules and also all the tents and other goods and provisions to land them at Indianola.
After eight days the vessel returned and got the balance of the passengers and their things from the Hercules; after another dreary wait of eight days finally the last of the passengers of the Neptune were relieved of their distress and landed at Indianola happy to be on solid ground once more.