The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 62, July 1958 - April, 1959 Page: 71

Notes and Documents

Dr. rdi and /oeemr's Accouit of the
laro-Sa Saba Couflty
Translated and edited bU RUDOLPH L. BIESELE
NOT long after his return to Germany from Texas, Dr.
Ferdinand Roemer' wrote a letter in which he gave his
impressions of that part of western Texas in the area
of the Llano and the San Saba rivers. This letter was written
by Dr. Roemer from Hildesheim on April 3, 1850, to Freiherr
von Bibra, then an official of the Verein zum Schutze deutscher
Einwanderer in Texas (Society for the Protection of German
Immigrants in Texas) . This society of German noblemen, for
which reason its settlers in Texas referred to it as the Adelsverein,
associated itself on June 26, 1844, with Henry Francis Fisher
and Burchard Miller, who in 1842 had received a colonization
contract from the Republic of Texas to introduce one thousand
German, Dutch, Swiss, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish families
into Texas as settlers in the region along the Llano and San Saba
rivers west of the Colorado.*
Dr. Roemer, a geologist, with a doctor of philosophy degree
in geology from the University of Berlin, arrived in Texas on
December 22, 1845,4 in the employ of the Society to explore its
grant for mineral resources. The letter which he wrote to Von
Bibra follows:
Hildesheim, the 3d April, 1850o.
Most highly respected Sir:
In your last letter you expressed the wish that I should give
you my opinion about the physical conditions of the Society's
grant lying north of the Llano and on the right bank of the Colo-
1For an account of the work of Dr. Roemer, see Samuel Wood Geiser, Naturalists
of the Frontier (Dallas, 1937), 181-214.
2For an account of the founding of this Society, see Rudolph Leopold Biesele,
The History of the German Settlements in Texas, z83z1-86z (Austin, 9ggo), 66-1o2.
For the sake of brevity this article will call the Verein the Society.
3For a map of the grant, see ibid., 80.
4MS. Colonization Papers, 1846-1873, Archives, Texas State Library.