Comfort

Location: Comfort, TX (~50 miles northwest of San Antonio on I-10; ~15 miles east of Kerrville)
Anchor Site: High Street / Treue der Union Monument / Historic commercial district

The Hook

Comfort was founded by German freethinkers who refused to join any church and therefore built no church for the first twenty years of the town’s existence. It has never been officially incorporated as a city. Its most famous monument commemorates men killed by the Confederate Army for refusing to fight for the Confederacy. And it has the most intact 19th-century German limestone streetscape in Texas. Comfort is one of the most quietly extraordinary small towns in the state.

Key Facts

Founded 1854 by a group of German Freidenker (freethinkers) — political liberals who rejected organized religion, many of them veterans of the failed 1848 revolutions in Germany
Never officially incorporated — Comfort remains an unincorporated community in Kendall County to this day, making it unusual among Texas towns of its size and age
No church was built in Comfort until 1892 — nearly 40 years after founding — because the founding community rejected organized religion
Treue der Union (True to the Union) monument: erected 1866, commemorates 36 German Unionists killed at the Nueces Massacre (August 10, 1862); one of only two monuments to Union dead in the former Confederate states; flies the US flag at half-staff permanently under a special Congressional designation
Population ~2,300 (unincorporated)
The High Street commercial district has the most intact collection of 19th-century German limestone commercial buildings in Texas — more complete and less restored than Fredericksburg’s Main Street

Story / History

The founders of Comfort were not typical Texas settlers. They were educated, politically sophisticated men who had come to America specifically because they had lost the democratic revolutions of 1848 in Germany and needed somewhere to build the free society they’d been fighting for. Ernst Altgelt, a lawyer, organized the Comfort settlement and chose the Cypress Creek valley deliberately. The community’s name — “Comfort” — is said to reflect the relief the founders felt at finding a site that matched their vision.

The decision not to build a church was not casual. The Freidenker community was explicitly anti-clerical: they believed religion was incompatible with rational government and individual freedom. They built a school first, then a community hall, then commercial buildings. When Comfort finally got a church in 1892, it was because a younger generation and newer settlers had different values. The founding generation had moved on or died out.

The Civil War nearly destroyed the community. Gillespie, Kendall, and the surrounding German Hill Country counties were intensely Unionist, and the Confederacy imposed martial law in response. German men were conscripted or threatened with conscription. Many formed a group of roughly 65 men who decided to escape to Mexico and from there to the Union forces. Confederate irregulars caught them on the Nueces River on August 10, 1862. Thirty-four men were killed in the initial fight and two more killed when wounded prisoners were executed. Their remains were left unburied for two years.

In 1865, survivors retrieved what bones remained and brought them to Comfort for burial. The Treue der Union monument was erected over the mass grave in 1866 — just one year after the war’s end, while Reconstruction was beginning. It is one of the earliest Civil War monuments in Texas and almost certainly the most politically charged: an explicit statement of Unionist identity in a former Confederate state, erected by a community that had paid for that identity with 36 lives.

The commercial district on High Street developed through the 1870s–1890s as Comfort became a trade center for the surrounding ranching communities. The limestone buildings — constructed using local stone and German masonry techniques — have survived intact largely because Comfort never had the money to demolish and replace them. The same poverty that kept Comfort small preserved its architecture.

Historic Battles

The Nueces Massacre (August 10, 1862)

The event Comfort’s monument commemorates was a military atrocity by any definition. The group of approximately 65 German Unionists who set out for Mexico in early August 1862 were not soldiers — they were civilians attempting to avoid Confederate conscription. Confederate Lieutenant C.D. McRae tracked them with 96 cavalry and attacked their camp on the Nueces River before dawn. The Germans fought back, killing 19 Confederate attackers, but were overwhelmed. Twenty-nine were killed in the fight. Two wounded prisoners were executed. Eleven more were killed attempting to cross the Rio Grande weeks later.

The surviving families in Comfort, Fredericksburg, and the surrounding communities knew what had happened but were under Confederate occupation and could say nothing publicly. The Treue der Union monument, erected in 1866, was the first public statement of what the community had endured.

Frontier Times

Comfort’s Unionism was its defining political characteristic throughout the frontier era. The community’s freethinker founders explicitly opposed slavery and the social order the Confederacy defended. That position cost them 36 men on the Nueces River and an occupation that lasted the remainder of the war. The post-war community rebuilt its commercial district and its civic life as a statement of persistence — the limestone buildings on High Street are, in their way, a second monument to the same values as the Treue der Union.

Local Legend

The “no church” founding story has been told so many times that it has acquired embellishments it doesn’t need. The actual founding documents don’t contain a formal prohibition on churches — the community simply didn’t build one because the founders didn’t want one. Visitors sometimes arrive expecting a formal anti-religion charter or a local ordinance banning worship. No such thing exists. The Freidenker community was committed to individual conscience, which meant no one was going to tell you not to pray in private. They just weren’t going to build you a building for it on the public square.

Insider Tips

Walk High Street slowly — the buildings are individually remarkable and collectively the best-preserved German Texas streetscape in existence
The Treue der Union monument is on 3rd Street, one block off High Street; it’s easy to miss and essential to see
Comfort Cellars winery operates out of a historic limestone building on High Street — a good stop
The drive from Comfort northwest to Kerrville on I-10 follows Cypress Creek through one of the prettier limestone creek valleys in Kendall County

Annual & Seasonal Events

Spring (Mar–May)

Comfort Antique Show (spring and fall editions) — the town’s historic buildings attract a serious antiques market; one of the better antique events in the Hill Country

Summer (Jun–Aug)

Cypress Creek swimming season — the creek through town has swimming holes used by locals; not heavily publicized

Fall (Sep–Nov)

Comfort Antique Show (fall edition)
Hill Country fall color (October–November) — the cypress trees along Cypress Creek turn gold in October; one of the more reliable fall color displays in Central Texas

Winter (Dec–Feb)

Small-town Christmas (December) — the historic commercial district decorated for the holidays; quieter than Fredericksburg but more intimate

Logistics

Tour stop duration: 1–1.5 hours
Parking: Free street parking on High Street
Nearby stops: Kerrville (15 miles northwest), Boerne (20 miles southeast), Fredericksburg (40 miles northwest via TX-87)

Sources

Texas State Historical Association — Comfort: tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/comfort
Texas Historical Commission — Treue der Union: thc.texas.gov

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