page_title: German Americans
section_title: Texas
hierarchical_section_title: German Americans / History / 19th century / Texas
caption_attribution_description: English: Wahrenberger House, 208 West 14th Street. It was a boarding school and house for female students at the German-American Ladies College. The Texas German and English Academy, a boys school, occupied the house from 1880 to 1886.
context_page_description: German Americans are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 44.2 million in 2018, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the United States Census Bureau in its American Community Survey. German Americans account for about one third of the total ethnic German population in the world.
  None of the German states had American colonies. In the 1670s, the first significant groups of German immigrants arrived in the British colonies, settling primarily in Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia. Immigration continued in very large numbers during the 19th century, with eight million arrivals from Germany. Between 1820 and 1870, more than seven and a half million German immigrants came to the United States. By the 2010 census, the population of German Americans had grown to 49.8 million.
  There is a "German belt" that extends all the way across the United States, from eastern Pennsylvania to the Oregon coast.
context_section_description: Texas attracted many Germans who entered through Galveston and Indianola, both those who came to farm, and later immigrants who more rapidly took industrial jobs in cities such as Houston. As in Milwaukee, Germans in Houston built the brewing industry. By the 1920s, the first generation of college-educated German Americans were moving into the chemical and oil industries.
  Texas had about 20,000 German Americans in the 1850s. They did not form a uniform bloc, but were highly diverse and drew from geographic areas and all sectors of European society, except that very few aristocrats or upper middle class businessmen arrived. In this regard, Texas Germania was a microcosm of the Germania nationwide.
  The Germans who settled Texas were diverse in many ways. They included peasant farmers and intellectuals; Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and atheists; Prussians, Saxons, and Hessians; abolitionists and slave owners; farmers and townsfolk; frugal, honest folk and ax murderers. They differed in dialect, customs, and physical features. A majority had been farmers in Germany, and most arrived seeking economic opportunities. A few dissident intellectuals fleeing the 1848 revolutions sought political freedom, but few, save perhaps the Wends, went for religious freedom. The German settlements in Texas reflected their diversity. Even in the confined area of the Hill Country, each valley offered a different kind of German. The Llano valley had stern, teetotaling German Methodists, who renounced dancing and fraternal organizations; the Pedernales valley had fun-loving, hardworking Lutherans and Catholics who enjoyed drinking and dancing; and the Guadalupe valley had freethinking Germans descended from intellectual political refugees. The scattered German ethnic islands were also diverse. These small enclaves included Lindsay in Cooke County, largely Westphalian Catholic; Waka in Ochiltree County, Midwestern Mennonite; Hurnville in Clay County, Russian German Baptist; and Lockett in Wilbarger County, Wendish Lutheran.
caption: The Wahrenberger House in Austin served as a German-American school.[55]
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