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View
of Hochheim from the road
Vintage photo courtesy TXDoT |
History in a Pecan
Shell
Immigrating to Texas was often
a tragedy. Such was the case with Valentine Hoch who bought a homesite in DeWitt
County even before leaving his home in Alsace-Lorraine. The man's name is
German for "high" so it can be translated as "Hoch's Home" or "High Home" which
corresponds to the geographic location of Mr. Hoch's residence.
One of
Hoch's children died a few days before they left for America and upon arrival
in Indianola,
Mrs. Hoch died - leaving Valentine a widower with three surviving children. Arriving
at his property in 1856, Valentine spent the next two and a half years building
his two-story house from stone gathered from the Guadalupe
River. Hoch remarried a woman with three children of her own and soon other
families were arriving. The community became known as Hocheim to the German speaking
residents and as "Dutchtown" by the Anglo settlers.
The community prospered
since it was the Indianola-Austin
stageline and a post office was granted in 1870. Hochheim had most essential business
in the 1880s including at least two stores, a blacksmith, a Masonic lodge and
a druggist. Daily stages to Gonzales
and Cuero
(the nearest railroad connection)
made life a little easier for the 200 citizens - half of which were German-speaking.
The population peaked with 261 residents in 1904. It declined to around 100 in
the 20s and remained there for the next 40 years. After a brief climb back to
175, it dipped down to 70 where it remained for the 2000 Census.
The
town remains on the state map and retains a post office on the highway. Valentine
Hoch's stone house still stands just south of town - a mile from the river. |
STAGECOACH INN
Then and Now |
| Vintage
photo courtesy TXDoT |
Hochheim General Store
Then and Now |
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Hochheim,
Texas Forum
Subject: Valentin Hoch
Valentin Hoch was a German
settler who travel from Germany in the fall of 1845 looking for a better life
for his family in America. As the Hoch family finished their preparation for their
voyage to their new home in Texas and said their goodbyes to friends and neighbors,
tragedy, the first of many, struck the family. They had a baby who sickened and
died prior to boarding the ship in Bremen and another child took ill and die aboard
the ship on the journey to America. Valentin’s wife, Margarethe made it to the
shores of their new homeland and died in Indianola. Valentin was among a group
of new settlers who were to receive a land grant and escorted to his new land
upon arrival in America, but circumstances led to the new immigrants being left
stranded without transportation, little food, and no shelter on an island where
disease and death were spreading rapidly. Many immigrants, such as Valentin set
out on their own. On February 17, 1848 a deed was filed in Gonzales County, Texas
recording Valentin Hoch purchasing 45 ½ acres of land in what is now DeWitt County,
Texas. The community at the time was known as Dutchtown and later became known
as Hochheim meaning “high home”. It is said that when “the lonely German traveler
came to the rolling rocky hills and the wooded hollows of this uninhabited spot,
he pulled his old gray horse to a halt and said to his son, August, ‘Here we shall
build our home’.” In 1854, Valentin was single and raising his children on his
own. It is said that a “neighbor came to him one day and said ‘Volentine you need
a housekeeper. I hear that there is a lady stranded at Indianola who would probably
come to work for you. She has two children and has recently lost her husband.
You might see if you can get her to come’”. “So Volentine went to see the lady,
a Mrs. Fleming, who had come to the new country with the same high hopes and plans
that Volentine had held, only to become hopelessly bewildered when death took
the husband and father of the family.” Perhaps, Valentin, hearing of Johanna’s
plight, recalled his own voyage to America, the loss of his two children and his
wife, and the overwhelming feeling of arriving in a new country and having his
own ‘high hopes and plans’ shattered. Whatever his reasons were “he saddled up
and went to Indianola to see the widow.” “What arrangements they made concerning
their respective families were not known”, but Valentin returned in a few days
with the young German widow and her two children. The “mother’s name, however,
had been recently changed to Mrs. Volentine Hoch. History relates that with no
more courtship than that, they were married.” To this union four more children
would be born to Valentin. It is unknown exactly when Valentin began the preparations
to build a home for his family, but it is assumed that the project was a long
and intense one. Valentin “spent several years quarrying his stone and bringing
his material to the spot where his house was to stand”. “There were no modern,
tools, no giant crane to lift the heavy stones, no one to quarry the stone from
the Guadalupe river banks, except Volentine himself.” “He hauled the rock on a
slide. The old gray horse pulled the slide.” It is assumed that the home that
Valentin labored over for his family was completed in 1857. “The sturdy two-story
rock house that Hoch built was near the regular stage line between Indianola and
Austin. Although Hoch did not build his house for a stage stop, it soon became
known that one could partake of a good meal and if need be, spend a night.” “People
hauling freight from Indianola to Gonzales and Austin would stop there and eat,
take their teams out and water and feed them.” “August Hoch, Valentine’s son,
was learning to repair harness and make saddles, a service always needed by the
horse-drawn freighter that passed by the Hoch place. The old home still stands
today and is recognized as a Texas Historical Landmark. The story of the Hoch
Home is best summed up in the article written in the Yoakum newspaper in 1936,
“Today, an old stone house stands on the old Hochheim-Cuero road, about a mile
and a half out of Hochheim, and about a mile from the Guadalupe river, with its
ancient roof beaten by the rains and buffeted by the winds of eighty years, and
its still sturdy walls holding memories of the heart-aches and disappointments,
the joys and achievements, the births, marriages, and deaths, of three generation
of Hochs who made it their home.” - Thanks, Debbie Hoch, March 03, 2008
See Cuero
and DeWitt County |
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