early residents

Emma Merck Altgelt

In the early days of the United States, most states followed “coverture,” where the woman’s property became the property of her husband, including income, interests, and rents. However, in Texas, Spanish law regulated property and contractual rights giving specific limited rights to married women. One example of a married woman who owned real estate in the King William area is Emma Merck Altgelt (1833-1922).

Born in Prussia, Emma was raised as an only child as her father and sibling died before she was five. Emma’s maternal grandmother and aunt raised her. Enchanted by stories of Texas, she arrived in Galveston in 1854, and, within a year, she married German immigrant Ernst Altgelt and moved to Comfort. After the Civil War, the Altgelt family moved to San Antonio.

Ernst acquired land on today’s King William Street, and is credited with naming the street after Kaiser Wilhelm I. They lived at 236 King William, then 226 King William. Ernst died in 1878 leaving Emma a widow with six children.

Elfrieda Siemering Basse

"Friends Join Teachers in Fight on Salary Slash" was a headline in the June 4, 1924 edition of the San Antonio Express. "A mass meeting of 800 persons took up the teachers' fight for better salaries.

The meeting was held in Brackenridge Senior School auditorium. The group in attendance adopted resolutions demanding abolition of the 5% cut in teachers' salaries. The accompanying photo showed a group of mostly women, who represented the parent-teacher association (PTA) and instructors, including Mrs. Ed Basse, president of the Bonham PTA.

Elfrieda Siemering was born May 21, 1880 in Texas, the fourth child of August and Clara Simering. She married Edward Basse in 1903. They resided at 423 Mission.

Gustav and Augusta Haenel

In October 1909, a San Antonio landmark was razed to widen South Alamo Street: the old home of Gustav and Augusta Haenel, which had been on the city's condemned list for fourteen years, finally came down.

In 1849, sixteen year-old Gustav and his brother Julius Haenel left their home in Prussia arriving in Texas at Indianola. Traveling inland, they stopped off briefly in San Antonio and New Braunfels, and then traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, but after a year, they returned to South Texas where they would remain.

In 1857, Gustav married Augusta Tewes on a ranch near Yorktown, Texas. In 1865, the Haenels settled permanently in San Antonio where they bought three lots at the corner of South Alamo and Cedar Streets. They built "Roof Tree" in 1866 facing South Alamo, where five of their nine children were born. Gustav built a rental house next door in 1896, which now has the address of 1008 South Alamo.

In 1881, Gustav bought two additional lots, which would become 1032 and 1036 South Alamo. He built the cottage at 1032 in 1884 for his son, Edward who married the next year. He built the house next door at 1036 South Alamo about the same time as rental property.

Gustav Haenel's primary occupation was that of a carpenter, but he was also noted for his skill in cabinetry and furniture making. Behind the family home, facing Cedar Street, Gustav had his workshop.

In 1909, when South Alamo was widened, the Haenels were forced to sell twenty feet of their property to the City of San Antonio. Like many of the early houses, theirs was built so close to the street that it could not be saved. Augusta said that one of her greatest regrets was losing her beautiful flower garden out front, "where I reared so tenderly, all the old fashioned flowers….but now, they are just part of the dust of the street."

When the family home was razed, Gustav enlarged his workshop, which would become their final home. Here, at 111 Cedar Street, in somewhat more modest accommodations, the Haenels lived until they both died in 1917.

Anton Wulff

After migrating to Texas from his native Germany in 1848, Anton Wulff (1822-1884) became a prosperous San Antonio merchant. He served as a City Alderman and as the first City Park Commissioner. He built this Italianate style home in 1869-1870 for his wife Maria (1834-1908) and their 11 children. The residence was sold in 1902 to Arthur Guenther, owner of the Liberty Flour Mill, whose family occupied it until 1950. It was restored (1974) by the San Antonio Conservation Society.