Dau. of Louis & Mathilda Schultz Doebbler
Married twice:
1st Gruen
2nd Wagner
Mathilda Wagner, an historical Texas memoirist was born in 1856, the fourth of five children, to Louis and Mathilda Doebbler.
When Matilda was 80 years old, she dictated her life history to her granddaughter Winifred Cade, and it was published in 1937 as I Think Back: Being the Memoirs of Grandma Gruen. This historically significant book reveals the life experiences during the middle and late nineteenth-century in the Texas Hill County, particular to the girls and women, revealing their life expectancy, child labor, family structure, and marriage.
In the early 1850’s, Mathilda’s parents and two older siblings, Richard and Clara, had left Prussia (a former German state) to escape political upheaval and had immigrated to the U.S. to Fredericksburg, Texas. Fredericksburg, named after then Prince Frederick of Prussia, was a German settlement in Texas, founded in 1846. The three youngest daughters, Laura, Mathilda and Bertha, were all born there. Louis Doebbler was a stonemason and his wife, Mathilda, did fancy sewing. When still a child, Mathilda’s mother died of an infection before the 1860 US Census, and her only brother, Richard, the oldest child, drowned in a mill stream, sometime after the 1860 US Census.
Because Mathilda’s father couldn’t care for four girls alone, he sent them to live with and work for other families. While children, one sister died from an accidental poisoning and her other sister got a permanently maimed hand from being crushed by a sugar press, while on the job. Louis happened to remarry a callous woman who beat her own children as well as her stepchildren. When Mathilda was nine years old, she was sent to San Antonio to live and work for a family that hired her out to pick cotton in New Braunfels, which was another German settlement in Texas and named after then Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels. Matilda was sent to school while living in San Antonio and was confirmed in an evangelical Lutheran church.
Her memoir describes the sight of wagons of death collecting bodies, during the Cholera epidemic of 1866 that struck when she was 10 years old. When Mathilda was sixteen, she married Fredrick William Gruen, who was twenty-nine of age, to escape her living conditions. The couple lived for a time with his parents, then moved into a log cabin on his farmland. They had ten children together and eventually lived in a two-story stone house her father built. In 1890, difficult times forced them to sell and move to Kerrville, Texas. Then, around 1896, Fredrick Gruen accidentally shot and killed himself. Sometime after 1900, the widow Matilda Gruen moved to San Antonio, Texas with six of her children. When she was fifty years old, on June 25th 1907, Mathilda married John Wagner, who had two dependent children of his own. Wagner had immigrated to the United States from Germany, at the age of 22. In 1927, John Wagner passed away and then in 1944, Matilda died at the age of 87 years, in San Antonio.
[Sources: Handbook of Texas Online, Wikipedia and selected U.S. Census records, Texas Marriage records and Texas Death records]
Married twice:
1st Gruen
2nd Wagner
Mathilda Wagner, an historical Texas memoirist was born in 1856, the fourth of five children, to Louis and Mathilda Doebbler.
When Matilda was 80 years old, she dictated her life history to her granddaughter Winifred Cade, and it was published in 1937 as I Think Back: Being the Memoirs of Grandma Gruen. This historically significant book reveals the life experiences during the middle and late nineteenth-century in the Texas Hill County, particular to the girls and women, revealing their life expectancy, child labor, family structure, and marriage.
In the early 1850’s, Mathilda’s parents and two older siblings, Richard and Clara, had left Prussia (a former German state) to escape political upheaval and had immigrated to the U.S. to Fredericksburg, Texas. Fredericksburg, named after then Prince Frederick of Prussia, was a German settlement in Texas, founded in 1846. The three youngest daughters, Laura, Mathilda and Bertha, were all born there. Louis Doebbler was a stonemason and his wife, Mathilda, did fancy sewing. When still a child, Mathilda’s mother died of an infection before the 1860 US Census, and her only brother, Richard, the oldest child, drowned in a mill stream, sometime after the 1860 US Census.
Because Mathilda’s father couldn’t care for four girls alone, he sent them to live with and work for other families. While children, one sister died from an accidental poisoning and her other sister got a permanently maimed hand from being crushed by a sugar press, while on the job. Louis happened to remarry a callous woman who beat her own children as well as her stepchildren. When Mathilda was nine years old, she was sent to San Antonio to live and work for a family that hired her out to pick cotton in New Braunfels, which was another German settlement in Texas and named after then Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels. Matilda was sent to school while living in San Antonio and was confirmed in an evangelical Lutheran church.
Her memoir describes the sight of wagons of death collecting bodies, during the Cholera epidemic of 1866 that struck when she was 10 years old. When Mathilda was sixteen, she married Fredrick William Gruen, who was twenty-nine of age, to escape her living conditions. The couple lived for a time with his parents, then moved into a log cabin on his farmland. They had ten children together and eventually lived in a two-story stone house her father built. In 1890, difficult times forced them to sell and move to Kerrville, Texas. Then, around 1896, Fredrick Gruen accidentally shot and killed himself. Sometime after 1900, the widow Matilda Gruen moved to San Antonio, Texas with six of her children. When she was fifty years old, on June 25th 1907, Mathilda married John Wagner, who had two dependent children of his own. Wagner had immigrated to the United States from Germany, at the age of 22. In 1927, John Wagner passed away and then in 1944, Matilda died at the age of 87 years, in San Antonio.
[Sources: Handbook of Texas Online, Wikipedia and selected U.S. Census records, Texas Marriage records and Texas Death records]
Dau. of Louis & Mathilda Schultz Doebbler
Married twice:
1st Gruen
2nd Wagner
Mathilda Wagner, an historical Texas memoirist was born in 1856, the fourth of five children, to Louis and Mathilda Doebbler.
When Matilda was 80 years old, she dictated her life history to her granddaughter Winifred Cade, and it was published in 1937 as I Think Back: Being the Memoirs of Grandma Gruen. This historically significant book reveals the life experiences during the middle and late nineteenth-century in the Texas Hill County, particular to the girls and women, revealing their life expectancy, child labor, family structure, and marriage.
In the early 1850’s, Mathilda’s parents and two older siblings, Richard and Clara, had left Prussia (a former German state) to escape political upheaval and had immigrated to the U.S. to Fredericksburg, Texas. Fredericksburg, named after then Prince Frederick of Prussia, was a German settlement in Texas, founded in 1846. The three youngest daughters, Laura, Mathilda and Bertha, were all born there. Louis Doebbler was a stonemason and his wife, Mathilda, did fancy sewing. When still a child, Mathilda’s mother died of an infection before the 1860 US Census, and her only brother, Richard, the oldest child, drowned in a mill stream, sometime after the 1860 US Census.
Because Mathilda’s father couldn’t care for four girls alone, he sent them to live with and work for other families. While children, one sister died from an accidental poisoning and her other sister got a permanently maimed hand from being crushed by a sugar press, while on the job. Louis happened to remarry a callous woman who beat her own children as well as her stepchildren. When Mathilda was nine years old, she was sent to San Antonio to live and work for a family that hired her out to pick cotton in New Braunfels, which was another German settlement in Texas and named after then Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels. Matilda was sent to school while living in San Antonio and was confirmed in an evangelical Lutheran church.
Her memoir describes the sight of wagons of death collecting bodies, during the Cholera epidemic of 1866 that struck when she was 10 years old. When Mathilda was sixteen, she married Fredrick William Gruen, who was twenty-nine of age, to escape her living conditions. The couple lived for a time with his parents, then moved into a log cabin on his farmland. They had ten children together and eventually lived in a two-story stone house her father built. In 1890, difficult times forced them to sell and move to Kerrville, Texas. Then, around 1896, Fredrick Gruen accidentally shot and killed himself. Sometime after 1900, the widow Matilda Gruen moved to San Antonio, Texas with six of her children. When she was fifty years old, on June 25th 1907, Mathilda married John Wagner, who had two dependent children of his own. Wagner had immigrated to the United States from Germany, at the age of 22. In 1927, John Wagner passed away and then in 1944, Matilda died at the age of 87 years, in San Antonio.
[Sources: Handbook of Texas Online, Wikipedia and selected U.S. Census records, Texas Marriage records and Texas Death records]
Married twice:
1st Gruen
2nd Wagner
Mathilda Wagner, an historical Texas memoirist was born in 1856, the fourth of five children, to Louis and Mathilda Doebbler.
When Matilda was 80 years old, she dictated her life history to her granddaughter Winifred Cade, and it was published in 1937 as I Think Back: Being the Memoirs of Grandma Gruen. This historically significant book reveals the life experiences during the middle and late nineteenth-century in the Texas Hill County, particular to the girls and women, revealing their life expectancy, child labor, family structure, and marriage.
In the early 1850’s, Mathilda’s parents and two older siblings, Richard and Clara, had left Prussia (a former German state) to escape political upheaval and had immigrated to the U.S. to Fredericksburg, Texas. Fredericksburg, named after then Prince Frederick of Prussia, was a German settlement in Texas, founded in 1846. The three youngest daughters, Laura, Mathilda and Bertha, were all born there. Louis Doebbler was a stonemason and his wife, Mathilda, did fancy sewing. When still a child, Mathilda’s mother died of an infection before the 1860 US Census, and her only brother, Richard, the oldest child, drowned in a mill stream, sometime after the 1860 US Census.
Because Mathilda’s father couldn’t care for four girls alone, he sent them to live with and work for other families. While children, one sister died from an accidental poisoning and her other sister got a permanently maimed hand from being crushed by a sugar press, while on the job. Louis happened to remarry a callous woman who beat her own children as well as her stepchildren. When Mathilda was nine years old, she was sent to San Antonio to live and work for a family that hired her out to pick cotton in New Braunfels, which was another German settlement in Texas and named after then Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels. Matilda was sent to school while living in San Antonio and was confirmed in an evangelical Lutheran church.
Her memoir describes the sight of wagons of death collecting bodies, during the Cholera epidemic of 1866 that struck when she was 10 years old. When Mathilda was sixteen, she married Fredrick William Gruen, who was twenty-nine of age, to escape her living conditions. The couple lived for a time with his parents, then moved into a log cabin on his farmland. They had ten children together and eventually lived in a two-story stone house her father built. In 1890, difficult times forced them to sell and move to Kerrville, Texas. Then, around 1896, Fredrick Gruen accidentally shot and killed himself. Sometime after 1900, the widow Matilda Gruen moved to San Antonio, Texas with six of her children. When she was fifty years old, on June 25th 1907, Mathilda married John Wagner, who had two dependent children of his own. Wagner had immigrated to the United States from Germany, at the age of 22. In 1927, John Wagner passed away and then in 1944, Matilda died at the age of 87 years, in San Antonio.
[Sources: Handbook of Texas Online, Wikipedia and selected U.S. Census records, Texas Marriage records and Texas Death records]
Family Members
Siblings
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Richard Doebbler
1847–1930
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Theresa "Nellie" Doebbler Sands
1852–1931
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Annie Laura Doebbler Starks
1854–1943
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Bertha Elizabeth Bernhart Schreiber
1858–1951
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Amalie Bernhard Lindeman
1861–1905
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Alfred Gustav Doebbler
1864–1958
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Emil Doebbler
1869–1919
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Anna Doebbler Marquart
1872–1945
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Alma Doebbler Wetz
1882–1945
Children
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