Page 22 - 2025 Comfort Chamber Membership Directory

the history of KendAll County
20
830-995-3131
info@Comfort-Texas.com
Kendall County is located in south central Texas, 170 miles inland from the Gulf of America, and is bordered by Gillespie, Blanco, Comal, Bexar, Bandera, and Kerr counties. Boerne, the county seat, is on Cibolo Creek at the intersection of U.S. Highway 87 and Farm Road 474, approximately fteen miles northwest of San Antonio. The county’s center lies eleven miles north of Boerne. Kendall County comprises roughly 663 square miles of rolling to hilly terrain in the Edwards Plateau region, with elevations ranging from 1,000 to over 2,000 feet above sea level. Vegetation native to the alkaline soils of the region consists primarily of tall grasses, live oak, juniper, and mesquite. Most of the area is drained by the Guadalupe River, which crosses the county from west to east. Two other important watercourses rise in Kendall County: the Blanco River in the north and Cibolo Creek in the south. Wildlife in the area includes whitetail and exotic deer, coyote, bobcat, beaver, porcupine, ringtail, skunk, wild hogs, fox, raccoon, squirrel, and a variety of small birds, sh, and reptiles. Among the county’s primary mineral resources is limestone. The climate is subtropical subhumid with an average minimum temperature of 35 degrees F in January and an average high of 94 degrees in July. The growing season averages 231 days annually, and the rainfall averages thirty-two inches.
The Central Texas region, including Kendall County, has supported human habitation for several thousand years. Archeological evidence suggests that hunting and gathering peoples established themselves in the area as early as 10,000 years ago. Lipan Apaches, Kiowas, Tonkowas, and Comanches were among the area tribes until the mid-1800’s when Germans began arriving. The Meusebach-Comanche Treaty, signed in 1847, allowed peaceful settlement and was unique in that it remained unbroken. German immigrants established Sisterdale in 1847, Tusculum (Boerne) in 1849, Curry’s Creek in 1850, and Comfort in 1854. Although relations between settlers and Indians were fairly sympathetic, small groups of Indians did make frequent raids on farms in the area,
Settled after the signiing of the Muesebach-Comanche Treaty of 1847.
and in several rare instances killed settlers and stole children. The threat continued through the mid-1870’s when the frontier was pushed farther west.
Most of the Kendall County area was originally part of Bexar County, established by the Republic of Texas in 1836. It later became part of Comal then Blanco and Kerr County which was organized in 1856. Comfort served as county seat of Kerr County for two years (1860- 1862) until Kendall County was formed. In 1859 residents of Boerne and Sisterdale petitioned the legislature for a new county, the legislature granted the petition in 1862, and the new county, carved from Kerr and Blanco counties, was named in honor of George Wilkins Kendall. The rst Kendall County o cials were elected later that year, and Boerne was chosen as the county seat.
The earliest schools in the area were private institutions that met in someone’s home or in donated space. The rst public schools were organized at Comfort in 1856 and at Boerne in 1857. Although the legislature had authorized a district system in 1854, the system was not put into e ect before the 1870’s or 1880’s. Shortly after 1900, Kendall County had twenty- two common school districts. It was not until the mid-1900’s that improved transportation made large-scale consolidation of schools into independent school districts possible. Until the mid-twentieth century extensive schooling was for many children a luxury that took second place to their duties on the family farm, and dropout rates were high. As late as 1940 less than 9 percent of the population over the age of twenty- ve had completed high school. The percentage of residents who nished school began to rise as the job market in nearby San Antonio expanded. By 1960, 20 percent were high school graduates, and by 1980 that number rose to nearly 65 percent of the population over twenty- ve.
Religious development in the county was fairly slow. Many of the early German immigrants were freethinkers and not particularly receptive to organized religion. In the 1840’s and 1850’s a