Grayson County TXGenWeb

Joseph Loeffler

Joseph Loeffler was born in 1817 in Wurttemberg, Germany, often spelled "Wurtemberg" in English, located in southwest Germany. The region was a member state of the German Confederation from 1815 to 1866. Switzerland (Schweiz) bordered the Kingdom of Wurttemberg on the south in 1817. The German surname varies in spelling in records as Loeffler, Leoffler, Leffer, or Lefler.

Joseph's immigration and naturalization card shows he was born in Wurtemberg in 1817, as do the 1860 and 1870 U.S. Federal census records. However, the 1880 census for Denison, Grayson County, Texas lists his birth place as Switzerland, leaving one to surmise that the Loeffler family might have lived very close to the borders of southeastern Wurtemberg and northern Switzerland, divided by Lake Constance, known as "Bodensee" in German a central European lake that borders Germany, Austria and Switzerland (shown in blue in the above map). The two cities on the German border of Lake Constance are Friedrichshafen, located on the shore of Lake Constance and Konstanz, bordering on the German side; there are also two Swiss cities that bonder Lake Constance on the south side, Rorschach, located on Lake Constance, and Rheineck, about 2.5 miles south of Lake Constance.
Joseph was about 26 years old when he arrived in New York in July 1843. He soon made his way to Wisconsin, where the first of his four daughters was born in 1847. He was living in Milwaukee and worked as a baker when he became a citizen on April 5, 1858. Based on the 1870 census for Sedalia, Pettis County, Missouri, all four of his daughters - Catherine "Kate", Margaretha "Maggie", Bertha "Bettie", and Lillie - were born in Wisconsin.

The first advertisement for the German Boarding House appeared in the Denison Daily News on April 12, 1876, with Joseph Loeffler and Stephen H. Hertweck as proprietors. The ad says "restaurant" instead of "boarding house," but the fine print indicates lodging was also available. The location of the business was "In the basement No. 122, Main Street." A couple weeks later on April 30 the wording of the ad changed from "Restaurant' to "Boarding House." In the May 18, 1876 edition of the Denison Daily News, the wording had been changed to "Boarding House" and reflected the change in ownership to Joseph Loeffler; the ads continued through June 30, 1876.

Stephen H. Hertwick (1850-1886) was a Bavarian-born cabinet maker, specializing in coffins. The surname spelling varies in records - Hertweck, Hertwick, Hertwek, Hirtweck, Hirtwick, and Hartwick. Stephen H. Hertwick came to Denison from Humboldt, Kansas, where he was enumerated in the 1870 census. An advertisement in the Denison Daily News, March 21, 1873 shows that he was partnered with a Mr. Casens in a carpenter shop with the making of coffins as a specialty. Less than a month later the firm's name changed to Hertwick, Young & Co. (Denison Daily News, April 12, 1873). This partnership dissolved almost as soon as it was formed, apparently in order to drop a silent partner named Jack L. Keck (Denison Daily News, April 29, 1873) Shortly thereafter the firm of Hertwick & Young secured a contract from Mr. E.J. Damron of Ohio to build a 2-story, 25-room hotel at the southeast corner of Gandy Street and Rusk Avenue (The Daily News, May 2, 1873). Before the Damron House was completed, it was sold to Col. G.W. Fisher (The Daily News, July 13, 1873). Before it opened for business in the late summer, it was sold again to R.S. Brooks, who renamed it The Clifton House (The Daily News, July 25, 1873). In the same issue of The Daily News, a notice of the partnership of Stephen Hertweck and W.C. Young being dissolved was printed, with Mr. Young retiring and Mr. Hertweck continuing the business. Advertisements after the dissolution of Hertwick & Young were for The Cabinet Shop on Austin Avenue between Main Street and Gandy Street with S. Hertweck as proprietor.
The Italianate-style building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. Although the Statement of Significance praises the design and craftsmanship of the building, the names of its architects/builders, Hertweck & Young, are nowhere to be found on the nomination form, which contains excellent photographs of the building. Less than 3 years after the nomination was approved by the National Park Service, the Clifton House was destroyed by fire on February 4, 1989. It stood for more than 115 years. Stephen Hertweck was only 23 years old when he built it.

How did Joseph Loeffler, a baker, come to open a restaurant and boarding house with a coffin maker who was 33 years his junior? It was a family venture. Stephen Hertwick married Joseph Loeffler's second daughter, Margaretha "Maggie" on Valentine's Day 1874. The next year Maggie partnered with a Mrs. Norman to open a milliner shop on Main Street under the name of Norman & Co. (The Daily News, April 7, 1875). In mid-September 1876 Stephen bought out Messrs. Lamb & Mills, carpenters and undertakers, and moved his shop to Woodard Street, west of Rusk Avenue (The Daily News, September 16, 1876). Mr. Hertweck continued the undertaking business of Lamb & Mills along with his carpenter shop.
The downtown section of the 1876-1877 Sherman-Denison City Directory was compiled in October 1876 (Denison Daily Cresset, September 27, 1876). Copies of the directory were distributed around Denison by December. The directory listing for Joseph Loeffler's boarding house shows that it had moved from the basement of 122 Main to the north side of Crawford Street between Austin and Houston avenues.

A detail from the 1876 bird's-eye map of Denison shows what appears to be a row of 4 buildings at or near that location. The letter "H" denotes a hotel or hotels. Depending on when the boarding house was erected and what month the map was drawn, Loeffler's new establishment could be somewhere in that group. Sometimes the bird's-eye maps included buildings that had been planned but not yet constructed.

In early July 1878 Stephen and Maggie Hertweck began taking in boarders in their newly constructed home on Woodard Street, near Austin Avenue (The Daily News, July 7, 1878). The Denison Daily News reported in its February 28, 1880 edition that Maggie had left town to join her husband in St. Louis. The newspaper may have meant Kansas City, where Stephen and Maggie were enumerated in June in the 1880 census. Four years later The Sunday Gazetteer of February 3, 1884 reported on Steve Hertwick's first return visit to Denison in five years.

The Loeffler family is listed as living on Woodard Street in the 1880 census. Perhaps they moved into the Hertwicks' house after Stephen and Maggie left for Kansas City. Joseph's occupation still reads "baker". There is no reference to a restaurant or boarding house. He was 62 and his wife Margaret (short for Margaretha, the same name as their second daughter) was 58. A newspaper story in 1879 revealed the Mrs. Lefler [sic], identified as "mother-in-law of Mr. Steve Hertwick," was deaf and almost blind, conditions which no doubt contributed to her receiving the glancing blow from a passing train (The Daily News, September 4, 1879). In 1880 the oldest daughter, Catherina "Kate" Conrady, was living with them along with her 3-year-old daughter, yet another Maggie, who was born in the Indian Territory. The whereabouts of Kate's husband is a mystery. Her occupation was "keeping house," while her younger sisters, Bertha, age 20, and Lillie, age 16, were simply "at home."

After the 1880 census the Loeffler family do not appear in records until the 1886-1887 Waco City Directory. Joseph, then 69, was still a baker. Daughters Bertha and Lillie, both still single, were living with him and working as seamstresses. Their mother is not listed. She may have died, or she may have been omitted because she was a non-working, non-head-of-household, married woman. The family's presence in Waco in 1886 may explain why Stephen Hertwick returned to Denison again that year from Waco instead of coming from Kansas City. The newspaper says his wife Maggie arrived in town on the day he died, but it does not say from which direction she came. It seem likely that she came from Kansas City; after he died, she returned to Kansas City, where she operated a boarding house for the next 10 years. In 1896 she married Thomas C. Anderson. She shaved 6 years off her age on the marriage license.

Stephen Hertwick is buried in Fairview Cemetery. His Find-A-Grave memorial incorrectly states that he lived in Sherman in 1876. It cites the city directory as the source. He is actually listed in the Denison half of the directory, on Woodard Street.
Bertha Loeffler married John Roebuck in Waco in 1888. They soon moved, first to Kansas, and later to Missouri. They lived in Palestine, Texas, when he died in 1907.

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