On November 25, 1845, the ship "Washington" came into the busy port of Galveston , Texas. One of the many German immigrants aboard the ship was Frederich Heinrich Schlador, an 18 year old boy from Iserlohn, Germany, a city in the western central part of the country. For the ship's records, he stated that his destination was Guadalupe County, in southeastern Texas.
Sometime between his arrival and the year 1850, he married Franziska Wiedenfeld, a very young girl who had also arrived from Germany in 1845 in the company of her parents, Wilhelm and Henrietta Wiedenfeld, and her brother Theodore. F. H. and Franziska made their home in New Braunfels, Texas until sometime in the year 1852, when they, their infant daughter Ida, and Franziska's brother Theodore and his family made the somewhat hazardous trip to an area on Cypress Creek near the Guadalupe River in what was then Bexar County, near the present town of Comfort, Texas. In this wild and unsettled area, the Schlador's and Wiedenfeld's established a home, where Franziksa bore four more children William in 1853, Samuel in 1855, Theodore in 1857 and Magdalena in 1863.
How the family made their living is unknown. Sometime during this period, F. H. made the acquaintance of John O. Meusebach, the founder of Fredericksburg, Texas (a town north of Comfort), and assisted Herr Meusebach with some of the tasks associated with the establishment of the town. F. H. also did some surveying in Fredericksburg, and together with a partner named Huck bought and sold several lots in the village. It is interesting (and amusing) to note that in one of their real estate transactions, F. H. traded several lots in the then-thriving Texas port of Indianola to Mr. Huck in exchange for Mr. Huck's lots in Fredericksburg. Had those lots stayed in the respective families, Mr. Huck's heirs would have had cause for despair, and the Schlador's to rejoice, because Indianola was completely destroyed by hurricanes in the late 1890's, while Fredericksburg today is a prosperous town, extremely popular as a tourist destination, and those lots acquired by F. H. would be a gold mine.
In either 1853 or 1855 (sources do not agree on the date), the F. H. Schladors had an unexpected and perhaps unwelcome addition to their family. The wife and four children of F. H.'s older brother, Diderich, who had immigrated to Texas in 1852, had arrived from Germany expecting to be met at the port by Diderich, who never appeared. His fate is unknown to this day. Diderich's family made their way through great hardships to Comfort, and for a time made their home with F. H. and Franziska. Relationships may have been strained between the two families... in the 1860 federal census of the area, F. H.'s niece, Christiana, is listed as a servant living in his family, rather than as his niece. Her obituary in 1917 says, rather bitterly, it seems, "F. H. Schladoer, a brother of the missing man, gave them a home, but one without any of the comforts they had known in the old country."
It is certain that the Schlador family was still in the Comfort area when the Civil War broke out...the 45-year-old F. H. Schlador is listed, in 1862, as a member of the Comfort militia; his weapon, a rifle. His and Franziska's sons would have been too young to enlist in the military, but their nephew Robert did serve, first on the Confederate side, then deserting and joining the Union Army.
Some time between 1862 and 1867, F. H., Franziska and their children moved from Comfort to Bandera, Texas, a small town on the Medina River, and owned a cypress shingle mill for several years. In 1870, the mill was seriously damaged by floodwaters, and totally destroyed by floods in 1900. However, by that time the Schlador family was gone, except for daughter Ida, who had married a resident of Bandera, Johann P. Heinen; and son William, who in the 1880 federal census is listed as a mail carrier in Bandera County, Texas.
Apparently, the call to move west had come to F. H., because the next federal census finds him in Oregon, his occupation listed as a hotel keeper in the town of Silverton.
Here the trail of F. H. Schlador abruptly ends. No mention of him can be found following the 1880 census. It is possible that he died and is buried in the Silverton area...the fact that there is a Schlador Street in the town of Silverton attests to the family's contributions to life in that city. Son Theodore's obituary in 1892 does not mention his father as a survivor, so it can be assumed that F. H. died sometime between 1880 and 1892.
At some point, Franziska and her surviving children moved from Oregon to California, Franziska dying in Los Angeles in 1920. Her son, William, had apparently joined his family by this time, for though William's date and place of death is unknown, his wife Grace Amelia died in San Bernardino County in 1951. Sadly, Franziska had lived to see the death of at least two of her children, both in 1892; Theodore died in Silverton, Oregon in February of that year, and her youngest child, the lovely Magdalena, who had married Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, died in Los Angeles the following August.
Today, descendants of F. H. and Franziska Schlador's children William, Samuel, Theodore and Magdalena live in California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona. Descendants of daughter Ida Schlador Heinen still live in Texas, as do the descendants of F. H.'s brother Diderich Schladoer and Franziska's brother Theodore Wiedenfeld.
Submitted by Donna Schulte Loth; Seguin, Texas; May 2005; Researching Britsch, Carrigan, Doehne, Farmer, Gass, Gerdes, Gray, Hartman, Heyen, Joiner, Loessberg, Mohrhoff, Reitzer, Schladoer/Schlador, Schulte