Nacogdoches Texas USA: Diedrich Rulfs

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Diedrich Rulfs

Diedrich Anton Wilhelm Rulfs was born in Oldenburg, Germany, on March 6, 1848. A family friend, John Schmidt, invited Rulfs to come to Nacogdoches, and in 1880, Rulfs, his wife, three children, mother-in-law, and brother-in-law arrived in Nacogdoches. The family’s first home was on a farm about three and a half miles south of town off of what is now Shawnee Street. In 1884, Rulfs bought a piece of property on East Main Street and constructed a modest home and three rental properties. Schmidt also helped Rulfs build his reputation around Nacogdoches by commissioning him to build and renovate several of his downtown businesses and personal residences. Rulfs brought with him to Nacogdoches different European architecture styles. He began building in the Victorian Queen Anne style; however, Rulfs’s style evolved, and he mixed and matched Victorian style with other styles such as Gothic, Neoclassical, Bungalow, and Prairie.

Many of Rulfs’s buildings still stand today, including Zion Hill First Baptist Church and many downtown buildings. Diedrich Rulfs changed the appearance of Nacogdoches, and local newspaper editor R.W. Haltom stated, “There is no man in Nacogdoches to whom the city is more indebted for the beauty and splendor of her scores of elegant residences and the stateliness of her business houses than to Diedrich Rulfs.”

In 2009, Chris Adams published, Diedrich Rulfs: Master Architect of Nacogdoches, as a photograph catalog of Rulfs’s work. Then in 2014, Dr. Jere Jackson published Diedrich Rulfs: Designing Modern Nacogdoches, a visual legacy of Rulfs’s architecture in Nacogdoches.

The Diedrich Rulfs Statue is located on the lawn of the Jones House at 141 North Church Street. Friends of Historic Nacogdoches, Inc. sponsored the bronze statue sculpted by Michael Pavlosky. The dedication of this statue was on August 29, 2013. Pavlosky designed the sculpture showing Diedrich Rulfs designing the 1897 Roland Jones home.

Diedrich Anton Wilhelm Rulfs was born March 6, 1848, and grew up in Oldenburg, Lower Saxony, Germany.

He married Emilie Helene Wilhelmine Boeschen and with their children and other family members, they immigrated to the United States in 1879 through the New Orleans port. The next year, the oldest town in Texas had the good fortune to welcome the family to their growing community.

A master architect, Rulfs first built his family’s home and then three rental properties for income for his family. From there, others began seeking out his talents.

He built huge private homes for wealthy clients as well as neighborhoods of shotgun houses for the train porters, maids, and gardeners that served the affluent citizens of the city. He designed the downtown district, an apartment building, and an office building. Besides the buildings in Nacogdoches, he built in other cities such as Lufkin, Garrison, San Augustine, Crockett, and Rusk.

Rulfs incorporated the motifs of his homeland along with elements from current trends in American architecture into Nacogdoches projects. He comfortably used classical and Palladian features, romantic (Gothic), flamboyant (Queen Anne), and eclectic (Mediterranean) styles. He started building in the Victorian Queen Anne style, which is characterized by asymmetrical floor plans, bay windows, gables, stained glass, and gingerbread details. Later, he also built other styles such as Greek Revival, Bungalow, and Prairie.

To maximize air flow in the heat of Texas summers, he placed windows for cross ventilation. He used the materials that were available to him locally. He remodeled several homes.

Rulfs proved himself a master at servicing many architectural needs: modest domestic structures, commercial buildings, city blocks, hotels, elaborately fashionable mansions, churches for all denominations, and public schools.

While few towns the size of Nacogdoches had, or could have supported, a talented resident architect, Rulfs returned the admiration by working flawlessly with the community. His success resided in his professionalism, his intimate knowledge of his clients, and his willingness to accommodate his designs to the needs and budgets of his patrons. Rulfs, as the architect and builder of choice in Nacogdoches between 1880 to the mid-1920s, left an architectural legacy — his creations transformed a historic Texas frontier town into a sophisticated modern city.

In 1902 he built Christ Episcopal Church, and for his African-American friends, he built Zion Hill Baptist Church in 1914.

A dozen of the Rulfs’ buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.Diedrich Rulfs became a naturalized American citizen in 1887. He died February 14, 1926, at the age of 77 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Nacogdoches.

A life-sized bronze statue of Rulfs is located on North Church Street in downtown Nacogdoches. The piece was created by Fort Worth sculptor Michael Pavlosky depicting Rulfs sketching the Roland Jones home that Rulfs designed in 1897. This is the seventh sculpture in the oldest town in Texas produced by the Friends of Historic Nacogdoches as part of the Heritage Walk that gives a pictorial tour of the leaders of Nacogdoches’ diverse history.

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The Flag of the Kingdom of Spain 1519 to 1821

The Spanish Flag of Castile and Leon flew over Texas for three hundred years. Spanish involvement in Texas began with Alonzo Alverez de Pineda's mapping of the Texas coast in 1519. Then, in 1542 Luis de Moscoso came to Nacogdoches and East Texas with the remnants of the Hernando de Soto expedition that had begun four years earlier in Florida. Spain's claim to Texas went back to the DeSoto-Moscoso Expedition, which claimed all of southeastern United States as Spanish Florida. Spain's occupation of Texas began in 1690 with the founding of Mission San Francisco de los Tejas on the Neches River. It continued in 1716 with the founding of six missions from the Neches River to Los Adaes in Western Louisiana, and 1721 with the founding of Presidio Nuestra Señora de Pilar de los Adaes----near present day Robeline, Louisiana. Los Adaes was the first capital of the Province of Texas. Texas was under the Spanish flag until Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821. Interestingly, the first flag used by the Spanish to claim Texas was not the familiar flag of Castile and Leon; it was a banner that had the Virgin of Guadalupe on one side and the crucified Christ on the other.

The Flag of the Kingdom of France 1685 to 1689

France's claim to a part of Texas went back to 1682, when Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, explored the Mississippi and claimed all the land in its drainage for France. For some mapmakers and politicians, this included Texas. He named this land Louisiana. La Salle came to Texas in 1685, after he accidentally sailed past his destination at the mouth of the Mississippi. He established Fort St. Louis and a French settlement on Garcitas Creek off Matagorda Bay. The settlement was ill fated from its beginning. LaSalle was murdered by his own men near Navasota in 1687, and the settlers and soldiers who remained at Fort St. Louis were killed or captured by the Indians in 1689. The Spanish found Fort St. Louis and burned it to the ground in 1690. This French intrusion into Spanish territory caused the Spanish to begin the occupation and settlement of East Texas to prevent further French invasions.

The Flag of the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition 1812 to 1813

Bernardo Gutiérrez and Lieutenant Augustus Magee flew their green flag of the new Republic of Texas over the Stone Fort in Nacogdoches in August of 1812. The Republican Army of the North, as these filibusters called themselves, had come from Natchitoches to Nacogdoches to recruit and train troops with the help of Samuel Davenport. They stayed for two months, drilled an army of over five hundred men, and then marched on to capture Goliad and San Antonio. Magee died at Goliad, and his place was taken by Samuel Kemper. Kemper and Gutiérrez captured San Antonio and issued a Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Texas on April 6, 1813. This brief time of Texas Independence was over when the Spanish general Joaquín de Arredondo destroyed the remains of the Republican army at the Battle of Medina on August 18, 1813. Augustus Magee and Samuel Davenport, who were in charge of the militia in Nacogdoches, were both Irishmen. That might have governed their choice of the Emerald Green flag as the Republican army's standard.

The Flag of the Dr. James Long Expedition 1819 and 1821

Some Americans believed that Texas was part of Louisiana as claimed by LaSalle in 1682 and should have been included in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. One of those was Dr. James Long of Natchez, Mississippi, who came to Nacogdoches in June of 1819. Dr. Long proclaimed himself the president of his newly declared Republic of Texas. Dr. Long's red-striped Lone Star flag flew but briefly over the Stone Fort and his Republic of Texas. The Spanish caught Long when he went to Galveston, where he was seeking the assistance of pirate Jean Lafitte. There they defeated him and his meager army and chased him back to Louisiana. Dr. Long returned to Texas with a small army in 1821 and quickly captured the poorly manned garrison at Goliad. However, he was soon under siege by Spanish troops from San Antonio, who recaptured Goliad and took him captive. Dr. James Long was taken to Mexico City, jailed, then freed, and then murdered under mysterious circumstances by a Mexican soldier.

The Flag of the Mexican Federal Republic 1821 to 1836

Spanish Nacogdoches came under the Mexican flag in 1821, when Mexico finally won its independence from Spain. Mexico, in order to prove its ownership of Texas, began settling its eastern parts with the Anglos as early as December 1821. In that year Stephen F. Austin was allowed to bring the first of his Old Three Hundred Settlers into his grant on the Brazos. Thereafter, Americans poured through Nacogdoches, the Gateway to Texas, in search of cheap land. By the time of the Texas revolution in 1836, Anglos greatly outnumbered the Spanish-Mexican population. The Mexican flag that flew over Nacogdoches and still flies over Mexico was adopted in 1825. It has three vertical green, white, and red fields of equal width. In the center of the white field is the Mexican eagle sitting on a nopal cactus holding a snake in its beak. In Mexican legend, this was a sign to the Aztecs that they had reached the land that was to be their home.

The Flag of the Fredonia Rebellion 1826 to 1827

For a brief while, the flag that flew over Nacogdoches was the red-and-white banner of Haden Edward's thirty-seven-day Fredonia Rebellion. Edwards had obtained a grant from Mexico to settle eight hundred families in East Texas in the Nacogdoches area. Unfortunately for him, most of the land had already been settled---legally and illegally---by the early Spanish, by Indians, and by Anglo squatters. His intrusion caused such a disturbance that the Mexican government revoked his grant. Disappointed over the loss of his grant, on December 16, 1826, Haden and his brother Benjamin rode into Nacogdoches, planted their flag in front of the Stone Fort, and proclaimed the Republic of Fredonia. They had formed an uncertain alliance with the Cherokees, thus the reason for the red and white colors of the flag. The flag carried the words "Independence Freedom and Justice" and the Signatures of sixteen of the original Fredonians. The Fredonian army consisted of no more than thirty men, the Cherokees never joined them, and Stephen F. Austin raised a militia to put down the East Texas rebellion. The Fredonians gave up their cause on January 22, 1827, and retreated eastward across the Sabine.

The Flag of the Republic of Texas 1836 to 1846

Mexican Texas became the Republic of Texas after Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna on the plains of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. The first official flag was a white upside-down star on a blue background with T-E-X-A-S written between the points of the star. This flag never flew. The second flag of the Republic was adopted by the first Texas congress in December 1836. It bore a single, large gold star on a blue field. This flag was the same design as the "Bonnie blue flag that bears a single star" that was so popular among the Southern troops during the Civil War. The Lone Star flag that we now use was designed by Texas Senator William H. Wharton and was officially adopted by the Senate under President Mirabeau B. Lamar in 1839. The new flag kept the white star on the blue field, but now the blue field was a vertical stripe which occupied one-third of the flag, and it was balanced by horizontal white and red stripes, on the other two-thirds. This Texas flag has been prominently displayed for over 150 years.

The Flag of the Confederate States of America 1861 to 1865

For four years, the Stars and Bars flew over Nacogdoches and Texas. After years of conflicts of interest between the North and the South over states rights, slavery, and the right of secession, the Civil War began in March of 1861. Texas seceded and joined the Confederate States of America. It sent its Texas brigades into battle, and suffered for four years with the rest of the Confederacy before General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. The most enduring of the Confederate flags during the War was the Stars and Bars with the square of blue holding a circle of the seven original seceding states. Texas was the seventh star. Because the Confederate Stars and Bars and the Union Stars and Stripes were easily confused in the heat of battle, General P. G. T. Beauregard introduced a Confederate battle flag. This was a square red flag with a white-bordered blue cross running diagonally from corners to corners. The cross contained thirteen stars representing the eleven Confederate states plus Kentucky and Missouri. This battle flag became the flag most closely identified with the Southern cause. The Confederate Stars and Bars came down in Texas after April 1863 and Appomattox, and the United States Stars and Stripes have been flying over this State ever since.

The Flag of the United States of America since 1846

On February 19, 1846, the Lone Star flag was lowered over the Texas state capitol in Austin, and the Stars and Stripes was raised. The Republic of Texas had become the State of Texas. From the beginning of the Republic in 1836, the majority of the Texians, most of whom had come directly from the States, had wanted Texas to join the Union. But many in the Union did not want Texas in the United States. Some did not want one more Southern slave-holding state, and some were afraid of causing a war with Mexico. Nevertheless, on July 4, 1845, the Texas congress voted to accept the articles of annexation offered by United States President James K. Polk, and on December 29, 1845, the congressional resolution proclaiming Texas as a state in the Union was signed by President Polk. The Old Glory that was raised above the Texas state capitol on the following February 19, 1846, had twenty-eight stars in four rows of seven stars each. Except for the four years of the Civil War, 1861 to 1865, these Stars and Stripes have since 1846 flown over the State of Texas.

Nacogdoches Texas USA

Nacogoches

Saturday, October 30, 2021

Diedrich Rulfs

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