Gazebo - Sam Houston Park
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25 April 1908: Houston in 1910 had a population of 78,000 and lay mostly within a score of blocks from Allen's Landing at Main and Commerce Streets. The West End started at the city line about where Studemont now lays. Houston Heights and Brunner were suburbs outside the city of Houston proper, but streetcar lines would have taken patrons to the City Park between Bagby Street and Buffalo Bayou. The bandstand was constructed in 1900, and surrounded benches accommodated crowds of listeners, especially on weekends.
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7 March 2016: Population estimates for the Houston metropolitan area is nearly 7,000,000 in 2018, with 2.3 million within the city limits, making it the 4th most populous city in the US after New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. City Park is now bisected by Allen Parkway lanes, and The Heritage Society has relocated historically important structures into the park grounds, including the chapel seen at left. Anna Platke Kreiter would have been pleased to see it there, and had attended services in the church many times, including her grandfather’s funeral; it was St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, first built in 1891 in Rosslyn. It featured handmade cypress plank pews and a covered ceiling with rounded corners. It was moved to the park in 1968 and renovated to include air-conditioning and heating. The Heritage Society will rent the chapel, with a capacity 65 persons, and the bandstand. The bandstand was moved to its present location in 2013, and the park itself has been enclosed in a high metal fence which is locked in the evenings.
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Postmarked: 25 April 1908; Houston, Tex.
Stamp: 1c Blue Green Ben Franklin #300 To: Miss Clara Feltz Iago Wharton Co. Texas Message: April 24th 1908 Received your postal. I enjoyed easter just fine but it rained all evening we are having a Carnival this week wish you were here we are certainly having a nice time I am watching right now for the air ship to go up wish you were here to see it. I certainly hope I will get to ome to Iago this summer but don't know yet wether I will or not Your Friend Anna Platke [above] I am going to a concert Sunday at the City Park Not quite 23 when she sent this postcard, Anna Lydia Platke was the daughter of Henrietta Schabel and August Platke, born in Harris County, TX on 3 August 1885. She lived at 4503 Lillian at Patterson in the West End town of Brunner with her older brother William (born 1883), younger sister Martha (born 1889). Their mother was the head of the household, widowed by the death of their father just ten years before. The family made their living mostly as farmers, traveling back and forth from their house in the city to their farm northwest of town near the village of Rosslyn. Living with them then were the Platke grandparents, Anna Elizabeth Koch and Christof Platke, immigrants from near Brandenburg, Germany, but Cristof died 3 October 1900 and Elizabeth died 16 March 1908 and were buried at White Oak Cemetery, a small cemetery at 4606 Mangum Road.
Clara Feltz received the postcard at home in Iago, Wharton County, Texas, about 60 miles from Anna’s. Clara was a few years younger, just 18 at the time, living with her parents Joe and Anna Feltz, and siblings John, a year older, Charlie, 4 years younger, and Lucy, 6 years younger. The Feltz family was making their living as farmers on the flat Gulf Coast plains east of Wharton. It is unclear how the two women were acquainted, perhaps through a church event or German Cultural associations. Clara’s father was also a German immigrant, coming to this country in 1888, and doubtless was a German speaker. At the Platke’s church, St. John German Evangelical Lutheran Church, worship services were conducted in German until as late as 1940. In her photo-postcard [below] Anna speaks of an uncle who sent a postal and some other pictures, and from the context it seems possible her uncle was the photographer. She also speaks of her “fellow” who has a Kodak and makes them himself, saying that she will send one to see if it looks like her, so it is more probable that the photo postcard is the uncle’s photograph. The uncle must have come from the Platke family, as no relations can be found from the Schabel side. Christof’s sons were Louis, who died in 1883 when less than eight months old, Anna’s father August (1853 - 1897); Uncles by marriage would include the husband of Anna, who married Louis Martin Telge, Mary Elizabeth, who married Jacob Kaspar, and the husband of Emma, who has not been found in the record. To be in contact with Anna every Sunday, her Uncle would have to live within just a few miles. Jacob Kaspar became a preacher in Hockley about 78 miles northwest of Houston, which would have been a difficult trip on transportation of the day. Anna’s Uncle Louis lived only 28 miles away from Rosslyn where the Houston Platkes may have gone to be with family on Sundays, so he is more likely the uncle who was “doing right well.” |
Anna’s “fellow” is not named, but he was quite likely Bruno Kreiter, whom she married fourteen months later at the German Lutheran Church [LINK], a congregation composed of many families who had immigrated from Germany. Bruno was a jeweler, an occupation requiring to the kind of technical awareness then needed for photographic work. He was the son of Jennnie Buschbeck and Bernard Otto Kreiter from Berlin, Germany, who immigrated to America in 1884 with 4 year old Richard and two year old Willie. Bruno was the first in the family to be born in America, on 3 September 1886 in San Antonio, Bexar County, TX where Otto had found work as a cooper at Lone Star Brewery. Otto worked hard and was promoted to foreman in the bottling department, and in 1895 moved to Houston where he managed bottling at Magnolia Brewery. He soon bought a house at 2112 Polk, and later an adjoining property at 1311 St. Emanuel. In the 1910’s this was an area of modest blue collar homes adjacent to more affluent neighborhoods to the west. [Both homes are now demolished. The neighborhood, now called EaDo (“East of Downtown”), has become highly desirable due to its proximity the city center, and the vacant lots are surely soon to be scheduled for development.]
Bruno and Anna moved into his father’s old house at 2112 Polk and had two children, Bernard Albert (29 September 1914) and Lydia Anna (9 November 1919). Later they moved to 4420 Maple (now Blossom) in the West End area of Brunner closer to where Anna had lived. Sadly, Anna died 21 February 1920 at the age of 34 of the pandemic flu after an illness of only a week, leaving her husband widowed with a 5 year old boy and a three month old daughter. It must have been a crushing blow to Bruno, he buried her in Glenwood Cemetery with the epitaph “My Darling Sweetheart.” Clara Feltz married Herman Taylor Looper on Christmas Day in 1916 and settled into the life of a farming family in Wharton County, TX. Herman was the son of Sarah and Thomas Looper, who had come from Mansfield, Scott County, AR. Clara (1890 – 1984) and Herman (1889 – 1964) had four children. Bruno Kreiter must have felt overwhelmed at the death of his wife and the responsibility for the care of two small children. He met Ruth Arto and married her in Montgomery County, TX just north of the Houston area on 3 October 1923. Ruth had been married to Charles Francis “Frank” Arto, son of Jacob Arto, an Austrian immigrant who had the nickname of The Restaurant King. His restaurant, “The Old Saint Charles Restaurant,” made him very prosperous, and by the time of his death in 1905 he was one of the largest taxpayers in town. His sons inherited his wealth, including J. P. Arto who became the Chief of the Fire Department [LINK? To Fire station, what year]. Unfortunately, Frank was burdened by mental health issues and never fully achieved independence, living with his sister Jennie Floeck (1900 as a 30 year old laborer “hunter”), or brother William J. Arto (1918). By 1920 he was an inmate at Southwestern State Insane Asylum in San Antonio, from which he never was discharged, dying there 5 December 1940 and interred in Hollywood Cemetery in Houston. His marriage to Ruth must have been annulled shortly after he entered the asylum. B. O. Kreiter continued to work as a jeweler, his shop in the lobby of the Kress Building (1930). In 1940 Bruno and Ruth were still living at their house at 4420 Blossom, but interestingly Bruno is also listed as a lodger at a boarding house at 4401 Bell in the Eastwood section east of downtown Houston. He is entered as married, but Ruth not there. It seems they didn't stay coupled, and nine years later Bruno married the boarding house proprietor, Tessie Myrle Nelson. She had been married in 1918 to Randolph Tucker, but listed herself as widowed on the census of 1940 even though he did not die until 17 December 1957. Bruno died 18 June 1958 in Seabrook on Galveston Bay where he had been living for 18 months, and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery in Houston. His widow Tessie M. Kreiter died 22 years later on 7 January 1981 in Pasadena and is buried in Forest Park Lawndale. Ruth Kreiter kept her married name and seems to have gone back to her house at 421 E. 9th in Houston Heights, the same address she had occupied in 1911 with her husband Frank Arto, in 1913 by herself, and listed as late as 1959 on directories. Clear record of her death has not been found, but a woman named Ruth Krieter died 17 January 1975 at a care facility in Austin at approximately 80 years of age. The death certificate does indicates that an inquest was held to determine her cause of death (“natural causes”), and since neither her parents or spouses are given, her identity cannot be established. She was buried in an unmarked grave in Round Rock Cemetery in Williamson County north of Austin. |
[Front] from your friend
Anna Platke 4503 Lillian St. |
Postmarked: 12 May 1908; Houston, Tex.
Stamp: 1c Blue Green Ben Franklin #300 To: Miss Clara Feltz Iago Texas. Message: How is Clara I hope just fine. How is every body? I received a postal from Uncle and some other pictures he is doing right well we take pictures nearly every Sunday my fellow has a Kodak and makes them himself I’ll send you one and let you see if it looks like me. |
