Pioneer Farms
Krueger Cabin - 1867
This one-room cabin, built of logs about 1867, was home to the Frederick Krueger family who had immigrated to Texas in the late-1850s from Anhalt Dessau in Germany. They were among the founding families of both Dessau and Pflugerville.
Frederick, relative Andrew and others constructed the house from native cedar logs cut six inches wide at a Bastrop sawmill. Originally located near Yager Lane and Dessau Road, it was the first of three houses the Krueger family would occupy in this area.
Frederick (1832 - 1904), an advocate of diversified farming, was also a skilled forester. His wife, Fredericka, shocked non- German neighbors by working alongside her husband in the fields. During the Civil War, Frederick - known to his friends and family as Fritz - helped run Texas cotton around the Union blockade by hauling it to Mexico.
The cabin's single room was the center for a variety of family activities - a parlor, a dining room and a bedroom for the parents - and the children slept in a loft upstairs or in the barn. The cabin was moved to Pioneer Farms in the early 1980s to save it from demolition, and it was then restored.
Source: Pioneer Farms Archives.
Immigrants from Germany began homesteading in this fertile area outside Austin in the 1840s. Some relocated from areas to the south, which were more prone to Indian attacks, while others arrived from Indianola and later Galveston, which were the primary ports of entry.
Many fled political persecution in their native lands; others were attracted by promises of rich soil on the Texas frontier. What they all found was a hardscrabble existence with none of the fine accoutrements in their native land.
Families with names such as Kruger and Pfluger were among the earliest German homesteaders in this area. They helped slaves build the Baptist Church in 1850, which served both groups and became a center for area gatherings. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Dessau, the second church they built, hosted the first school in the area.
In time, the communities of Dessau and Pflugerville were founded as additional immigrants arrived. By the early 1860s, German immigrant farmers were some of the most prosperous in the area, often living in log cabins for a time before they built more substantial stone houses.
Sources: Handbook of Texas, German Society of Texas, Pioneer Farms Archives.