The Engel Store

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. A native of Austria, Andreas Engel was born in 1864, and by 1885 he had made his way to Texas. Now that alone tells you something about the man.

An ocean crossed, a continent traversed, and he wasn't done yet. Come 1900, he purchased land right here in the Texas Hill Country and built a cotton gin. And where a cotton gin goes, people follow.

An agricultural community began to take shape around it, the way communities do when someone plants something worth gathering around. Then in 1901, the area post office was moved to this spot, and Andreas Engel became postmaster. That put the naming of the town in his hands, and he reached back across that ocean for the word he wanted.

He called it Bergheim. German for home in the hills. You look around at this country and you understand why a man from Austria might feel he'd finally arrived somewhere that made sense to him.

Two years on, in 1903, Andreas and his wife Eva opened a store right here at this site. A cotton gin, a post office, a store. The bones of a real town.

Their son Alfred kept building on what his parents started, adding services including a cedar yard, meeting the community where it was and helping nudge it forward. Here's the part that lands, though. The marker tells us the store has remained in the Engel family.

One family, one piece of ground, one town they helped name and build and tend. Andreas Engel came a long way from Austria to put down roots. Looks like those roots held.

What the marker says

A native of Austria, Andreas Engel (b. 1864) migrated to Texas in 1885. In 1900 he purchased land here and built a cotton gin, around which an agricultural community developed. When the area post office was moved here in 1901 and Engel became postmaster, he named the town Bergheim, German for "home in the hills". He and his wife Eva opened a store at this site in 1903. Their son Alfred added later services, including a cedar yard, to meet community needs and aid local development. A symbol of Bergheim's pioneers, the store has remained in the Engel family. (1983)