Frau Kolls was Margaretha (usually pronounced Marguerite) Kolls, who came here from Germany to join her sons in Belton in 1882 after her husband died. The words on the trunk indicate how far she had to come, in a cultural as well as a geographic sense, to make a go of it in a new world.
The old abandoned building where the trunk was found was once the post office for the community of Kolls, also known as Sulphur Springs. The community was set in a fertile and picturesque countryside flanked by the communities of Armstrong, Bell Plains, Amity and Salado. Salado Creek slices through this part of the country, making possible a series of mills that once operated along its banks.
This was the part of the new world that Margaretha Kolls decided to call her own. The land she bought would be a key part of the Sulphur Springs, or Kolls, community.
Albert Durie was the postmaster at Kolls from 1898 to 1903, at which point mail service was moved to Belton. Durie married a Kolls, Lizzie Kolls, in 1884. Lizzie was Margaretha’s daughter.
On a recent visit to what’s left of the old Kolls post office, Will Splittgerber pointed to an outline of rocks one side of the old building.
“The building had a lean-to on this side of the building,” he said, pointing the rock outline. “Various families lived here. This was also the voting box for Kolls.”
He pointed out the original wooden shingles, now covered with tin, and square nails used in its construction. He told about a wooden yoke the family also found on the property. The yoke was used to carry water from the creeks back to the houses. It’s now in the Central Texas Area Museum in Salado.
The Splittgerbers’ son, Matt, is putting together historic information about the old post office and the community in hopes of getting a historical marker recognizing the German immigrants, like the Kolls, Splittgerbers and many others, who made this land a home in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Will pointed out that the private land where the old post office still stands has been in the family since 1882 and been farmed since 1891. The Texas Department of Agriculture designated it as a Heritage Farm in 1992.
The Splittgerbers found another stone outline last week, this one tracing a partial walkway that Will said led to the old school, which was located in a field across the road from their place. The school was torn down in 1942.
Will grew up on the farm, riding horses and generally living the rural life that was lived in the early and middle decades of the 20th century. He drank the water that came from Sulphur Creek, which stained his teeth but left him otherwise unharmed.
In the days when Sulphur Springs was a thriving community, the sulphur water was in high demand by locals who believed in its medicinal qualities.
Sulphur was (and is) handy in other ways. It’s used to make gunpowder, matches, fireworks and fertilizer. It’s the prime compound in sulfuric acid and dozens of other compounds that are used in hundreds of ways. And, yes, it’s used medicinally, perhaps most obviously in sulfa drugs.
The sulphur water still flows naturally across this land. Next to an old milk house elsewhere on the Splittgerbers’ property is a spigot dripping with sulphur water. Visitors today are more likely to make do with bottled water.
Salado Creek and its tributaries brought people to this land for thousands of years before the European immigrants settled here. The area those people would have recognized is growing smaller every day, encroached upon by development and the specter of large delivery lines for electricity looming in a possible future.
The Splittgerbers are dedicated to preserving not only the history of the people who left Europe to call this land their new home but to also preserve the land itself. They are working with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) on a conservation plan that includes turning much of the land back to its native state.
“We’ve worked with the NRCS to develop a plan where we can turn it back to native grasses,” Will Splittgerber said. “We’ll maintain the agriculture operation, but we’re going to turn the rest of it back to what it was.”
ccoppedge@temple-telegram.com
