KLEIN, TEXAS. In the 1840s German immigrants established an agricultural community called Big Cypress on Cypress Creek in Harris County. Adam Klein and his wife, Friederika (Klenk), natives of Stuttgart, arrived in 1854, after Adam had spent a successful stint in the California goldfields. Twenty years later they-with the Bernshausen, Benfer, Brill, Kaiser, Lemm, Theiss, and Wunderlich families, and soon joined by the Klenk and Strack families-organized Trinity Lutheran Church, which became the center of religious, social, and educational life at Big Cypress. Through the efforts of Adam Klein a post office was established in 1884 in William Blackshear's general store on Spring-Cypress Road. The area it served was named Klein in honor of Adam. In 1938 the eighty-eight square miles of the community's rural school district was made the Klein Independent School District. The area within the boundary of the school district has been without a post office since 1906; it is served by the post offices of Houston, Spring, and Tomball. Nevertheless, the district was in 1977 officially designated by the state legislature as Klein, Texas. In the late twentieth century the schools in this populous part of the Houston metropolitan area were named for early settlers, whose numerous descendants still resided there. In 1988 the Klein, Texas, Historical Foundation was established to preserve the community's heritage. Population statistics were not reported in the 1990 census.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Heritage of North Harris County (n.p: North Harris County Branch, American Association of University Women, 1977).
