CRABAPPLE, TEXAS. Crabapple is on Crabapple Creek about 10½ miles north of Fredericksburg in northern Gillespie County. The area was originally settled sometime in the mid-1800s by Friedrich Wellgehausen, Jacob Land, Adam Pehl, Mathias Schmidt, Nicolas Rusche, James Riley, Heinrich Keese, and Jacob and Adam Fries. Most of these early settlers were of German origin. A school had been established in Crabapple by 1867, and during the 1880s a Lutheran congregation was founded. In 1897 St. John's Lutheran Church was built there. The Crabapple post office operated from 1894 to 1910. Maps dating from the 1960s showed a school, a church, and several cemeteries at Crabapple. No population was reported for the community in 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Don Hampton Biggers, German Pioneers in Texas (Fredericksburg, Texas: Fredericksburg Publishing, 1925). Ella Amanda Gold, The History of Education in Gillespie County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1945).

Martin Donell Kohout