Texas State Historical Association - My Texas

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Selma's Little Stage Stop

My first encounter with the little building was in 1999. It was sitting in a small grove of trees completely hidden from the traffic streaming up and down what had been the "Old Austin Road" in the 1850s. The road is now Interstate 35. It was a tiny building, only two rooms. The interior walls had begun to deteriorate, with rocks falling to the floor. The old wooden shingles lay hidden under the tin roof that had been placed over them many years before. Children's graffiti filled the back wall. Inside, stuck in the walls, were corn cobs used as binding agents to make the walls stronger.

Conversations with longtime Selma residents revealed that the little building had always been referred to as the "stage stop" or "post office." Mayor Friesenhahn confirmed that ever since he was a little boy living on the farm adjacent to the tiny building, it had been referred to as the "stage stop"--only no one knew its history.

Quite by accident and 150 years later, I found it.

As my brother's fiftieth birthday was approaching, I thought it would be nice for him to have a written history of our family. I began researching in earnest. I discovered that my mother's father, Archibald Schmid, had been born in Selma in 1889 and lived there until his father, Sam, moved the family to their new 400-acre farm on Fredericksburg Road in the Nine Mile Hill area. (San Antonio's Methodist Hospital occupies the site today.) Sam's widowed mother, Johanna, was moved to Pierce Street in the Government Hill area of San Antonio next to Fort Sam Houston. We didn't know much about Archie's family since our grandparents had divorced in 1920 and my mom and her siblings had been raised by our grandmother. Edna Earl Wilkes Schmid had been the proprietor of Mrs. Schmid's Secretarial School in San Antonio for almost thirty years and had raised her children alone. Her ex-husband, Archie, had owned a motel on old Fredericksburg Road back in the 1940s and also the Elite Café on Boerne's main street during the 1950s. This was all we knew about our grandparents and I wanted to find out more.

I began researching deeds at the Bexar County Courthouse. I found the deed where in 1854 Archie's grandfather, Martin Schmid, purchased 127 acres in Selma from a John S. Harrison and his wife, Martha Jane. This was the same farm adjacent to the little stage stop where the mayor had been raised. The Schmids lived there for forty years. As family members began to pass away, they were buried on their farm in the Schmid Family Cemetery. I wanted to find the cemetery. I didn't want to trespass, so my daughter and I went with Selma's fire chief to the area where the cemetery was. I was told that the headstones and fencing had mysteriously disappeared back in the 1950s during the nearby construction of IH-35. He also told me the site was being turned into a golf course. I sped up my research.

I went to the Sophienburg Museum to look through records regarding early German settlers to New Braunfels. I found that Martin Schmid and his father-in-law, Wilhelm Geier, had become naturalized citizens there. I found Johanna Geier and Martin's marriage license from 1854. I also found Oscar Haas's book, History of New Braunfels. Quite by chance, I also saw the name of John S. Harrison and his wife, Martha Jane, in the 1850 census. John was listed as a "stage contractor." I put my family research on hold and began researching John.

I managed to track down John's great-great-great-granddaughter. Turns out John came from Valparaiso, Indiana, to claim land that had been awarded posthumously to his two brothers for their service to the Republic of Texas. One brother, Achilles Leonidas Harrison, had died in Houston while serving as a soldier for the Republic. His other brother, Erasmus Darwin Harrison, had been killed with Fannin at Goliad. John came to Texas and never left.

At twenty-four, he and his brother-in-law, William McCulloch (Jane's brother), started the Harrison and McCulloch Stage Line. From National Archives records, I learned that John was Selma's first postmaster. I also learned that in 1847 Harrison and McCulloch had two connecting postal/stage routes, Star Routes 6154 and 6155, that ran from Indianola through Victoria and Seguin to New Braunfels, and that their third route, Star Route 6285, ran from Austin to San Antonio through Manchaca, San Marcos, Bonito, New Braunfels, and Selma--an eighteen-hour trip. They had beaten out several stage lines, including the more famous Brown and Tarbox, with a bid of $2,500 by upgrading their stages from two to four horses. I also learned that for a short time they partnered with Dr. Caleb S. Brown in Gonzales, Texas, dissolving the partnership in December 1850. John was also the proprietor of the Victoria Hotel during the time he ran his stage lines. From the family's papers, I found that he lived for a time in Pleasanton in 1856, and that he died on December 31, 1864, in Waco.

Ultimately, Mark Denton of the Texas Historical Commission and Dr. Eugene George, archeological architect with the University of Texas, came to Selma to assess the stage stop at the city's invitation. Dr. George stated the stop was made of limecrete and Denton said it would meet the criteria for a state archeological landmark. The little building was declared a state landmark in October 2000 and ultimately received a grant of nearly a million dollars from the Texas Department of Transportation for its restoration and creation of a fourteen-acre roadside park. Construction should begin in 2005.

As for the Geier and Schmid Farm, with support from the Texas Historical Commission and Texas Department of Transportation, a historical marker was placed at the site of the cemetery on the twelfth fairway of the Olympia Hills Golf Course in Universal City.

Jean Heide
San Antonio, Texas
Published: November 14, 2005