Located about 40 miles northwest of San Antonio in the
hill country of Kendall County Texas, Boerne, renamed "Bauer" for the
Little Colonel stories, became home to Annie Fellows Johnston, her
daughter Mary and son
John from 1903 until John's death from
tuberculosis in 1910. Annie may have chosen Boerne because of the number
of the number of
sanitariums there.
It was in Boerne, in a home
she purchased and named "Penacres," that, Annie wrote
The Little Colonel in Arizona
(1904), In The Desert
of Waiting (1905), The
Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware (1908), and
Mary Ware in Texas (1910), all set
in the Southwest. During this time she also wrote
The Little Colonel's Christmas
Vacation (1905), The
Little Colonel: Maid of Honor (1906),
Legend of
the Bleeding Heart (1907) and the
Little Colonel's Knight Comes
Riding (1907)
ca 1900-1906
From Mary Ware in Texas,
Chapter III:
The station was half a mile away from the
village, and as they swung down the sunny white road towards it, at a
rapid gait, both Norman and Mary looked out eagerly at the place that
was to be their home for a whole long winter, and maybe more.
From a distance it looked almost like a
toy village, with its red roofs, blue barns and flashing windmills
nestled against the background of misty hills. Low mountain peaks rose
here and there on the far horizon beyond.
"This is distinctly a German village, you
know," explained Mrs. Barnaby, as they passed a group of little
flaxen-haired Teutons on the roadside, who were calling to each other
and their dog in a tongue which Mary could not understand.
"Bauer was settled by an old German count
and a baron or two, who came over here with their families and
followers. They made it as much like a corner of the Fatherland as they
could, and their descendants still cling to their language and customs.
They don't want any disturbing, aggressive Americans in their midst, so
they never call on new-comers, and never return their visits if any of
them try to make the advances. They will welcome you to their shops, but
not to their homes. Even the English and Scotch people who
have owned the out-lying ranches as long as they have
owned the town are looked upon as aliens and strangers, in a way."
and later in the same chapter:
"I wish you....could see the little town
now, spread out below the hills in the twilight, with the windmills
silhouetted against the sky. At one end is the little stone belfry of
St. Peter's, at the other the square gray tower of the
Academy of the Holy Angels; and just between, swinging low over the
hills in the faint afterglow, the pale golden crescent of the new moon.
After all, it's a good old world...
More views of Boerne:
The Courthouse in Boerne (ca 1900-1910)
Boerne Hotel, before 1906
Phillip's Hotel, before 1906
Main Street, before 1905
Before 1908
An old railroad route, Spanish Pass is three
miles north of Boerne.
It stands at an elevation of 1,750 feet above sea level,
100 feet higher than the surrounding hills.
As late as the summer of 1910, the census shows the
Johnston family in Boerne. John's occupation is listed as wholesale
merchant in curios (remember the menagerie in Mary Ware, the Little
Colonel's Chum, Chapter 14
as described by Annie in a
letter of 1908).
Mary is living with them. That John has an occupation and is living at
home indicates that they had a somewhat normal life in Texas until nearly
the end. People from Pewee/Lloydsboro Valley would have ventured to Texas
to visit them. .
Letters from Boerne:
"Cousin Annie" A
letter from Annie Fellows Johnston to Mrs. Henry Lawton ("Mrs. Walton")
from Boerne Texas, April 19, 1908. On the writing of Mary Ware, life
in Texas, and maybe a hint to the location Annie Fellows Johnston had in
mind of the 'fictional' boarding school, Warwick Hall?
"My dear Lilly"
A letter from Annie Fellows Johnston to a close friend, Lilly (??We think
Lillian Barbour of Evansville, IN), sent from Boerne Texas, in September
1908. This letter is packed with previously unpublished background
information on Annie Fellows Johnston's personal life at the time, as well
as quite a bit of insight on The Giant Scissors and Mary Ware,
the Little Colonel's Chum.
"My dear Miss
Dickinson" A letter from Annie Fellows Johnston to a Miss
Dickinson, sent from Boerne Texas, January 11, 1910 along with a copy of
"The Jester's Sword" Discusses translations of works into Italian,
Spanish, Japanese and Braille, and points up some of the dissatisfaction
she was known to have had with her publishers.
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