Gustav Schleicher
Called Gustav Schleicher also Gustave or Gustavus ( born November 19, 1823 in Darmstadt, Hesse, † 10 January 1879 in Washington, DC, USA ) was a German - American engineer, entrepreneur, lawyer and politician.
Family
Gustav Schleicher was the son of Grand Duke of Hesse politician.
He married in 1856 Elizabeth Tinsley Howard. The couple had seven children.
Life
After completing his education in Darmstadt Gustav Schleicher studied engineering and architecture at the University of Giessen. There he became in 1841 a member of the Corps Starkenburgia. After graduation he worked as a civil engineer in railway construction.
In 1847 he belonged and his friend Dr. Ferdinand von Herff ( 1820-1912 ) to a group of intellectuals, the " society of the forties " who emigrated to Texas, where the noble - communist commune " Bettina " on the north bank of the Llano River ( Llano County) founded, which they named after the writer Bettina von Arnim. In this community they wanted to as a " free-thinker " live by the ideas of the communist ideal and gave themselves - according to the motto of the French Revolution - its own motto " Friendship, Freedom, Equality ". They despised any conventional system of government.
However, Schleicher soon lost his illusions: The municipality could not function if intellectuals are constantly discussing only, but not to work and have learned these are not used to, but still want to have enough food. Instead, he made contact with the settlers of neighboring villages and operated a sand mill ( shingle mill ), which he had built shortly after his arrival in Huaco Springs near New Braunfels ( Comal County) and began as a surveyor other German settlers in determining their land ownership to help and to acquire land.
In 1850, Schleicher moved to San Antonio in Bexar County, where he led the Guadalupe Bridge Company founded with others who should build a toll bridge over the Guadalupe River between San Antonio and New Braunfels. This group also founded the " San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railway". As an engineer, he participated in the construction of the railway line from Port Lavaca ( Calhoun County) to San Antonio. He was also co-owner of a restaurant in San Antonio and a member of various social and community organizations such as the Texas " Sängerbund ". Schleicher is described as a large man who liked to dance.
On December 8, 1852 he became an American citizen, so that he could be in the years 1853 to 1854 one of the first German deputies in the Texas House of Representatives. Between 1854 and 1861 he again worked as a surveyor of the Bexar Country Districts, which included the main area between San Antonio and El Paso. During this work, he also acquired rights to the wider countryside, mainly in the Edwards Plateau.
In May 1856, he bought of Adolph Douai ( 1819-1888 ), a derived also from Germany teachers and socialists, the weekly German -language San Antonio newspaper, renamed it San Antonio Staats-Zeitung to and acted at least in 1859 together with his brother Heinrich Dresel, (probably ) brother of Gustav Dresel ( 1818-1848 ), as the publisher. In the same year he was also co-founder of the San Antonio Water Company and 1860 of the Alamo College. From 1859 to 1861 he was also a Texas Senator of the eighth legislature. Although Schleicher was a democrat and supported the Union before the Civil War with Sam Houston, his contemporaries saw him after cleavage of the Southern States as a supporter of the secession movement. He became a captain in the Confederate army and served in the Corps of Engineers of General John Bankhead Magruder ( 1807-1871 ). During this time, some forts built at Sabine Pass.
After the Civil War, he worked as a lawyer in San Antonio. In 1866 he was a partner of the " Columbus, San Antonio and Rio Grande Railroad " and again worked as an engineer in the construction of the "Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific Railway" of Indianola after Cuero ( DeWitt County). This village he had, however, only found as an intermediate station of the railway line and also pulled soon after in 1872 there himself.
Without his own doing, he was nominated in 1874 by the Democrats as a Member of the 6th District for the U.S. House of Representatives and elected to the U.S. Congress on March 4, 1875. He was so after Eduard Degener (1809-1890) one of the first German -born members in the U.S. Congress. His first act as a deputy was - typical engineering - the installation of a lift, but he soon made himself a name as a clever politician and campaigned for border between Texas and Mexico. He was a member of the Committees on Indian Affairs, for railways and canals; In his second term, he also belonged to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Only after a heavy election campaign within his own party against John Ireland (1827-1896), he was re-elected in 1878. But on January 10, 1879 Schleicher died in his office in Washington DC With great pomp and great ceremony, he was born in the National Cemetery in his hometown of San Antonio to the grave ( Section A, Grave 140).
Schleicher's descendants now live in Uvalde, Uvalde County.
Honors
According to him, the Schleicher County and Schleicher Bridge were named in Texas.