Eckhardt Stores

The Eckhardt Stores in Yorktown, Texas are architecturally significant commercial buildings that are closely associated with the origins of Yorktown as a trading center. The stores' owners and builders, the Eckhardt family, encouraged the predominantly German settlement of Yorktown. Later they became influential in banking, merchandising, civic improvement, experimental irrigation efforts and the cultural life of the local German community.

Charles Eckhardt immigrated to New Orleans in 1832 from Laasphe, Germany. In 1836 he took up arms and joined the Texas War for Independence. After the war, he married the sister of Michael Hahn, then the Governor of Louisiana, and settled in Carlshafen (Indianola) where he established a dry goods store in 1842. Carlshafen, as it was then known, was the port of entry for the Aldesverein, the Society for the Protection of German Immigration to Texas. Eckhardt prospered from trade with the Aldesverein gradually expanding his business to include trade with the inland German colonies of New Braunfels and Fredricksburg. In 1847 Eckhardt fought in the War with Mexico. While in Mexico he met Captain John York, the owner of a land grant in DeWitt County, Texas. After the war, Eckhardt and York agreed to settle immigrants on York's land and establish a town that would serve as a trading center between Indianola and the land-locked German settlements.

In 1848 York, Eckhardt, and John A. King, a surveyor and later, founder of the famous King Ranch, laid out the town site. King was also contracted to survey a shorter route to New Braunfels, which would bring most of the New Braunfels-Indianola traffic through the new settlement. The site was named Yorktown in honor of the landowner. Captain York, profited from the sale of town lots to immigrants. Eckhardt himself moved to Yorktown and built the first permanent dwelling in 1848.

Through a liaison with the Aldesverein, Eckhardt encouraged German families to settle in Yorktown and in 1849 he brought his brother Caesar and Caesar's wife and children from their home in Laasphe, Germany to settle in Yorktown. On a return trip from central America in 1852 Charles was stricken with Yellow Fever and died. His brother Ceasar assumed ownership of the Yorktown store.

Ceasar grew wealthy from the strategically located business and additional ventures in the brokerage of local cotton, produce hides, and grain. Immediately prior to the Civil War Ceasar's sons Robert and William became partners in the store, and the firm became known as C. Eckhardt and Sons. When the Civil War broke out Ceasar, Robert, and William left to fight for the Confederacy while Mrs. Eckhardt remained behind as the sole operator of the store for the duration of the war.

In 1868 Ceasar Eckhardt died and the store passed to his son William. Robert Eckhardt had become absorbed in his own interest, which included the operation of lime kilns and ranching leaving William in sole charge of the store. It was William who was responsible for the construction of the two buildings now known as the Eckhardt Stores, which replaced the earlier 1850 building. In 1876 the first of the two Eckhardt buildings were constructed of sandstone hauled by ox cart from the quarry at Rocky Mound in Karnes County, 15 miles north of Yorktown. The building also served as a warehouse and boasted iron shutters at the windows as well as 24-inch thick walls. A one-story addition of similar sandstone was later built just east of the first structure and was used for storage. In 1895 the addition was incorporated into a two-story brick structure that shared a common wall with the 1876 store. As William Eckhardt prospered, he became a benefactor and civic leader of Yorktown. In 1884 he donated funds and lumber for the construction of a new schoolhouse, and in 1886, paid $3,346 for the additional track- laying which brought the Aransas Pass Railroad into Yorktown. Eckhardt had also experimented with the drilling of artesian wells for irrigation as early as 1877, and during the drought of 1886, he bored an artesian well in his pasture at the edge of town for the use of all the citizens of Yorktown. By 1895 he had five artesian wells open to the public-a very generous gift where the rainfall rarely exceeded 23 inches in a "wet" year.

Other improvements that William Eckhardt was responsible for initiating were street grading and windmill irrigation. In 1896 Eckhardt tried to encourage the town council to improve Yorktown's Main Street graded and succeeded in convincing the council to improve all of Yorktown's streets. During the 1890s Eckhardt promoted the irrigation of pasture land and crops with windmills. Eckhardt was the first man in South Texas to promote windmills as a source of power for irrigation and he established a windmill dealership in conjunction with his store.

The Eckhardt's family was also involved in local affairs and merchandising. His brother and former business partner, Robert Eckhardt, served as the first mayor of Yorktown after incorporation in 1871. William's sister, Emily Eckhardt, linked the family with another wealthy German mercantile family through her marriage to Gustav Heinrich Schmeltzer. San Antonio wholesale dry goods firm owned by Schmeltzer covered a city block on the Alamo grounds, which he bought in the 1870s. Schmeltzer's firm, which was the largest of its kind in Texas, was the principal supplier of merchandise for William Eckhardt's store.

The Eckhardts were actively involved with the cultural life of Yorktown. William Eckhardt was the head of Yorktown Schulverein, which provided books and reading materials in both German and English for the local schools. His brother, Herman Eckhardt organized the Lone Star String Band in 1894, as well as supervised and conducted the band which played German melodies for parties, holidays, and other special occasions. The Eckhardts and several other Yorktown families participated in the Lesezirkle or reading circle, a club that met to discuss contemporary English and German literature as well as conduct dramatic readings of plays and poetry.

As the Eckhardt family became increasingly prosperous in their diverse occupations of ranching, merchandising and politics, only William retained and operated the original business, C. Eckhardt and Sons. Throughout the 1870's he performed formal banking services in the store and eventually opened a bank consisting of a safe and an enclosure at the rear of the 1876 Eckhardt building. He operated the bank as an adjunct service in the store until 1914 when the bank failed. William endeavored to return all of the funds of the bank's depositors out of his own pockets and by December 1914 he was totally bankrupt, forcing the sale of the store buildings and all of their contents.

After the banking calamity, the Eckhardt Store Buildings were rented to a series of tenants as warehouses. In the 1920s the 1876 Building was altered on the first floor to accommodate a gas station and garage. Presently the buildings are empty, but they have been deeded by their owners, the Yorktown Chamber of Commerce, and Mrs. Ila May Riedl, to the Yorktown Historical Socity, Inc., which plans to preserve the buildings for use as a local museum and offices for the Chamber of Commerce.