1: The first Polo game in the U.S. was played in Boerne in the early 1870s on a field on Upper Balcones Rd- Brought by the English.
2: Boerne Shooting Club C. 18912: Boerne has the oldest Shooting Club in the U.S. in continuous use. New Braunfels was the oldest but it ceased to exist in 2007 and we became #1.
3: The Boerne Village Band is the oldest German Band outside of Germany. Formed in 1860 by Karl Dienger and has never stopped. Check them out on Main Plaza every other Tuesday during the summer!
4: The Kendall County Historic Courthouse is the second oldest courthouse in Texas (1870) in continuous use. Cass Co. Courthouse in 1861 is the oldest- Kendall Co. was formed in 1862 and the courthouse wasn’t built until later because of post Civil War economic conditions and Reconstruction.
5: Ebensberger Funeral Home is the oldest continuous business in Boerne. (Started in 1883)
6: 1614 Low German Bible6: The Boerne Public Library has on display a rare 1614 Low German Bible. Only 6 known in the World today. ( Brought to Texas in the 1840s from Oldenburg, Prussia)
7: Boerne was formed in 1849 by German immigrants. Kendall County became the most thoroughly German populated area in Texas during the immigration which was over by the 1870s.
8: Dr. Ferdinand Herff performed the first cataract surgery in the U.S. on an Indian Chief. The Chief then protected the Herff family residence in Boerne from Indian raids, as thanks for saving his sight.
9: Dr. William Kingsbury, a dentist and Indian fighter, first recruited the English to come to Boerne in the 1870s and worked closely with Dr. Herff to bring the railroad here in 1887.
10: George Wilkins Kendall; the namesake of Kendall Co., was the first editor of the New Orleans Times Picayune, a reporter on the Santa Fe Expedition, and a sheep raiser in Kendall Co., who invented the “sheep dip.” We're sure goats could have been dipped there too.
11: John G. O’Grady was the first to document Boerne’s early history with the Texas Almanac.