I find it neccessary sometimes to use my memories of places and objects in order to 'build' my mental image of a place, or a scene in my books. Sometimes a picture, a map, a diagram or a drawing in a reference book will do. And sometimes, nothing will work but to go and visit, and take a picture myself.

This is the Valley of the Pedernales and Baron's Creek, as seen from old Ft. Martin Scott, a little east of Fredericksburg, Texas. It would have looked a great deal wilder, and with many more tall trees, when the Richter and Steinmetz families and their friends came in a train of wagons from New Braunfels in 1847, as related in The Gathering.

This is Magda Vogel's sewing box ... and this is the blue and white china that her family packed carefully in straw and brought all the way from Germany - as I wrote them into the Adelsverein Trilogy. In reality on exhibit in the Gillespie County Historical Society's Pioneer Museum, in Fredericksburg, Texas.

This is a wooden bread trough. It looks as if it was carved from a single length of wood; it has begun to split a little, along the grain at one end, and so it was carefully reinforced with a bolt. It also is on exhibit in the Pioneer museum - although in The Sowing, this is what Liesel uses to make the last of the wheat bread, when hard times come during the Civil War.

This is the parade ground of the reconstructed citadel at the Goliad, with a view of the chapel. This is the place where Carl Becker and his older brother - as well as the other survivors of Colonel James Fannin's garrison were held, after they surrendered  to the Mexican Army after the fight at Coleto Creek. On Palm Sunday of 1836, they were marched out of the fortress in three different parties ... and executed. But a handful escaped - and so I built a story around one of them. I really meant to stop at just one book, but there were just too much a scope for drama and too many fascinating people and important events for just one.

This is the Dangers House from the late 184os, about in the middle of the block of Creek Street in Fredericksburg. I think it is stone, or fachwork - but it is about in the same place and the same size as the Sunday House that Hansi Richter built from sawn lumber on his town-lot.

This a patent coffee-roaster for roasting green coffee beens, which were usually a bit less expensive. This was American made, not something that would have been brought from Germany - but most settlers had one. I imagned that this is the one that Peter Berg, the hermit would have found in the ruins of the Becker's house, when they had been turned out of it, and the house partially burned by Duff's Partisan Rangers, during the Civil War.

This is the old Catholic Church, St. Mary's, or the Marienkirche. It was built by members of the local Catholic congretation, in a restrained traditional Gothic design, and completed during the Civil War. No one knows who the architech was - or even if there was one at all.

I am almost sure this is the gravestone for the brother of Peter Berg, the stone-cutting hermit and distiller of very fine wiskey, who features in the Trilogy. This is a grave in the old Catholic Pioneer cemetery in Fredericksburg, which was in use for only about fifteen years. About fifty graves are in it - all but ten are for babies and children

This is the Steves house in the King William District of San Antonio - the Steves were German settlers, who first went to Comfort, and would have been neighbors of the Beckers. After the Civil War, they relocated to San Antonio, prospered and built grand houses for themselves in what was essentially the top-drawer suburb. I used houses like this to build my mental image of what Hansi Richter's house, and the house on Turner street, where the very aged Magda Vogel Becker would have lived with her daughter's family, and told stories to her great-grandchildren.