Hick Wimberley and Dorothy (Dot) Wimberley Kerbow
June 28th, 2009 @ 13:13
Posted by: John
Dorothy has written several books and decades of fantastic articles. Here’s a listing of some of her books. She’s earned a lot of respect for being one of the main players in keeping the history of this area alive. She will laugh to hear me refer to her as a player. I think it was she herself who coined the phrase “The Belle Of The Blanco” which stuck as the poetic description of Wimberley. For many years, when anybody anywhere in the world wanted to know about Wimberley they were recommended either to her or to the things she has written. Now she’s retired but her name is associated with Wimberley all over the Internet. The family calls her Dot and she’s 90 years old and one of the most engaging people you’ll ever talk to. She ran the post office in Wimberley for most of my adult life, she was at the center of everything and talked to everybody.
The reason for my call to her last week was that Jimmie works for the New Braunfels Utilities that Dot’s father was probably the most important single person in the early history of and, like I said in an earlier post, NBU is going to “re-purpose” the amazing piece of property they own at the headwaters of the Comal River above The Island. Seems like we all have connections to the Comal and The Island. Those connections started in the 1800’s but the connection through Hick was one of the strongest. He encouraged Granddad to buy a lot on the hill near the beginning of Landa Estates which he later sold and traded up to the house on the hill that many of us knew. If you think about the layout of the river, you know where the headwaters are that I’m talking about – it’s the furthest you can go upstream from the Island, maybe 1200 yards up river. It’s a short canoe ride – HIck, my Grandfather’s uncle took him on it, my uncle took me on it and I’ve taken my nephews and nieces on it. Maybe you’re one of the other hundred family and friends I’ve taken in a canoe to see it. It’s a very cool landmark for people who are into Texas rivers; the Comal just pops up out of the Edwards Aquifer right there unlike any other river. No other river or creek feeds the Comal, just the springs. The public doesn’t have access to view it, hasn’t ever really, and they’re talking about changing that. Our family did have access to it for a long time, more access to it than anybody.
The synopsis of the history is that as New Braunfels was starting to get going as a town they needed utility services. That was a make it or break it deal for a community to move from small town to city. If you did it you grew and if you pumped slimy green Guadalupe river water into a tower like H.D. Gruene did… you failed. So some people in New Braunfels who wanted to make that transition searched out Hickman Wimberley. As I understand it, Hick was known to them because he had designed and built equipment to render power from the Blanco for a mill. As I’ve said before, his father Pleasant Wimberley and my great, great Grandfather John Henry Saunders were founders of Wimberley. All us Whipples are uniquely tied to the town of Wimberley because not just one but both Pleasant Wimberley and John Henry Saunders are relatives. We have all kinds of very old, very deep family ties to New Braunfels and San Marcos, too. But Hick came from Wimberley to here and turned out to be a genius for New Braunfels at building and running the waterworks. New Braunfels and many other fledgling towns around here were striving to take off…. again for instance Gruene could have been the big town here if things had gone different. This is an instance of one man making a difference; a big difference for New Braunfels is that they had Hick Wimberley who was a genius at building a system to deliver water with very little funds.
So they dug the first well there in this spot we’re talking about. Horse drawn wagons would come up and tanks would be filled and it was old school and they needed new school. Hick devised pipe system layouts and electric pump and gravity feed systems and made the water flow to businesses and houses. People moved into towns to have water. Not just a good but a great water supply was New Braunfels’ claim to fame.
In my lifetime, from the 50’s to now, I watched NBU’s expansion at this original waterworks spot; Uncle Raymond and Granny and Granddad looked down from the hill and were livid about how NBU used it as a parking lot for their growing fleet of service trucks. There was a reason to have the well there but not a reason to park trucks there. NBU finally abandoned the site and built a new facility out on the loop a couple of years ago. So… all these years after Hick builds and is the first and longest acting head honcho (Superintendent) of the waterworks there, Jimmie gets a memo saying they’re inviting employees for a meeting and tour of the grounds. They are being really cool about it and want a brainstorming session of ideas of what to do with this priceless piece of property.
It amazed me but Jimmie and I were the only people who showed up.
So it’s Jimmie and me and a very nice head honcho of NBU and about five maintenance people and a grill with about a hundred lonely hot dogs without matching mouths to feed. Jimmie is connected to this spot in ways they don’t realize, both through marriage and through raising her kids on that river. An element of this is ecological issues and they have no clue how much she knows about that. So we start walking, us and the head honcho, one of Jimmie’s ultimate highest bosses. Just the three of us. The first thing she asks is, “Do you know anything about this area?”. 
I answer that Hick Wimberley was family to us. She stopped and something itched in her memory. She turned to the oldest maintenance guy and asked “Hick Wimberley?” and he said “do you mean Mr. Wimberley?”. And he had a lot of respect in this voice, it was like there may be many Wimberleys but surely only one MR. Wimberley. It was classic. If Hick heard it he dug it and if not I heard it for him. So we were walking and talking and I told her that these old rock buildings were well known to our early family here – all the way up to after World War II and my father’s days. Hick lived here on these grounds with his wife Mabel – they were Uncle Hick and Aunt Mabel to us. These turn of the century looking buildings were his workshop and machine shop. They had family living here so my grandfather and my Dad and my uncles and cousins and tons of our family came here for visits and dinners and pretty much treated it like family property. I said my brain storming suggestion was for NBU to just give it back and we’ll start taking care of it again. But she passed on that.
So anyway, the highlight of our tour was these two beautiful old rock buildings they are planning to save. I think a lot of the newer metal buildings may get dozed. Those rock buildings are the coolest things there besides the river and they didn’t know that Uncle Hick Wimberley designed and built them – stacked the rock by hand and made the roof flat to be an area for his family to use. They may want to turn them into a museum type thing but they have to dig up some history but the old timers at NBU who knew are all gone. That’s where Dot comes in, she’s Hick’s daughter. Dot moved onto this property when she was three years old and lived there on the grounds all through high school – historians think of Dot as being the ultimate Wimberley person, (and she was, she was the postmaster of Wimberley and everybody in that town came to see her everyday to get their mail so she was at the soul of Wimberley for later decades) but she absolutely grew up right there at the headwaters of the Comal above the Island. You wonder what brought Granny and Granddad to live on the hill above this spot? It wasn’t by chance, it was the fact that they had a bunch of relatives on the Comal. Uncle Hick encouraged Granddad to buy that first lot he had on the hill. We have deep, old ties to this whole New Braunfels/San Marcos/Wimberley area and we ourselves are not here by chance but through family history and the ties it created. If Uncle Hick hadn’t come to New Braunfels, Jimmie and I wouldn’t be in New Braunfels.
The last survivor of the early part of this history with the Comal is Dot and she knows more of what NBU wants to know than any living person. And…. she’s a historian. Perfect.
I’m going to continue to talk to Dot, probably go up and see her in Austin. Then see if these people truly want the information she has. We’ll see where it goes over the next few years, their project will be a long process.
