Boldtville

Boldtville is located south of U. S. Highway 87 about nine miles southeast of downtown San Antonio in east central Bexar County. This farming community began around the 1870s and was called Calaveras. Settlers included the Adams, Avery, Blandford, Boldt, Duke, Gembler, and Vasbinder families. On October 12, 1891, C. Henry Echterhoff donated two acres for a school. Albert F. Boldt, Louis Brehm, and Joe E. Halbardier served as trustees. By the early 1900s the community had a general store, Klondike's Store, owned by Henry Klondike Stuckenberg. Residents organized the Union Sunday School in 1908 and the Calaveras Presbyterian Church in 1909, led by Rev. Baxter D. D. Greer. In 1919 the farming settlement reached a turning point in its history. After visiting some of the newer schools in Bexar County, trustees Albert F. Boldt, Robert Uecker, and Joseph Halbardier, Sr., decided that Calaveras needed a new educational facility. Boldt, the local blacksmith, donated an acre for a new school building, constructed by Fritz Gembler. The new school opened in 1919 and served first through eighth grades. Citizens renamed the community Boldtville in honor of the Boldt family. The school remained open until 1960 and served as a community center. Church services were also held there for a time. A church was built in 1950, on land donated by Albert Boldt, and formally organized on October 26, 1952, as the Boldtville Community Presbyterian Church. During this time Avery's General Store, owned by Ed and Ruby Avery was also a popular meeting place and remained so until it closed in 1979. After the school closed in 1960 it was used for storage, but by 1980, Anthony Constanzo, superintendent of the East Central Independent School District, lobbied to renovate the building as a new administration complex for the district. Crews restored the old schoolhouse, and the structure received a Texas Historical Marker in 1984. By this time, former students had held a reunion and collected assorted mementos and artifacts related to the old school for the formation of a museum to honor not only Boldtville, but also eighteen other rural schools located in eastern and southeastern Bexar County, and historic-minded citizens formed the East Central Historical Group. The museum in the old Boldtville School officially opened on January 12, 1986, thereby kicking off Bexar County's Texas Sesquicentennial celebration. In 2000 the schoolhouse was the site of school district board meetings. Though the 2000 census officially reported a population of twenty for Boldtville, the Boldtville Presbyterian Church had about one hundred members.