Honey Creek

Honey Creek, in far western Comal County, was settled by Catholic German immigrant families in the late 1840s as a result of the mass migration initiated by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels. George Friedrich and Christina Bechtold Kunz settled at the confluence of a flowing creek and the Guadalupe River. Honey Creek was named for the large numbers of honeybees near the creek and an abundance of an unusual limestone rock formation locally known as "honeycomb rock." Though a shoemaker by trade, George F. Kunz made his first cash income in this new land by hauling cedar charcoal to San Antonio, New Braunfels, and Boerne. Rev. John Kospiel, a Catholic missionary priest stationed in Boerne, made Honey Creek, or Kunz Settlement, as it came to be called, a permanent stop on his missionary tours. A log church was soon erected near the Kunz home; the first Mass there was celebrated on August 20, 1876, and the church was named St. Joseph's Catholic Church. Fire destroyed the log church when it was less than a year old. Johann Adam Kneupper donated land, and a larger rock chapel was built on a hill a half mile southwest. The new chapel, built from limestone quarried by hand from nearby hills, was completed in 1878. The Kneupper Chapel received a Texas historical marker on June 16, 1985. In June 1892 a larger frame church, St. Joseph's Church, was built and dedicated. In 1909 a rock church was built, and the frame church was refurbished as a school taught alternately by the Sisters of Divine Providence and the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament until it was closed in 1949. In 1883 a public school, Honey Creek School, near Kneupper Chapel also served the community until it was consolidated with the Bulverde school district in 1945. The remains of this school and Kneupper Chapel were still visible in 1986. In 1990 St. Joseph's Church at Honey Creek remained virtually unchanged and served some 330 families from the surrounding communities and northern Bexar County.