Martinsburg

Albert is on Williams Creek sixteen miles southeast of Fredericksburg and one mile west of the Blanco county line in southeastern Gillespie County. The earliest known settlers in the area were George Cauley, Ben White, Sr., and a man named Jacobs. The town dates from 1877, when Fritz Wilke, George Maenius, and John Petri moved from Fredericksburg seeking new grazing lands for their cattle. Wilke, a blacksmith, bought his land from a man named Elmeier, who was murdered in a robbery several years later. The town was originally called Martinsburg after an early settler and was a stop on the Fredericksburg-Blanco stage route. The Martinsburg post office operated from 1877 to 1886, when mail was routed through nearby Hye in Blanco County. In 1892, however, Martinsburg got a new post office and a new name, thanks to Albert Luckenbach, who sold his store in Luckenbach, moved to Martinsburg, and opened a new post office, which he registered as Albert. The first local school was established in 1891, and in 1897 postmaster Otto Schumann opened the town's first store. The Albert Echo, a singing society, was founded the following year. In 1900 a new school building was erected; there the young Lyndon Baines Johnson was enrolled for a year. A local Lutheran mission was established in 1902 and eventually grew into what was often called the Lutheran Church of Stonewall, which Johnson attended. Albert had fifty residents in 1925, four in 1964, and twenty-five in 1972. By 1985 the store had been torn down, the school was a community club, and the town's dance hall was partitioned and used for storage; Albert still had twenty-five residents and two businesses. The reported population in 1990 and again in 2000 was twenty-five.