ADAM KONZ
(1860-1945)

Adam Konz, surveyor, was born in Bavaria in 1860, one of five children of John Xavier and Anna Maria Konz. He immigrated with his family to the United States and settled at Potato Hill in Anderson County, Kansas. He attended public school in Kansas and the Bryan and Stratton school in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1881 the family moved to Texas with Father Christian D. (Anastasius) Peters,qv a Catholic colonizer, to locate a site for a group of the Carmelite Association then in Anderson County, Kansas.

When the group arrived at Grelton, on the Texas and Pacific Railway, which had completed its line through the county earlier in 1881, they found only a section house and a water tank. The settlers changed the name of the settlement to Mariensfeld, a name that remained until 1890, when the name Stanton was chosen. Adam Konz became assistant to the railroad surveyor, reestablished the lines of the Texas and Pacific's original grants, and in 1881 surveyed the town plat of Stanton.

He was elected justice of the peace and continued surveying land in the county for many years. Late in life he married a widow, Mrs. Dranke, who had two children by her first marriage; she preceded him in death. In 1938 Konz moved to California, where he died in 1945.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Pat W. Hull and Fay E. Smithson, Martin County: The First Thirty Years (Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1970). John R. Hutto, "The German and Catholic Colony of Mariensfeld," West Texas Historical Association Year Book 9 (1933). Martin County Historical Commission, Martin County, Texas (Dallas: Taylor, 1979).