<\/p>\n
The Menger Hotel on Alamo Plaza, shown here in 1877, was founded in 1859. It grew from a modest boardinghouse to a sophisticated hostelry, serving fine food and offering a variety of travelers\u2019 amenities. It remained in family hands until it was sold in 1881.<\/p>\n
UTSA Special Collections<\/p>\n
Shown here in firefighting gear, William Menger was a member of a volunteer company that protected the area around his Alamo Plaza businesses. As chief of Alamo Fire Co. No. 2, he bought the city\u2019s first steam-powered, water-pumping fire engine for $4,000.<\/p>\n
UTSA Special Collections<\/p>\n
The three surviving Menger children pictured are Louis, left, Barbara and Gustav. The family lived in the Menger Hotel as it grew from a boardinghouse into a full-service inn.<\/p>\n
UTSA Special Collections<\/p>\n
German immigrant William A. Menger became one of San Antonio\u2019s leading residents, founding a brewery and a hotel. His widow Mary Menger ran both after his death at 44.<\/p>\n
UTSA Special Collections<\/p>\n
An unidentified, undated photograph in the collection of the San Antonio Fire Museum may depict William A. Menger, a fire department pioneer, and his family.<\/p>\n
Courtesy San Antonio Fire Museum<\/p>\n
I am looking for a picture of Mary Menger to submit to the Daughters of the American Revolution, as I wish to include her in the DAR database of Women in History, and the DAR requires some likeness to include with the short write-up I have prepared.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I came across your (March 9, 2024,) article in the Express-News about the old photo found in the firehouse, asking if anyone could confirm that this is the\u00a0Menger family. Can you tell me if you received any further information confirming the identities of William and Mary Menger in this picture?<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The San Antonio Fire Museum was interested in a photograph of William A. Menger (1827-1871) because the founder of the Menger Hotel also was a prominent member of the city\u2019s volunteer fire department.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His wife Mary\u00a0Menger (1816-1887) was twice widowed \u2013 by her first husband, butcher Charles Guenther, in 1850; and by Menger in 1871, when he died at 44 in the hotel from an unknown illness. Both times, she kept a family enterprise going. With her first husband, she kept a boardinghouse where Menger was a guest and handyman before their marriage in 1851.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The meeting of these two German immigrants led to some impressive 19th-century vertical integration. William\u00a0Menger first operated a cooperage or barrel-making concern, which would supply the brewery he started in the mid-1850s. Mary Menger was a good cook, used to tending to boarders, so after their marriage, the couple upgraded their boardinghouse to a hotel on Alamo Plaza. Menger beer eventually was rolled in Menger barrels through a connecting tunnel to the Menger Hotel, to be consumed by thirsty travelers.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Opened in 1859, the\u00a0Menger was an inn that catered to stagecoach passengers, visiting cattlemen and Army officers. San Antonio in those days was \u201ca Baghdad of the wilderness,\u201d says local historian Sam Woolford (covered here June 17, 2023) in a 1959 San Antonio Light series that marked the hotel\u2019s centennial.\u00a0<\/p>\n