Founded in 1854, Comfort was laid out by Ernst Altgelt, who later lived in San Antonio ( SA70). The town was settled by German immigrants after the 1848 revolution failed, who organized the community as a cooperative and opposed any sort of formal local government. The town was Unionist before the Civil War, when it was a part of Blanco County, one of the nineteen counties that voted against secession. A number of men attempting to escape to Mexico to avoid Confederate service lost their lives in 1862 to Confederate cavalry at the Battle of the Nueces, an event which is commemorated in the Treue der Unionmonument ( NB34).
The town's architecture is strongly tied to the career of Alfred Giles, whose nearby ranch is still occupied by his descendants, and to the Faltin family, the town's foremost merchants, for whom Giles designed a store ( NB28).
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