BIOGRAPHY OF LEADING TEXANS

(volume 4 pp. 870 - 874)
Reproduced from the holdings of the Texas State Archives


STATE TREASURER.

Sketch of the Public and Private Career of
Geo. B. Zimpleman.


     George B. Zimpleman first saw the light of day on the sunny banks of the Rhine, in
the Rhenish Bavaria, In the year of our Lord 1832.  Coming-from a well-to-do family, he
had at the 'old home the benefit of a classical education until he was about 13 years of
age.  His leaving the Fatherland and coming to America in 1845 was more an
accident, an unpremeditated happening, than a deliberate plan.  In 1845 an uncle and
aunt of his, Mr. and Mrs. Hightower, started on a tour of part pleasure and part
exploration to America, not with any intention of remaining, but simply to see the
country, and, if they
liked it, perhaps to return to it at some future period.  George was asked and readily
consented to come along and be one of the party.  They arrived first in New Orleans, and
in the same year, 1845, traveled on to Galveston.  In those days the dreadful scourge,
yellow fever, was an almost constant visitor to the Mexican gulf ports, and Galveston did
not escape, the annual visitation.  Mr. and Mrs. Hightower fell victims to the epidemic in
the oleander city, and young Zimpleman was also stricken with the disease and
recovered.  Losing his uncle and aunt, George, an inexperienced, unsophisticated boy,
found himself adrift in a strange city, alone and without money.  He had no
acquaintances or friends.  Truly, the boy's advent into Texas was not of the most
flattering character.

     But something had to be done, and that quick.  He had to make an honest living, and
at the very first thing that might happen to offer.  That first thing was a waitership in the
very hotel where his unfortunate relations had been stopping, and he tried it for a week. 
But one week was sufficient to prove to young Zimpleman that he would  never make a
success as a flunkey, and that he would make a better farmer and agriculturist.  It did not
take him long 'to find work on a farm in Bastrop county, and after the crop there was
made, in Hays,  and finally Travis his future home.

     In Travis county George B. Zimpleman entered upon the earnest portion of his life's
work as early as 1847.  There he worked, made a home, and married an estimable and
loving wife, whom he had the inexpressible grief to bury at the old home in 1886.  After
that the unhappy memories of his great loss would not let him remain in Travis
county any longer, and he came to El Paso.