BIOGRAPHICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TEXAS

(New York: Southern Publishing Company. 1880.)
pp. 80-81

(Reproduced from the holdings of the Texas State Archives)





ZIMPELMAN, GEORGE BERNHARD, insurance and land agent of Austin, Texas,
is of foreign birth and extraction, having been born in Bavaria July 24, 1832, at which
place his father, John Jacob Zimpelman, was born and resided, and where he died in
1857, a successful, influential and respected farmer.  His mother,  Maria Salome
Hochdoeffer, was also a native of Bavaria and daughter of Valentine Hoch-
doeffer, a farmer of that locality.  The subject of this memoir was reared in Bavaria until
about the age of fourteen.  His early education was liberal, and obtained at the best
classical schools. In 1846 he came to America and settled in New Orleans, where he
remained about one year, engaged as a clerk in a dry goods store.  Some time in the year
1847 he came to Texas, locating in Austin, where he has since resided.  His first
employment after his arrival at Austin was at the carpenter trade, a pursuit he followed
assiduously, first as an apprentice and then as a master, up to 1854. In that year he
abandoned that trade, and began learning the trade .of a gunsmith, at which  occupation
he continued for nearly  two years.  In  1856 he located on a stock farm in the vicinity of
Austin, and was engaged  in agriculture and stock raising until the breaking out of the
war in 1861. He promptly responded to the call of his country, entering the Confederate
service as a private in Colonel Terry's Texas rangers, and remained in the army, a brave
and faithful soldier, until the close of the conflict, actively participating in many
skirmishes and in many of the great battles of the war. The theaters of operations, to
which that branch of the service he was in was confined, were the moat sanguinary and
stubbornly contested of all in that bloody encounter, numbering the great battles that
General Sidney Johnson, General Joe Johnston, General Bragg and General Hood, fought
on the soil of Kentucky and Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi  and  Tennessee. 
He  was  wounded nine times—at Murfreesboro, Shelbyville, Corinth, Shiloh,
Chickamauga, and three times at Atlanta, where he was taken prisoner.  His military
career was illustrious, and made more conspicuous by his persistent refusal to be
promoted.  Men ambitious for distinction may perform " feats of arms " and be "prodigies
of valor;" but the brave and unostentatious private in the ranks ever merits the
admiration and gratitude of his countrymen.  Mr. Zimpelman in his military experience
exhibited in an uncommon degree the qualities of a true soldier.  When the Confederacy,
from sheer exhaustion, laid down its arms, and the remnants of its grand armies returned
to their homes and the pursuits of peace, he sought his stock farm near Austin, and
followed  farming  and  stock  raising until 1866, when he was elected Sheriff of Travis
county, but was deposed by military authority, emanating from the Radical Provisional
State Government, set up in pursuance of the reconstruction policy of Congress.  This
unlawful military interference in time came to an end, and in 1869 Mr. Zimpelman was
a second time elected Sheriff, and discharged the duties of that office, being re-elected in
1871 and again  in 1873, up to 1876.  In that year he turned his attention to the banking
business as a member of the banking house of Foster, Ludlow  & Co., having since 1873
been connected with that business.  In 1878 he was made secretary and treasurer of the
Bridge Company, and vice president and superintendent of the Ice Company, positions to
which he was called in consideration of his probity and business capacity.  It may be
truthfully said of the subject of this brief sketch that, whether as a soldier or a civilian, in
public or in private, at home or abroad, he has the faculty of clearly perceiving his duty,
and the courage to honestly discharge it. The inquiry with him is not what was said, or
what was done,  but what ought to be said and done - what if right ?  This practical cast
of mind when supported by integrity of purpose is the foundation of all lasting success. 
To this  Mr. Zimpelman owes his good fortune and the high esteem granted him by his
fellow-citizens.  In 1856 the subject of this  memoir  was married  to  Miss Sarah K.
Matthews, of Austin.  His political connections are those of the Democratic party, and
in religion he is a Presbyterian.  Religiously and politically, as in everything  else, he is 
thoroughly conscientious, detesting hypocrisy in the one, and demagoguery in the other.