In October, 1942, Captain Alvin Mueller returned to his hometown. Two bands played for a crowd of 10,000 waiting at the Southern Pacific depot[since demolished]. Mueller and his wife paraded in an open car down Austin St. through the center of town.

The month before, a news release reported that "Captain Alvin Mueller, of Seguin, Texas, has won his grand slam in decorations for his services to his country and to the Air Corps. Major General George Kenney, commander of the [Allied] Air Forces pinned on him a Silver Star for gallantry in action during an evacuation flight from Mindanao Island in the Philippines. The Silver Star completes a neat row of four decorations across Mueller's dress blouse.

"For gallantry in the Philippines he won the Distinguished Service Cross, for gallantry in Java he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and for courage in Australia and on commando flights over Jap-held territory, he won the Purple Heart."

After enjoying his hero's welcome and a short home visit, Mueller returned to the Pacific. He shot down more enemy planes, took part in Jimmy Doolittle's famous raid over Tokyo, and by the end of World War II, Alvin Mueller was a Lieutenant Colonel.

Mueller was not the only war hero from Seguin, not even the only ace pilot, but he seems to have been uniquely destined for the role.

His lawyer father prospered handling mineral rights when the Darst Creek Field gave Seguin an oil boom. The field was discovered July 18, 1929, just a few months before the Wall Street Crash ushered in the Depression. So while almost everyone else was feeling poor, Alvin Mueller, Jr., was a bored rich kid.

First Alvin Mueller, Sr., tried to involve his son in the glamorous world of movies. Mueller built the Texas Theatre, a state-of-the-art motion picture house for his son to operate. But the silver screen did not hold his attention. Alvin Junior wanted to fly. And fly he did, almost flying his parents to distraction, famously dipping under the highway bridge over the Guadalupe and crash landing on the Fairgrounds racetrack.

Mueller was in the Army Air Corps reserves when he was called to duty. His flying skills and raw courage made him a decorated hero shortly after the U.S. entered its second war with Germany. And Mueller's ancestry made him a perfect poster boy for German-American patriotism when some were once again questioning their loyalty.

The handsome, Mediterranean-style home of the Alvin Mueller family stands on College at Bauer St., across from the public library in Bauer Park. Plans are being made to restore the beautiful art deco Texas Theatre on Austin Street.

Sources: An Authentic History of Guadalupe County by Willie Mae Weinert // Under the Live Oak Tree by John Gesick. // texasescapes.com

Not long after the Civil War ended, Henry Troell came here and a started a mill, soon operating at the old Flores Crossing -- some gravel banks in the Guadalupe River. Troell began raising the level of the natural rock dam, increasing the flow of water to power his mill and gin. In a few years the Seguin Waterworks Company began to take water from behind his dam.

Then Henry Troell built one of the first hydroelectric plants in Texas, in service only a dozen years after Thomas Edison's first power plant in New York City!

Later Troell, in partnership with Edgar Nolte and James T. Holmes, developed the Seguin Milling & Power Company west of town. Their first mill was located on Court St. near Walnut Branch, but was soon moved further west, beside the river. There it reached a daily output of 750 barrels of flour, along with 300 tons of mixed feed. The flour mill remained one of the biggest local employers for more than half a century.

Troell sold the electric light system to the city of Seguin about a dozen years after he started it. Some of the proceeds he invested in property downtown. He built a structure that held the Kempenstein Opera House upstairs. Today the building houses the Heritage Museum. The city still owns the dam and the early power plant. The surrounding unused parkland on the south bank of the Guadalupe will soon be connected to Starcke Park by a new footbridge.

The original Troell family home stands across Highway 123 from the power plant site. That house is one of the town's few remaining limecrete structures (half of it is wood frame), a relic from the era when this old town was called The Mother of Concrete Cities. About the time the dam and plant were sold, Troell traded that house for the Lannom house on N. Bowie at Walnut St., not far from the center of town. That fine, two-story home is also still standing today, though the double-height gingerbread porches that once wrapped around it were removed more than 50 years ago.

An extraordinarily successful entrepreneur, Henry Troell was also a successful family man. He married Johanna Woehler when she was 18 and he was 34. They had 14 children in the next 20 years, and 10 of those lived to adulthood, producing, in turn, hundreds of descendants. Henry and Johanna were early members of Emanuel's Lutheran Church, and some descendants still attend that historic church.

Henry Troell was born October 5, 1838 in Wichmannshausen, Hessen, Germany. He arrived at Indianola in 1859, and came to Seguin about a dozen years later. He died on December 19, 1921.

Source: History of the Henry Troell Family by Jeannine Chamberlain Hardy