Brother Louis Garni and the Little Creatures of Boerne’s Past
The land around the tiny village of Boerne at the turn of the last century was as wild and rugged as any in Texas. The rolling, sometimes mountainous terrain of Kendall County was thick with live oak, mesquite, blackjack, walnut, cedar and even elm, split by the Guadalupe River, lively Cibolo Creek, and dozens of streams, and its limestone undercut by dark and mysterious caverns and caves.
In those great forests and amid the rocky outcroppings lived such an abundance of scarcely known and exotic horned lizards, frogs, toads, snakes and turtles that even America’s great museums clamored for their collection.
And if you were a pioneer homesteading just outside Boerne (pop. 900 or so) in the early 1910s, you might unexpectedly encounter a frail but earnest young naturalist, Bro. Louis Garni, eagerly scrambling through mesquite thickets and splashing through unnamed creeks in search of Texas’ unique natural fauna.
Because of Garni’s efforts, the name “Boerne” is attached to specimens in collections that range from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to Baylor University’s Strecker (now Mayborn) Museum and to San Antonio’s beloved Zoo.
Much of what little we know of Garni’s short but eventful life comes from the book, “Marianists in God’s Acre, St. Mary’s University Sesquicentennial, 1852-2002.” Louis Ladislaus Vladimir was born Christmas Eve, 1886, in Libava, Finland. When his father, a Finnish general, was executed by the Russian Tsar, his mother Ann emigrated to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and took the name Garni. At a Marianist school, Louis joined and eventually became a brother in the education-focused Marianist tradition. Several stations followed until in January 1910, when he was sent as a postulate, then as a science teacher, to St. Louis College (later St. Mary’s) in San Antonio.
But in those pre-vaccine times, Brother Garni had contracted tuberculosis and his health was severely compromised, requiring long periods of enforced rest and recuperation. His fellow brothers recalled that “whatever his illness or trials, he always bore up bravely and cheerfully.”
During a bad period with the disease, Garni was sent from November 1912 to August 1913 to recuperate at St. Mary’s Sanitarium located at 401 N. Main in the small rural town of Boerne.
Despite his poor health, Garni was an eager, self-taught naturalist and the abundance of wild creatures in Kendall County fascinated him. He began corresponding with the directors of various museums about his forays into the Texas wilderness – and they enthusiastically responded.
A few years after Garni’s death, Dr. John K. Strecker, wrote that the Baylor Museum “is under obligation to him for many interesting specimens and valuable notes on the fauna of southwestern Texas” and complimented his “splendid work.”
Strecker notes that most of Garni’s specimens were collected along Cibolo Creek in what is now Boerne proper, Orth’s Ranch (three miles west of Boerne) and Martin’s Ranch (seven miles west of Boerne).
Some of Garni’s notes on his collections still survive and they display a lively intellect and quick wit. While looking for Gerrhonoutus infernalis (the Texas Plated Lizard) in downtown Boerne, he saw a man displaying the small creature on a piece of wood. When Garni asked the man what he intended to do with the lizard, the old farmer gave it to him:
“I picked up the creature by the neck, and you should have seen that crowd stare at me. All claimed that it was poisonous; it had a bark that could be heard 700 yards away, and a lot more such information was freely given out.”
On other expeditions, Garni collected and submitted examples of Phrynsoma cornutum (Texas Horned Toad), Leiolepisma laterale (Brown Lizard), Leptotyphlops dulics (Worm Snake), Amyda emoryi (Emory’s Soft-Shelled Turtle), Bufo punctatus (Spotted Toad). Chelydra serpentina (Snapping Turtle), Aromochelys carinatus (Keeled Mud Turtle) and many, many more.
Garni’s health continued to decline and he died on September 15, 1914. According to accounts left by his fellow brothers, “Even when he was surely beyond hope of cure and fully aware of his sickness, his sunny disposition never left him. He was a source of edification to all.”
But Bro. Louis Garni’s legacy lives on.
(St. Louis College merged with St. Mary’s College of San Antonio in 1923 and remains one of only three Society of Mary/Marianist universities in the United States with Dayton University in Ohio and Chaminade in Hawaii.)
In 1924, Strecker, curator of the museum that would later bear his name, published “Contributions from Baylor University Museum,” featuring a list of the many reptiles and amphibians collected by Garni. One creature, Scelopous variabilis (Variable Lizard), Brother Louis actually collected on the grounds of St. Louis College, where he was teaching science.
The University of Texas in Austin was also a recipient of Garni’s specimens and published a monograph on his work.
One issue of The Bulletin of the Texas Ornithological Society features an article on the Garni Nature Club, founded in 1929 at St. Mary’s, and calls Garni “a former science teacher at the university and a respected herpetologist and naturalist.”
The San Antonio Zoo’s famed Reptile House in Brackenridge Park, opened in 1933, is dedicated to G.W. Marnock, Strecker, and Garni – all of whom donated numerous specimens to the Zoo.
Today, the Garni Science Hall on the St. Mary’s campus is dedicated to Brother Louis and the college’s museum still contains a host of examples of reptiles and amphibians collected by Garni in Bexar and Kendall counties.
Finally, “Marianists in God’s Acre” contains a poignant letter about Brother Louis Garni S.M. from his attending physician, Dr. J.S. Lankford, addressed to Father August Frische, S.M., then President of St. Louis College:
“I cannot let the death of good Brother Louis Garni pass without commending him for his splendid bravery and great patience and courage while he fought the battle of life. In all my experience, I have not seen a man more courageous or more patient. He had more to bear than his friends even knew, and only a physician could understand the many sides of his great suffering. He had not only lung trouble, but tuberculosis involved his heart muscle; perhaps every organ of his body was afflicted recently. He had many pains and difficulties, indeed, but he faced everything with a sublime reconciliation to whatever might come. To me, his life during the two years has been very beautiful and a new evidence of the comfort of the Catholic faith.”
As is sometimes the case in God’s economy, the presence of the humblest of creatures from Boerne’s distant past in places of honor in the mightiest institutions of education and learning in America is the greatest tribute possible to the brief but triumphant life of Brother Louis Garni.
