This blog was originally the idea of Dr. Scott Baird, Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics at San Antonio's Trinity University. A number of years ago Scott became interested in gravemarkers and, more importantly, what they said about the community that created them. Eventually, he began investigating cemeteries of German communities in the Texas Hill Country. Finally, in April 2011, at the annual meeting of the American Culture Association, Scott presented a paper entitled "The Lateiners at Rest: Gravemarkers of the Lionized Texas German Intellectuals." (http://www.scottbairdphd.com/) At the same time he announced the creation of this blog as a co-operative venture with the Texana/Genealogy department of the San Antonio Public Library. For various reasons it was decided to create the blog here.

The Lateiner blog has several purposes:
1. Present the history of the Texas Lateiners (German Freethinkers)
2. Present biographical sketches of known Lateiners
3. Try to identify a number of unknown Lateiners
4. Share family stories about your Lateiner ancestors.