Merchant, legislator, and financier of the Texas Revolution, NicholasAdolphus Sterne was born in Cologne, the eldest child of EmmanuelStern and his second wife, Helen. Adolphus was employed in a passportoffice at age sixteen, in 1817, when he learned that he was to beconscripted. He then forged a passport and set sail for New Orleans,where he found work as a merchant and studied law. For ten years thatcity would be his base of operations, as he worked as a peddlerthroughout the south. He joined a Masonic lodge, an affiliation thatwould later save his life.
InNashville, on a peddling excursion, he made the acquaintance of SamHouston, with whom his fate would be entwined. Sterne moved toNacogdoches, Texas, in 1826, setting up a mercantile operation, andalmost immediately became involved in the Fredonian Rebellion, thefirst attempt by Anglo settlers to secede from Mexico. Travellingback and forth between Texas and New Orleans, he smuggled guns andother supplies in barrels of coffee. He arrested by Americanauthorities in Nacogdoches, imprisoned in the Stone House, tried fortreason, and sentenced to be shot. But his guards, like him, wereMasons, and so eventually they let him go with the promise that hewould never take up arms against the government. He didn’t exactlykeep this promise: Sterne aided the Texans in the battle ofNacogdoches in 1832 and financed two companies of troops during theTexas Revolution.
Duringone of his trips to New Orleans he met his future wife, Eva CatherineRosine Ruff, an immigrant from Württemberg whose parents had diedduring a yellow fever epidemic and who had, in turn, been taken in byone of Sterne’s business associates, Placide Bossier. They weremarried in 1828 and made their home on the eastern edge ofNacogdoches, where they would raise their three children. There toothey hosted Houston when he first moved to Texas, in 1832, and evenbaptized him a Catholic—as was required by Mexican law—in theirparlor. Eva served as his godmother, although Adolphus—who had alsoofficially converted to Catholicism —was busy with the dutiesmarking Yom Kippur.
Astrong supporter of Texas independence, Sterne was sent to NewOrleans as an agent of the provisional government to raise funds. In1841 he became a justice of the peace and served as deputy clerk ofthe board of land commissioners, commissioner of roads and revenuesfor Nacogdoches County, member of the board of health, and overseerof streets for the corporation of Nacogdoches. He served three termsin the Texas House of Representatives and one in the state senate.
