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Christian Frederick Duer was an older half-brother of Frederick and Louisa Mohl. All three immigrated to the US. Frederick and Louisa came as children with their parents Frederick and (F. Marie?}Mohl to NY in 1832.
See Helen Glenn Court's wonderful website at http://www.glenncourt.com.
Christian F. Duer was in the Houston area early, as he was cited as CF Duer, an early (1830's-1845) contributor to the growing town. He expanded what wealth he had and became a merchant and planter.
Frederick Mohl followed CF Duer to Houston and there married Aurelia Hadley, b. Jackson, MS in 1850.
Frederick/Fritz Mohl first had a grocery store. Then he became proprietor of the Fannin Hotel by 1860. It was owned by Aurelia's father Thomas Benjamin Jefferson Hadley, a successful lawyer who had brought his family to Houston from Jackson about 1840. He also had interest in the Capitol Hotel.
Fannin Hotel customers were mostly young single men in their 20's. Fritz/Frederick Mohl hired an enslaved African-American woman to work at the hotel, in housekeeping, probably. She had a couple of young children who lived with her. (1860 Slave Schedules).
Louisa Mohl had married Carl Court, also from Germany, and they lived in CT for a while, where their son Carl Frederick Court was born in 1852. By 1854 they had also moved to Houston, as their daughter Marie Aurelia was born there. She was named after her maternal grandmother (I think) and maternal aunt-in-law.
Carl first was a grocer. He and his family went to KY for a couple of years, where their daughter Ada was born, then returned to the Houston area.
Carl Court went into business in some association with his brother-in-law Christian F. Duer. By 1860 they had a stage stop, stables and store in Rose Hill, on the stage road 35 miles north of Houston. Carl and Louisa had an 80-acre farm there on Spring Creek, where they grew cotton and crops. Their youngest child, Frederick Mohl Court, was born there in Feb 1860.
Christian F. Duer also had a cotton plantation in or near Rose Hill. In 1860 he held 22 enslaved African-Americans to work the land and cotton gin. (1860 Slave Schedules). According to historians, that number (20 or more slaves held) classified Duer as a planter, part of the white political and social elite of the South. (1860 census) Duer owned real estate worth $60,000; and personal property, including the slaves, worth $35,000.
Duer was married to Marie/Mary S.(unknown) from France and had eight children living at home. From the ages of Marie and his children, I think he had been married before, as the oldest ones seem too old to be hers. Only initials of the children are given in the 1860 census. (1870 census) three were still living at home with him and Mary: Camille, Frederick and Phillip.
It's likely that after his brother-in-law Carl Court's death in 1861, Duer loaned slaves to Louisa Court to work her farm. In 1860 she and her husband did not hold any slaves in their own name. Her children were young, the youngest only 18 months old. It doesn't seem possible that she could have done the work on 80 acres by herself. It was common for people of that era to talk about working land and doing work without mentioning the labor of enslaved African-Americans.
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