Sculptor and stonecutter Frank Teich was born in Lobenstein, Germany, the son of the poet Frederick and Catherine (Horn) Teich. At the age of eight he began painting, and after his graduation from the University of Nuremberg he was apprenticed to the German sculptor Johannes Schilling; he probably worked on the German national monument, The Watch on the Rhine. He then studied a year under the Franciscan Brothers at Deddelbach am Main. Teich immigrated to the United States in 1878 and traveled in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, and California.
In Chicago, in 1879 he contributed to the stone carving on the Cook County courthouse. By 1883 he was in Texas, locating first in San Antonio but working on different projects across the state. Teich worked under Gustav Wilke, superintending the granite cutters and inspecting the granite used in the state capitol building at Austin, and he also worked on the Tarrant County courthouse. In San Antonio in 1885 Teich opened a marble yard on the present site of the Medical Arts building, across from the Alamo, and worked on the construction of several buildings in the city including the city hall and the Kampman building. Shortly afterward, for health reasons, Teich left San Antonio for the hills around Fredericksburg.
In Llano County, Teich discovered a granite deposit and opened a quarry, but he soon left to spend time in Europe gathering ideas. He returned around 1901 and opened Teich Monumental Works two miles from Llano. Teich was responsible for, or worked on, many monuments throughout Texas and other states, many of them Confederate monuments in the southern states. He completed the Confederate monument and the Fireman's monument on the capitol grounds at Austin, the Sam Houston monument in Houston, the Luther Memorial Church in Orange, the statue "Grief" over the grave of Will Scott Youree in the Scottsville cemetery near Marshall, a carved Italian marble altar in a Durango, Mexico, church, the Governor Pease monument in Austin, and two Confederate statues in Dallas. He did much work in the San Antonio area, including the Mahncke Memorial in Brackenridge Park and the altar in St. Mary's Church. He was the sculptor of the bronze statue of René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle in Navasota and the monument to Abel (Shanghai) Pierceqv near Blessing, Texas. Teich was in an indirect way responsible for bringing the sculptor Pompeo Coppini to Texas. Frank Teich married Elvina Lang of San Antonio on October 12, 1887; they had three daughters. He died January 27, 1939, in Llano and was buried there. He has been called the father of the granite industry of Texas.
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