Referencing Dog Town on the photo, this is the only thing I could find in Texas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Dog_Town_Fork_Red_River

The curious thing about this information is that Gertrude had a sister who "died of small pox at Red River". So there may be a tie to this area for us. I don't know about the Thiele family. I think mostly the tie would be Galveston and Guadalupe Counties.