Or only the first to crash? Jacob Friedrich Brodbeck may have made the first flight in a heavier-than-air craft, on Sept. 20, 1865–almost forty years before the Wright brothers–in a field in the Hill Country about three miles east of Luckenbach.
Tethered gas balloons had been used for military recon in the Civil War, but Brodbeck’s spring-wound engine was something new, supposedly (accounts vary) propelling him for 100 feet, just twelve feet above the ground, until the spring unwound and, oops, the crash ensued. Or not, depending who you believe.
The photo (owned by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo) suggests Brodbeck’s bird might have been a biplane, of a sort.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
All kinds of flyin’ been goin’ on at Lukenbach for a long, long, time.
Heh. Most of it without benefit of aircraft.
Yep. Looks like a biplane.
The question we’ll probably never have answered is whether it actually flew—even twelve feet off the ground.
Weird!
Weird only because history has been edited so much to remove the prior claimants to firsts like this. Although the Wright Flyer (also a biplane) was a superior craft that flew higher than twelve feet.