DUANE
Duane's take
The marker outside this house tells the story, and here's my telling of it. Now, 1908. A man named Anders Johan Anderson has just buried his first wife, Edla Maria, who passed in 1906.
He's a Swedish immigrant, born in 1858, and he's got two daughters to raise and a farm sitting two miles south of Round Rock. So what does a man do when the ground shifts under him like that? He builds something.
Something solid. Something that says: we are still here. The house went up between 1908 and 1909.
And when it was done, Anders Johan Anderson packed up his two daughters, left that farm two miles south of town, and moved in. You look at this place and you can see he wasn't just building shelter. The fishscale shingles.
The classical columns. This is a man making a statement — because Round Rock at the time was a genuine mercantile center for Swedish settlers in this part of Texas, and this house reflects that prosperity like a mirror held up to the whole community. Then in 1912, Anderson married Carolina Lindquist.
And from then on, it was the A. J. and Carolina Anderson house, and it stayed in that family all the way until 1963. Fifty-some years of one family inside these walls.
Anders Johan Anderson died in 1929. But the house he built out of grief and grit and fishscale shingles? That one outlasted him by quite a stretch.
Some things you build just hold on.
What the marker says
This house was built in 1908-09 for the family of Swedish immigrant Anders Johan Anderson (1858-1929) just after the death of his first wife, Edla Maria (1859-1906). After its completion, Anderson and his two daughters moved into the house from their farm two miles south of Round Rock. In 1912, Anderson married Carolina Lindquist, and the house remained in the Anderson family until 1963. The Folk Victorian structure, with details including fishscale shingles and classical columns, reflects Round Rock's prosperity and status as a mercantile center for Swedes in the early 20th century. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2001