DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Albert and Marie Kopplin House in Comal County. Now settle in, because this one's got a quiet kind of beauty to it. Albert Kopplin came over from Germany, born in 1845, and by the time he and his wife Marie Caroline — she was a Hitzfelder before she married him, born in 1851 — by the time those two had put in their years working ranch life, they were ready for something a little more refined.
So in 1892, they built themselves a retirement home. A house that said, we've done the hard work, and now we're going to live somewhere worth lookin' at. And brother, they did not hold back.
The place went up in folk Victorian style — symmetrical facades, porches running along the front, and those porch posts, chamfered wood, holding up a frieze of intricately carved gingerbread trim. Balustrades to match. You get the feeling Albert and Marie wanted every passerby to know that a life well lived deserved a home well built.
Now here's the detail that really sticks with you. For a stretch of time, their granddaughters, Elsa and Thekla Pfeuffer, came to stay with them in that house so they could attend school and take part in the social activities in town. Come the weekend, those girls would head back out to the ranch.
Back and forth, town and ranch, the old world and the new one being built around them. Albert lived until 1929. Marie passed in 1921.
And the Kopplin family held onto that house all the way through the 1940s. Nearly half a century that home stood as theirs. A German native, a ranch life behind him, gingerbread trim above him, and two granddaughters heading to school on a Monday morning.
Some retirements are worth remembering.
What the marker says
German native Albert Kopplin (1845-1929) and his wife, Marie Caroline (Hitzfelder) Kopplin (1851-1921), built this house in 1892 as their retirement home from life on the ranch. The house reflects the folk Victorian architectural style with symmetrical facades and porches supported by chamfered wooden porch posts with intricately carved gingerbread frieze and balustrades. For a time, the couple’s granddaughters, Elsa and Thekla Pfeuffer, stayed with them to attend school and social activities in town and returned to the ranch on weekends. The Kopplin family lived here until the 1940s. (RTHL 2020)