DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Andrew J. Palm House, out in Williamson County. Pull up a chair — this one's got some miles on it, in more ways than one.
Andrew J. Palm was born in 1839, and in 1853, when he was just a boy, he crossed an ocean and half a continent with his mother and brothers, migrating from Sweden all the way to Texas. Now that is a journey that would test the sturdiest of souls.
They landed themselves about three miles north of Round Rock, in a place that came to be known as Palm Valley. The name fits. Around 1873, Andrew Palm set about building himself a proper home.
He purchased the land from S. M. Swenson — a Swedish immigration agent, which tells you something about how tight-knit these communities could be, even in the middle of wide-open Texas.
Then Palm did something that took real determination: he hauled cypress and pine lumber all the way from Austin to construct that house. Board by board, beam by beam. When it was done, he and his wife Carolina — Carolina Nelson before she married him, born in 1851 — settled in and got to the serious business of living.
Together they raised eight children inside those walls. Eight. That house held a lot of laughter and a lot of years.
Andrew Palm lived all the way to 1928, eighty-nine years on this earth, and Carolina made it to 1929. Nearly a century apiece. Now here's the part that makes you stop and think.
In 1976, that house — the very structure Palm built with timber hauled by hand from Austin — was picked up and moved to Round Rock. The house that started three miles north of town finally made it into town. Some things, it seems, are just built to last.
What the marker says
With his mother and brothers, Andrew J. Palm (1839-1928) migrated to Texas from Sweden in 1853. They settled about three miles north of Round Rock at Palm Valley, where Palm built this residence about 1873. He purchased the land from Swedish immigration agent S. M. Swenson. Palm hauled cypress and pine from Austin to construct the house. Here he and his wife Carolina (Nelson) (1851-1929) raised their eight children. The structure was moved to Round Rock in 1976. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1978