Baethge-Behrend Homestead

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the Baethge-Behrend Homestead out in Gillespie County. Now, 1854. Picture a family stepping off a ship and into Central Texas heat, carrying everything they've got from Germany.

Johann Heinrich Baethge, born in 1814, and his wife Sophie Konradine, born 1824, the daughter of the Pape family, and their two children. They didn't land somewhere and plant roots right away. No sir.

They moved around the Central Texas area, trying out a spot here, a spot there, the way folks do when they're still learning the land and the land is still sizing them up. Then comes 1867. The Baethges settle.

About 120 acres, right here. And they didn't build with lumber or stone. They built with what they had and what they could make: handmade clay and straw bricks.

You take clay, you take straw, you press them together and you let the Texas sun do the rest. That main house went up, and a number of outbuildings alongside it, and the Baethge homestead took shape one brick at a time. Johann Heinrich and Sophie Konradine lived out their years on that land.

And then, 1888, both of them gone. Same year for each of them. The farm passed to their sons, Ferdinand and Heinrich, Jr., who inherited it upon their parents' deaths.

Ferdinand and his wife Louise kept the place going. Kept it in the family. Season after season, decade after decade on those same 120 acres.

All the way to 1937. That's when the property was sold to the August F. Behrend family, and a new name got added to the story of this land.

Two families, one piece of Central Texas ground, and a homestead built by hand from the earth itself. That's the Baethge-Behrend place.

What the marker says

Johann Heinrich Baethge (1814-1888), his wife Sophie Konradine (Pape) (1824-1888), and their two children immigrated to Texas from Germany in 1854. They lived at several locations in the Central Texas area before settling here on about 120 acres in 1867. The Baethges' homestead consisted of a main house constructed of handmade clay and straw bricks and a number of outbuildings. The Baethges' sons, Ferdinand and Heinrich, Jr., inherited the farm upon their parents' deaths in 1888. The family of Ferdinand and Louise Baethge lived here until 1937 when the property was sold to the August F. Behrend family. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995