Cade House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Cade House in Kerr County. Now settle in, because this family's story stretches across three generations and ends with a house built right into the hillside itself. Back before the Civil War ended, there was a man named Guilford Marion Cade, born in Alabama in 1821, who had taken up the practice of medicine and eventually found himself serving as a doctor in the Confederate Army.

When the war was over, in 1865, he made his way to Texas. He wasn't done moving yet either. In 1883, Guilford and his family pulled up and relocated to Kerr County, where they purchased this very property.

A log cabin, a piece of land, a new chapter. That's how it stood for a while. Guilford Marion Cade passed in 1887, and the property carried on in the family's hands.

Then, in 1901, his son, Gilford P. Cade, bought the property from his siblings. Now, the old log cabin was gone by then.

A storm had seen to that. So Gilford P. built a frame house in its place, and life went on. The family kept growing.

By the early nineteen thirties, a frame house wasn't cutting it anymore. So Gilford P. and his own son, Marion, did something that would outlast them both. They built a stone house on a high hill facing east.

Two stories tall, composed of irregular coursed rubble masonry, with a rear wing addition made of random coursed faced ashlar. That second story landing, held up on large stone posts and rough-hewn beams, is something worth stopping to look at. And here's the part that makes this house more than just a house.

Marion Cade had a carpentry business, and he used the random stones of this very house as demonstration models for his clients. The walls weren't just walls. They were a working portfolio, a stone-by-stone argument for what good craftsmanship looks like.

Three generations of Cades came through this place, from an Alabama doctor serving in a Confederate army, to a son rebuilding after a storm, to a grandson turning the stones of his own home into a lesson. That hill hasn't changed much. The house is still up there, still facing east, still making its case.

What the marker says

Alabama native Guilford Marion Cade (1821-1887) was a doctor in the Confederate Army prior to his moving to Texas in 1865. He and his family moved to Kerr County in 1883 and purchased this property. Cade's son, Gilford P. Cade, bought the property from his siblings in 1901 and built a frame house after the family's log cabin was destroyed in a storm. As the family grew larger in the early 1930s, he and his son, Marion, built this stone house on a high hill facing east. The two-story house is composed of irregular coursed rubble masonry with a rear wing addition made of random coursed faced ashlar. Marion Cade used the random stones of his house as demonstration models for clients of his carpentry business. The second story landing is supported on large stone posts and rough-hewn beams. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999