Czichos House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it right along to you. You're looking at the Czichos House, out in Hays County, and this little structure has a story that stretches across more than a century of Texas living. It starts with hand-hewn cedar logs, chinked with clay, the way builders did it when they meant for something to last.

And last it did. This house was built in Comal County, around 1850, before most of the Hill Country had even introduced itself to the idea of permanence. Somebody swung an axe, notched those logs, packed the gaps with clay, and raised four walls against the world.

Now, the house didn't stay in one place, and it didn't stay with one family. By 1858, it had become home to the family of Dr. Adolph Schlameus, and that's where the story really deepens.

Dr. Schlameus wasn't just a man with a house. He taught the area's very first school, near Fischer, gathering up the children of the settlers around him, and his own twelve children alongside them.

Twelve. That school wasn't a grand institution with a bell tower. It was a man, a marker in the wilderness, and a room full of young Texans who needed to learn something.

The Schlameus family kept that house as their home all the way through 1951, nearly a hundred years of one family's life pressing itself into those cedar logs. Then the house was moved from the Canyon Lake area and restored in 1960. Cedar logs chinked with clay, built around 1850, still standing after all of that.

Some things, it turns out, were built to outlast the people who built them.

What the marker says

Of hand-hewn cedar logs chinked with clay. built in Comal County about 1850. Home, 1858-1951, family of Dr. Adolph Schlameus, who taught area's first school, near Fischer, for settlers' children and his own 12. Moved from Canyon Lake area and restored in 1960. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965