DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm not gonna add a word it didn't earn. Somewhere out in the Crabapple community of Gillespie County stands a stone house that has been holding its ground since the early 1870s — and friend, I do mean holding its ground. Four generations of the Riley family have lived inside those walls, which is itself a story worth pullin' over for.
But it's the walls themselves that get me. Twenty-four inches thick on the outside. Eighteen inches on the partitions.
That is not a house that is asking permission from the weather. David Crockett Riley — born 1840, died 1900 — was a Crabapple community pioneer, and when he decided to build, he built like a man who intended to be remembered. The stone came from a hill a mile north of the property.
The timbers were hand-hewn right off the farm trees. And when milled lumber was needed — well, somebody made the haul from Austin, ninety miles to the southeast. Ninety miles.
Over Texas terrain that was not exactly begging you to come through it. Now here is the part I love most. Riley needed door locks for this house — multiple locks, one imagines, for a structure of some size and seriousness.
So what did he do? He bought one lock, used it as a model, and had the rest made right there in the farm shop. One purchased lock.
All the rest: homemade. That is the kind of problem-solving that makes you want to stand up a little straighter. And the workmen who built this place?
They were paid fifty cents and a pint of Crockett Riley's whiskey — home-distilled — for a day's work. You can decide for yourself whether that was generous compensation. I will only say that four generations of Rileys have lived in what those workers built, and the house is still standing.
Seems like everybody held up their end of the deal.
What the marker says
Four generations have lived in this house built in early 1870s by Crabapple community pioneer David Crockett Riley (1840-1900). Stone for 24" outer walls and 18" partitions came from a hill a mile north; timbers were hand-hewn from farm trees; milled lumber hauled from Austin (90 mi. SE). With a purchased lock for model, rest of door locks were made in farm shop. Workmen were paid 50 cents and a pint of Crockett Riley's whiskey (home-distilled) for a day's work. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1972