Duewall House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Out here in Burleson County, some houses are built from history itself, and the Duewall House is about as fine an example of that as you're going to find. It starts back in the 1880s, when Rudolph and Anna Duewall packed up their lives and moved to Burleson County, putting down roots on a family farm right here on this land.

They built something worth passing on, and pass it on they did. Their son Edward, born in 1885, and his wife Lizzie, born in 1890, she was a Herrmann before she married, the two of them kept those farm operations going, raising a family of six children on that same ground. Now, six children means you need a proper house, and in 1928, that's exactly what they set out to build.

But here's where the story gets interesting. Carpenter Otto Berndt didn't just go out and buy fresh lumber. He pulled materials from the original Duewall farmhouse, the one Rudolph and Anna had known, and he mixed those in with materials salvaged from the second Burleson County Courthouse.

Think about that for a moment. The walls of that old courthouse, the place where county business had been argued and decided, found a new life sheltering the Duewall family. Otto Berndt raised up a vernacular farmhouse with exposed rafters and a cross-gabled roof, built from pieces of what came before.

Edward passed in 1944, Lizzie in 1947, but the house they built still stands, carrying the weight of two structures inside it, a farm, a courthouse, and one family's long story in Burleson County.

What the marker says

Rudolph and Anna Duewall established a family farm here in the 1880s upon moving to Burleson County. Their son Edward (1885-1944) and his wife, Lizzie (Herrmann) (1890-1947), continued the farm operations. In 1928, they built this house on the site of the original Duewall House to accommodate their family of six children. Carpenter Otto Berndt used materials from the first farmhouse and from the second Burleson County Courthouse in the home's construction. The vernacular farmhouse features exposed rafters and a cross-gabled roof. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2001