Fritz Paul and Emma Schroeder House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Schroeder House out in Washington County. Now, when you're nine miles north of Brenham, rolling through that stretch of Washington County called Sandy Hill, you're passing through country that was, at the time of this story, exclusively German immigrant farmland. Every neighbor, every hand, every voice you'd have heard spoke the old tongue.

And it's in that world, in 1914, that Fritz Paul Schroeder set out to build something lasting. Fritz didn't hire it out. He didn't order from a catalog.

The man designed the house himself and constructed it himself, using materials he obtained right there locally. That's not a small thing. That's a man who knew his land and knew his craft.

The farm itself, all one hundred acres of it, Fritz had purchased from his stepfather, August Scheffer. So the ground under that house already had family in it before the first timber was raised. What went up was a one-and-a-half-story dwelling, the kind of vernacular architecture that belongs to the twentieth century, plain of ambition but honest of purpose.

The Schroeder house, as the marker tells it, stands as an example of the relationship between the occupants, the builder, and the traditions of that German farming community. Fritz and Emma Schroeder didn't just build a house. They built a piece of a community's identity, right there in Sandy Hill, and a hundred years on, it's still standing to prove it.

What the marker says

SCHROEDER HOUSE Built in 1914, the Fritz Paul and Emma Schroeder house is a 1-1/2-story dwelling, an example of 20th century vernacular architecture. The building was designed and constructed with locally obtained materials by Fritz, who purchased the 100-acre farm from his stepfather, August Scheffer. The farm is nine miles north of Brenham in the rural community of Sandy Hill, which at the time of the home's construction was exclusively German immigrants. The Schroeder house is an example of the relationship between the occupants, builder, and traditions of the traditionally German farming community. RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK - 2014