DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, friend — and it's a story worth the telling. Somewhere around 1910, somebody built a two-story frame Colonial Revival on the Aransas County coast. Good solid construction, the kind that gets put to work.
And put to work it was — first as a boarding house for shipyard employees, men who needed a roof and a bed after a long day at the water's edge. That alone would be a decent enough history for any house. But this one wasn't done yet.
In 1919, a hurricane devastated the coast — the kind of storm that doesn't ask permission and doesn't apologize — and that house opened its doors to fifty refugees who needed shelter while the world outside came apart. Fifty souls riding out a killer storm inside those two-story Colonial Revival walls. The house held.
Now, the very next year, 1920, county judge Joe A. Harper came along — born in 1881 — and he purchased that home with his new wife, Bertha Oertling Harper, born in 1888. Joe Harper wasn't just any man passing through.
He served four terms as county judge, and he was influential in bringing the first coastal highway to the area, which spurred development along that stretch of Texas coast. Four terms. A highway.
The kind of work that changes a place and stays changed. But in 1928, Joe Harper died — the marker calls it untimely, and that word carries weight — and Bertha was left with that house and all its years inside it. She didn't leave.
She and her siblings lived in that home for almost forty-five years. And all that time, Bertha Harper kept teaching — primary grades, and at the First Baptist Church — a long career that stretched well beyond what the coast's storms, or grief, might have taken from a lesser spirit. Bertha Oertling Harper was born in 1888 and died in 1978.
The house that sheltered shipyard workers, that held fifty refugees against a hurricane, that anchored a judge's legacy and a teacher's life — it was all of those things, one after another, right there on the Aransas County coast.
What the marker says
Built around 1910, this two-story frame Colonial Revival was used as a boarding house for shipyard employees. The home was also used for shelter for 50 refugees during the 1919 hurricane that devastated the coast. In 1920, county judge Joe A. Harper (1881-1928) and his new wife, Bertha Oertling Harper (1888-1978), purchased the home. Judge Harper, a four-term County Judge, was influential in bringing the first coastal highway to the area which spurred development. After Joe's untimely death in 1928, Bertha and her siblings lived in the home for almost 45 years while she continued her long career as a teacher for primary grades and at the First Baptist Church.