Johann Joseph Knopp House

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm going by what the official marker says, so let's talk about the Johann Joseph Knopp House, right here in Gillespie County. Now, picture this. Johann Joseph Knopp and his wife Katherina, born a Stein, have just crossed an ocean.

Six weeks on a clipper ship. Six weeks of open water, rolling swells, and whatever a clipper ship serves for supper. They land at Indianola, which is already a journey in itself, and then they climb into an oxcart and make their way to Fredericksburg.

An oxcart. Not a stagecoach, not a wagon with any pretense of comfort. An oxcart.

They get to Fredericksburg, they look around, and they decide this is the place. They buy a homesite for seventy dollars. In gold.

Not paper, not promises. Gold. Now here is where Johann Joseph Knopp's particular skill comes into the story.

The man was a stonemason. He knew stone the way some men know horses or weather. And in 1871, not long after he and Katherina arrived in America, he built this house out of native stone.

You can imagine him looking at this Hill Country landscape, all that limestone sitting right there in the ground, and thinking: I know exactly what to do with that. The family farm was a mile from the house, and while Johann was doing what stonemasons do, it was Katherina and the children working that land. That detail is worth sitting with for a moment.

The wife and the children, a mile out, keeping the farm going. And there were children aplenty. Fifteen were born to the Knopps.

Of those fifteen, nine reached adulthood. Six did not. The marker gives you that number plainly, and the plain telling of it is enough.

The house Knopp built in 1871 was restored in 1939, and then extensively remodeled in 1968. That stone held. Decades passed, families changed, the Hill Country rolled on through droughts and booms and everything else Texas could conjure, and that native stone house was still standing, still worth the work of restoring and remodeling.

Seventy dollars in gold, six weeks on a clipper ship, an oxcart ride through Texas, and a stonemason who knew what to do when he got here. That's the Knopp house.

What the marker says

Built of native stone in 1871, soon after Knopp and his wife Katherina (Stein) came to America. From Germany they traveled six weeks by clipper ship to Indianola and by oxcart to Fredericksburg. They bought this homesite for $70 in gold. Knopp was a stonemason; family farm, a mile from this home, was worked by the wife and children. (Of the 15 children born to the Knopps, nine reached adulthood.) House, restored in 1939, was extensively remodeled in 1968. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1971