John R. Dobie House

Duane's take

The official marker's the word on this one, and here's how I tell it. Now, out in Hays County, there stands a house that's been keeping its own counsel for well over a century. Built about 1892, it went up for a couple named Charles and Susannah Cock.

Board and batten construction, a central hall running clean through the middle, classical detailing on a working-country frame. A vernacular house, they call it, meaning it's the real thing. No pretense.

Just good building. Then, in 1899, a man named John R. Dobie came along and bought it.

John R. Dobie, born in 1849, was a native of Scotland, which is about as far from the Texas Hill Country as you can get and still be on the same planet. But he made himself at home.

He became a farmer. A rancher. And in 1897 and 1898 he served as a Hays County commissioner.

A man who knew how to work land and how to work a room. His wife Martha was beside him, and together they put down roots that held. The house stayed in the Dobie family, year after year, decade after decade, all the way until 1977.

John R. Dobie himself passed in 1924, but that house? It outlasted the man, outlasted the generations, and it's still standing out there in Hays County, board and batten tight, central hall straight as a die, a Scotland-born rancher's name still on the marker out front.

What the marker says

Constructed about 1892 for Charles and Susannah Cock, this house was purchased by John R. and Martha Dobie in 1899. A native of Scotland, Dobie (1849-1924) was a farmer, rancher, and Hays County commissioner in 1897-98. A fine example of vernacular house types, the John R. Dobie house features a central hall plan, board-and-batten construction, and classical detailing. It remained in the Dobie family until 1977. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1990