Julius A. and Anna Phillip House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Around the year 1900, somebody put up a four-room house in Kendall County, and that somebody was Julius A. Philip.

Now Julius was born in 1867, and the man would go on to serve his community as Justice of the Peace and County Judge, which means folks around Kendall County trusted him to keep things square. His wife Anna, born that same year, 1867, came to that house as Anna Meckel, and together they filled it up, because eight children will do that to a place. Four rooms, eight children.

You do the math, and you start to understand why, come the 1920s, they had to make that house bigger. They enlarged it to keep up with the growing family, and then in the 1930s, somebody decided the whole arrangement needed a front porch, and they added one. Now that porch wasn't just slapped on plain.

Whoever built it knew what they were doing. Board-and-batten siding on the walls, a gable roof overhead, jigsawn porch brackets doing their decorative duty, and turned wood frieze finishing the whole picture off proper. Anna Philip, for her part, lived in that house a good long while.

Julius was born in 1867 and died in 1935. Anna was born in 1867 and lived until 1961. That house held a lot of life between those years, a Justice of the Peace, a County Judge, a wife named Anna Meckel, eight children, two extra rooms, and a front porch that came along just in time to sit on.

Some houses just accumulate a story. This one earned it.

What the marker says

Built about 1900, this was the home of Kendall County Justice of the Peace and County Judge Julius A. Philip (1867-1935), his wife Anna (Meckel) (1867-1961), and their eight children. Originally built as a 4-room house, it was enlarged in the 1920s to accommodate the growing family, and the front porch was added in the 1930s. Prominent features of the house include board-and-batten siding, a gable roof, jigsawn porch brackets and turned wood frieze. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1993