DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passin' it along just as it stands. Way out in Fayette County, there's a log cabin with a story that starts, according to tradition, somewhere around 1848. That's when somebody took live oak, hand-hewed the logs, stacked them up, and chinked every gap with a mixture of mud, straw, and sand.
Not one nail of fancy hardware, not one shortcut. Just the land giving what it had. And the cabin stood.
The cabin kept standing. That right there should tell you something about how it was built. Now, the people who made that cabin their home for many years were Konrad Joh, born in 1830, and his wife Elisa, born a Zwernemann, born in 1839.
They had come over from Germany, the two of them, and they settled into this structure somewhere along the main road running from Galveston to Bastrop. Think about that road for a second. Galveston to Bastrop.
Wagons, travelers, the whole restless machinery of a young Texas rolling right past their door. Then comes 1875, and here is where the story gets the kind of detail that sticks with you. Konrad and Elisa decided the cabin needed to move.
Not far, mind you. About three hundred feet uphill from where it sat. Now, a lesser outfit might have just built new.
Not the Johs. They hitched up their oxen, and they moved the whole cabin, logs and all, up that hill. Three hundred feet.
With oxen. Elisa passed in 1901. Konrad held on until 1912.
After their time, members of the Paetzold family lived in the cabin. Different name on the door, same hand-hewn walls, same mud and straw and sand holding it all together. That cabin got moved uphill once by oxen, and it never moved again.
What the marker says
According to tradition, this cabin was erected about 1848 near the main Galveston to Bastrop Rd. The hand-hewn live oak logs were chinked with a mixture of mud, straw, and sand. Konrad (1830-1912) and Elisa (Zwernemann) Joh (1839-1901), who migrated to Texas from Germany, occupied the structure for many years. In 1875 they used oxen to move the cabin about 300 feet uphill from its original location. Later members of the Paetzold family lived here. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1987