Mueller-Petmecky House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm tellin' it to you. Somewhere between 1848 and 1850, a man named Willis Wallace put up a house on land granted to him by the German Immigration Company. Two rooms.

Fachwerk construction, which means timber framing with fill between the beams, a building style that knew how to hold its own against a Texas summer and a Texas winter alike. Simple, sturdy, honest work. That was the original portion, and it stood.

Time passed, as time has a habit of doing, and the home was acquired by a German farmer named Heinrich Mueller, Jr. Now Mueller's story on this land gets handed forward through his daughter Augusta and her husband, A. W.

Petmecky. A. W.

Petmecky, it turns out, was a man the community leaned on, hard. He served as justice of the peace for forty-two years. Forty-two years of disputes settled, of signatures witnessed, of the slow reliable weight of the law applied by one steady hand.

And in 1895, after the birth of their second child, Augusta and A. W. decided the old two-room fachwerk house needed more to it. They built a limestone addition.

Stone laid onto timber framing, new generation laid onto old. The Mueller-Petmecky House. A place that started with a land grant and a man named Wallace, passed through the hands of a German farmer, and found its full shape when a daughter and a justice of the peace decided their growing family deserved a little more room.

That limestone addition is still there, answering the question of what forty-two years of service and one good family can leave behind.

What the marker says

The original portion of this house probably was built between 1848 and 1850 by Willis Wallace, who was granted the land by the German Immigration Company. Of fachwerk construction, the two-room home later was acquired by German farmer Heinrich Mueller, Jr. Mueller's daughter Augusta and son-in-law A. W. Petmecky, who served as justice of the peace for 42 years, built the limestone addition after the birth of their second child in 1895. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983