Old D. A. Young Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. The Old D. A.

Young Building, Kyle, Hays County. Now, they call it the first permanent store in Kyle, and that alone ought to tell you something about the kind of man who put it up. David Alexander Young was born in 1841, came to Texas with his parents from Tennessee back in 1857, and by all accounts he was the sort of fellow who showed up somewhere and made it stick.

Before he ever laid a foundation stone in Kyle, though, Young had already been tested in ways that would have sent a lesser man home for good. He was one of 179 Hays County men who went off to fight in the Civil War, and he came back wounded, having served in Woods' 32nd Cavalry. One hundred and seventy-nine men from this county.

You sit with that number a moment. When the International and Great Northern Railway came into Kyle, Young and his wife, Fannie Elizabeth, saw the future pulling into the station. They moved from Mountain City, and in 1881, he built it.

The store. Permanent, they called it, and they meant it. The building stood through the decades the way a good structure does, quiet and stubborn and useful.

David Alexander Young died in 1883, just two years after the building went up. But the building kept going. It kept going all the way to 1936, when M.

G. Michaelis, Sr., an early-day rancher, gave it to the city of Kyle as a gift. Some men leave behind words.

Some leave behind names on courthouse walls. David Alexander Young left behind four walls and a roof, and the city of Kyle still has them.

What the marker says

First permanent store in Kyle. Builder, David Alexander Young (1841-1883), moved with parents to Texas from Tennessee, 1857. D. A. Young, one of 179 Hays County men in Civil War, was wounded fighting in Woods' 32nd Cavalry. When International & Great Northern Railway came into Kyle, Young and wife, Fannie Elizabeth, moved here from Mountain City. This 1881 building was given to city of Kyle in 1936 by M. G. Michaelis, Sr., early-day rancher. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1968