Old Kammlah House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some houses just sit there. Four walls, a roof, a place to hang your hat.

But the Old Kammlah House in Gillespie County, friend, that one has got stories stacked up like cordwood. Let me walk you through it. Back in 1849, a German settler by the name of Henry Kammlah the First built himself four front rooms, and he put an outside stair going up to the attic.

Practical man. You can picture him looking at that Texas sky and deciding he needed access from the outside, thank you very much. And the walls inside, now here's where it gets interesting.

He didn't just slap up some plaster and call it a day. He used an old world technique, plaster laid right over woven twig supports. Woven twigs.

The man brought centuries of European craft straight into the Texas Hill Country in 1849, and those walls held. Well, the house kept growing. Come 1875, a smokehouse went up, and rooms were added at the rear.

The Kammlah place was putting on weight, you might say, spreading out the way a prosperous family will do. And prosperous they were. Henry Kammlah the Second and his wife Amalia, they opened a general store right there in the front room in 1870.

Right in the house. You walk in to buy your dry goods and you are standing in somebody's home. That store became a fixture, a landmark before anyone called it one, and Henry the Third kept it running all the way until 1924.

Three generations, one front room, one family name holding steady through the decades. Then the house went quiet for a while, the way old houses sometimes do when the last chapter closes. But in 1956, the Gillespie County Historical Society purchased it and brought it back, restored and opened as a museum.

Those woven twig walls, that outside stair, the smokehouse out back, all of it saved. Three Henrys built something that outlasted all three of them, and Gillespie County made sure the rest of us would know it.

What the marker says

Four front rooms with outside stair to attic, built 1849 by German settler Henry Kammlah I. Smokehouse and rooms at rear added 1875. Old world technique of wall plaster over woven twig supports used in interior. Henry Kammlah II and wife Amalia, opened a general store in front room in 1870. This was continued by Henry III until 1924. House purchased 1956 and restored as museum by Gillespie County Historical Society. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966