Old Lex Homestead

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and I'm passing it straight along to you. Back in eighteen seventy-three, a German-born pioneer named Peter Lex put his hands to the Hill Country limestone and decided he was going to build something that would last. He and his wife Carolina set to work, and by eighteen seventy-four they had themselves a home.

Now, that right there might not sound like much of a story, until you hear how they built the thing. Every single rock in that original structure was hand-cut and faced. Every one.

Out here in the Texas Hill Country, where the sun has opinions and the stone pushes back, Peter and Carolina Lex shaped that limestone by hand and stacked it into a story-and-a-half farm cottage that became as much a part of this land as the cedar and the creek. It's what folks call a typical German house of the Texas Hill Country, that sturdy, no-nonsense style the German pioneers brought with them and made their own in this rocky corner of Comal County. Peter Lex was born in eighteen forty-nine and lived until nineteen twenty-one, long enough to watch that hand-cut limestone hold through decade after decade, proof that when you build something right, you only have to build it once.

The Old Lex Homestead is still standing. The hands that shaped it are long gone, but the rock they faced, it isn't going anywhere.

What the marker says

Built 1873-74 by Peter Lex (1849-1921), German-born pioneer, and wife Carolina. All rock in the original structure was hand-cut and faced. This story-and-half limestone farm cottage is typical of German houses of the Texas Hill county. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1969