Otto Brinkmann House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Kendall County, there's a little stone-and-timber cottage that has been standing since 1860, and if you know what to look for, its walls will tell you exactly who built it and where they came from. The man behind it was Otto Brinkmann, born in Germany in 1832.

He put up this cottage with his own hands, and for a while he shared it with his brothers. Just the Brinkmann boys, settling into Texas soil. Then 1867 came around, and Otto married Marie Johanne Ochse, and the bachelor days in that little cottage were done.

Now, the walls themselves are worth your attention. They're built in what's called the fachwerk technique, half-timbered frames packed with native stone, a method German immigrants brought with them to Texas and planted here like a seed from the old country. You look at those walls and you're lookin' at a piece of that transplanted tradition, holding together more than a century and a half later.

The cottage got bigger in 1879. By then the owner was Mrs. Julius Ochse, Brinkmann's mother-in-law, and she oversaw that enlargement.

Otto himself lived on until 1915. Then the house passed through time, the way old houses do, until 1973, when Mr. and Mrs. William E.

Parrish purchased it and set about restoring it. They brought it back. And the fachwerk walls, those patient stone-filled timbers, just kept standing, the way they always had.

What the marker says

The cottage was built in 1860 by German-born Otto Brinkmann (1832-1915), who lived here with his brothers until he married Marie Johanne Ochse in 1867. The half-timbered walls filled with native stone display the "fachwerk" technique introduced in Texas by German immigrants. The structure was enlarged in 1879, when the owner was Brinkmann's mother-in-law, Mrs. Julius Ochse. The house was purchased in 1973 and restored by Mr. and Mrs. William E. Parrish. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1976