Schueddemagen Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, picture yourself standing in Fayette County, Texas, in the year 1852, and a man named Carl Siegismunde Bauer has got something to prove. He's got a daughter, and she's married a man named Conrad Schueddemagen, and Carl Siegismunde Bauer is not about to let that young couple set up housekeeping in just any old structure.

No sir. He's going to build them something that reminds him of home. Back in Saxony, they knew how to put up a house.

And Carl Siegismunde Bauer, he remembered every bit of it. What he raised up out of the Texas earth was a replica of a Saxony home, right there in Fayette County. Now, the Teutonic influence, the marker says, shows itself in two places you can't miss: that steep roof reaching up like it's trying to outrun a German winter, and walls, native limestone walls, two feet thick, plastered smooth on the inside and the outside both.

Two feet. You could lean on those walls and they would not care one bit. Inside, Bauer kept the cedar.

Cedar ceilings, cedar floors, cedar beams, cedar fireplace mantels. The whole house breathing that particular smell, warm and close and enduring. He built all of this for his daughter and her husband, Conrad Schueddemagen, in 1852.

A father's work, made to last. And last it did.

What the marker says

Replica of Saxony home of Carl Siegismunde Bauer, the builder. Teutonic influence is shown in steep roof and 2-foot native limestone walls, plastered inside and out. Cedar ceilings, floors, beams, fireplace mantels. Built in 1852 for Bauer's daughter and her husband, Conrad Schueddemagen. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965