Stagecoach Inn, 1856

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same way. Out here in DeWitt County, there's a stone building that's been standing since 1856, and if those walls could talk, they'd have a lot of road dust to shake off. The man who built it was V.

Hoch, a native of Germany, and he didn't go looking far for his materials. He quarried the stone right there nearby and set it into something that was meant to last. And brother, it lasted.

This was an inn on the Austin to Indianola Stagecoach Road, which means it sat right in the path of everyone who was going somewhere important or coming back from somewhere hard. Travelers, freight, news from the coast, the whole restless business of a young state moving through. That building took it all in.

Now, years roll by the way they do out on the Texas plains, and in 1899 a man named Valentine Bennet purchased the place. The stagecoach era was fading by then, but the stone didn't care about any of that. It just kept standing.

Then came the part of the story that doesn't happen often enough. Valentine Bennet's grandson, Ross Boothe, Jr., looked at what his family owned and decided it was worth saving. In 1954, he restored it.

Not replaced, not rebuilt from scratch. Restored. That's a word that carries some respect in it.

So what V. Hoch quarried out of the ground in 1856, what Valentine Bennet purchased in 1899, Ross Boothe, Jr. handed back to the world in 1954, still standing, still stone, still square. Some things, it turns out, you build right the first time.

What the marker says

Built by V. Hoch, a native German; of stone quarried nearby. An inn on Austin-Indianola Stagecoach Road. Purchased by Valentine Bennet, 1899. Restored by his grandson, Ross Boothe, Jr. 1954. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1964