The Meinhardt-Pfeil Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm not gonna stray one word from what it says. Somewhere in Gillespie County stands a two-story limestone house, and that stone has been holding secrets since about 1850. That's when Albert and Doris Meinhardt, pioneer settlers in the area, put up the original section of what would become a home with more than a few chapters left to write.

Limestone walls, two stories, built to last. And last it did. Now, by 1879, Albert was gone, and Doris found herself a widow.

A widow with a house, and decisions to make. She sold the property to G. Adolph Pfeil, a local cotton gin owner, and here's the part worth savoring: Pfeil was her former son-in-law.

Whatever the family story was, the marker doesn't say, but the land changed hands between those two people, and that is a detail worth a long pause around any campfire. Pfeil, who would live until 1926, didn't exactly move in and leave well enough alone. He converted part of the living area into a blacksmith shop.

A blacksmith shop, inside what had been a family home. And if that weren't enough reinvention for one building, he later opened a soda water factory right there on the same property. From pioneer homestead to smithing iron to fizzing up soda water, that old limestone just kept absorbing whatever life threw at it.

The house stayed in the Pfeil family all the way until 1939. Nearly ninety years of stories soaked into those walls. Some homes just refuse to be only one thing.

What the marker says

The original section of this two-story limestone residence was constructed about 1850 by pioneer area settlers Albert and Doris Meinhardt. A widow in 1879, Doris sold the property to her former son-in-law G. Adolph Pfeil (d. 1926), a local cotton gin owner. He converted part of the living area for use as a blacksmith shop and later opened a soda water factory here. The house remained in the Pfeil family until 1939. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980