The Menn House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Menn House out in Fayette County. Now, every good house has a story, and this one starts before the family that gave it its name ever set foot inside. The house was built near Winedale, four and a half miles to the northeast, and the marker points to Samuel K.

Lewis as the man who most likely put it up. Lewis was born in 1807, died in 1867, and in between those two years he had managed to serve as a congressman of the Texas Republic. Not a bad résumé for a man who built a house in the country.

But the Lewises don't hold the spotlight here long, because by the 1860s the house had new occupants, and they came in force. William and Carolina Menn moved in with their twelve children. Twelve.

You stop and let that number settle a moment. That is a house that knows noise, knows chaos, knows the particular thunder of feet on floorboards at all hours. The Menns filled whatever Samuel K.

Lewis had built and then some. They lived in that place through the 1860s as occupants, and then in 1880 William Menn went ahead and bought it outright. The house that had sheltered his family for years became, on paper, his.

And that was not the end of it. The Menn descendants kept calling it home all the way until 1931. Generation after generation, the same walls, the same floors, the same four and a half miles between them and Winedale.

Some houses just hold on to a family, and some families hold on right back.

What the marker says

Built near Winedale (4.5 Miles NE), probably by landowner Samuel K. Lewis (1807-67), ex-congressman, Texas Republic. Occupied 1860s by William and Carolina Menn and their 12 children, bought 1880 by Menn, this was home of their descendants until 1931. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1973