The Patton Home

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker on the Patton Home in Gillespie County, so let's see what the stone and the record have to say. Now, limestone has a way of holding onto a family's story, and this particular stretch of Fredericksburg stone has been doing exactly that for well over a century. The man who started it all was Albert Lee Patton, born in 1851, a pioneer business leader in Fredericksburg by any account worth keeping.

He and his wife Emma, born a Wahrmund, purchased this piece of land in 1876, and shortly after that purchase, they set to work. What they built was a four-room limestone home. Four rooms.

Solid, practical, the kind of structure that says we are planting ourselves here and we intend to stay. And stay they did. Then came the late 1880s, and somebody decided four rooms and a plain front just wouldn't do anymore.

Alterations were completed, and the change that catches the eye even now was the addition of a three-window front bay. Three windows looking out onto Fredericksburg like the house itself wanted a better view of the world going by. Albert Lee Patton lived until 1934.

His wife Emma passed in 1927. And when the family story carried forward, it was their daughter, Emma Patton Detjen, who inherited the residence. The daughter carrying her mother's name, and the house carrying the family's.

That home stayed in Patton hands all the way until 1978. More than a hundred years after that original purchase, the limestone finally passed to someone outside the family name. Some houses just hold on.

This one held on hard.

What the marker says

Pioneer Fredericksburg business leader Albert Lee Patton (1851-1934) and his wife Emma (Wahrmund) (d. 1927) built the original four-room section of this limestone home shortly after they purchased the property in 1876. Alterations to the structure, completed in the late 1880s, included the addition of the three-window front bay. Later inherited by a daughter, Emma (Patton) Detjen, the residence remained in the Patton family until 1978. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980