The Wilhelm Weidner Homestead

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's the story of the Wilhelm Weidner Homestead in Comal County. Now, some men build a house. Wilhelm Weidner built a memory.

Born in 1835, he knew exactly what he wanted when he set out to build on this land, and he wasn't about to settle for anything less than home. The home he'd left behind in Germany. So he copied it.

Stone for stone, line for line, he set about recreating his ancestral home right here in Texas. And the land, bless it, gave him nearly everything he needed. The stone came from the Cibolo Creek bed, quarried right out of the earth nearby.

The cedar came from the Kramme farm, just down the way. The shingles and lumber, cypress, were made locally. Between 1873 and 1875, that two-story house rose up, and if you squinted just right, you might've thought you were standing somewhere in Germany.

But you weren't. You were in Comal County, Texas. Now, a man building a home has to think practical too, and Wilhelm was nothing if not practical.

His wife Maria, she was a Kramme before she was a Weidner, and she already had a log house on the property. Wilhelm didn't tear it down. He incorporated it, folded it right into the plan for more room.

Smart man. And he wasn't done there. Sometime in the 1870s, he put up a smokehouse, a shop, and a laundry, all in one.

Then in 1904, he added a small stone dwelling. Wilhelm Weidner passed in 1907, but what he built kept standing, kept living. Four generations of the Weidner family have lived here on this land.

That's not just a house. That's a homestead. That's something a man carried across an ocean and built with creek stone and cedar and the kind of stubborn love that doesn't have a translation.

What the marker says

Using stone quarried in Cibolo Creek bed, cedar from the nearby Kramme farm, and locally-made cypress shingles and lumber, Wilhelm Weidner (1835 - 1907) copied his ancestral home in Germany in building his two-story home here in 1873-1875. He incorporated a log house owned by his wife Maria (Kramme), for more room. He also built (1870s) the smokehouse-shop-laundry and (1904) the small stone dwelling. Four generations of the Weidner family have lived hre. RTHL - 1974