DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it — and it's one worth telling right. This is the William Frobese Home, DeWitt County, Texas. Now settle in, because this one starts on the coast and ends up right here, and the journey it took to get here is something else entirely.
William Frobese was born in 1838, came over from Germany to Texas in 1859, and didn't waste a moment getting to work. He rose to a place of leadership as a partner in what the marker calls the foremost banking-mercantile firm in the region — H. Runge and Company.
That is not a small thing. That is a man who arrived in a new country and made himself indispensable. Now, Frobese built his home not here in Cuero, but down in Indianola — a port city about seventy miles to the southeast.
A proper house, built to last. And for a while, it did. Then came 1875.
The storm that hit Indianola that year didn't negotiate. The marker calls it Indianola's ruin, and that word — ruin — carries all the weight it needs to. But here is where the story turns from tragedy to something almost stubborn in its ingenuity.
Frobese was not about to let that house go down with the city. So his home was dismantled. Every piece of it.
And those pieces were numbered — numbered — so that every board and beam could find its way back to its rightful place. Then, loaded onto oxcarts, the whole thing made the journey inland to Cuero. Reassembled like a puzzle that refused to be lost.
William Frobese went on to have ten children, and when he died in 1911, he left behind not just a family but a house that had already survived more than most. And that house — one of the oldest homes in Cuero — is still owned by his descendants. Some things, it turns out, you number carefully enough, and they just keep standing.
What the marker says
One of oldest homes in Cuero built in port city of Indianola (70 miles southeast) by William Frobese (1838-1911), who came from Germany to Texas in 1859 and rose to place of leadership as a partner in foremost banking-mercantile firm, H. Runge and Company. After Indianola's ruin in 1875 storm, house was dismantled and moved here by oxcart, with the parts numbered for reassembly. Frobese had 10 children. House is still owned by descendants. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1970