The Witte-Williams House

Duane's take

The way I tell it, this one comes straight from the official marker for the Witte-Williams House in Washington County. Let me lay it out for you. Now, every good old Texas house has a first chapter, and this one starts in Hanover, Germany, with a man named Victor Witte.

Born in 1820, he made his way across an ocean and a good stretch of this continent to settle in Latium. That was 1848. Whatever the crossing cost him, he stayed.

He put down roots so deep that the story of this place stretches clean across a century. Fast forward to 1872. Victor Witte is no longer a newcomer.

He's a man of standing, and he builds something lasting right here, a three-room frame house, built for his son Armin. Three rooms. Modest, sure.

But solid. The kind of thing a man builds when he means it. Now here's where the tale gets interesting, because Victor wasn't done.

Somewhere along the way he added a log cabin to the property. And not just any log cabin. This one came from Mill Creek Crossing, sitting right along the nearby Houston-Austin wagon road.

He repurposed it as a hay barn. A hay barn. You take a cabin that once watched wagon traffic roll between Houston and Austin, and you fill it with hay.

Nobody asked the cabin how it felt about that. Victor Witte passed in 1900. But the house carried on.

In 1906, his granddaughter Emma Williams arrived, moving her family to the place. She wasn't just keeping the lights on, either. By 1914, Emma had added a two-room ell and a porch.

She shaped this house to fit her people, same as her grandfather had before her. Her descendants held onto it all the way to 1969, when they sold the property to Mr. and Mrs. Robin Elverson.

And the Elversons, they looked at what they had, and they got to work restoring it. Now here's the part that makes you smile. That old log cabin hay barn, the one Victor Witte dragged over from Mill Creek Crossing all those years ago, the one that had been sitting there smelling like old straw and history?

The Elversons annexed it as a living room. A cabin that started its life along a Houston-Austin wagon road, spent a chapter as a hay barn, and ended up as somebody's living room. Victor Witte built for his son.

Emma Williams built for her family. And somebody's sitting in that old log room right now, probably with no idea what a long road it took to get there.

What the marker says

Victor Witte (1820-1900), who came from Hanover, Germany, to Latium in 1848 built a 3-room frame house here for son Armin in 1872; later added log cabin from Mill Creek Crossing of nearby Houston-Austin wagon road, as a hay barn. Witte's granddaughter, Emma Williams, and family moved here in 1906, built 2-room ell and porch in 1914. Her descendants sold place in 1969 to Mr. and Mrs. Robin Elverson, whose restoration included annexing the log cabin hay barn as living room. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974