Waddell-Dudensing-Bering Home

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Waddell-Dudensing-Bering Home in Austin County. Now settle in, because this old house has got more layers to it than a good brisket, and every one of those layers was put there by somebody different with something to prove. It starts around 1842, when a man named F.B.

Waddell built the front portion and the loft. Just the front and the loft, mind you. A man builds what he needs, and apparently in 1842, that was enough.

But houses have a way of attracting ambition. Fast forward to 1873, when a German-born fellow named William Dudensing bought the property. Now William Dudensing, who passed in 1892, was not the kind of man to leave well enough alone.

He looked at what Waddell had built and said, in whatever combination of German and English he had available to him at the time, that rooms were needed at the back. So he added them. And then the house passed on, staying within Dudensing's family, and somebody along the way, some other hand entirely, extended the porch across the whole front.

That house sat in Dudensing family hands all the way until 1956. Then it waited. And in 1968, a man named August C.

Bering the Third came along. Now Bering was himself a descendant of Germans who had emigrated to Texas back in 1846, so he understood something about putting down roots in a new place and making a structure fit for the long haul. He purchased it, enlarged it, and restored it.

And here is the detail that ties the whole story together, the quiet little surprise waiting inside: the staircase still carries its original stenciled trim. All those owners, all those added rooms and extended porches and enlargements, and that stenciled trim just kept right on being itself. Some things, it turns out, survive everything.

What the marker says

F.B. Waddell built the front portion and loft of this house about 1842. When German-born William Dudensing (d. 1892) bought the property in 1873, he added rooms at the back. The porch was extended across the front by others in his family who owned the house until 1956. August C. Bering, III, a descendant of Germans who emigrated to Texas in 1846, purchased (1968), enlarged, and restored the structure. Staircase features original stenciled trim. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974