Welgehausen Ranch

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'll let Welgehausen Ranch do the talking. Friedrich Welgehausen and his wife Juliane came to this land as German immigrants, and sometime in the 1850s they put up a one-room log cabin right here. One room.

Log walls. That was home. Now, you might look around at what stands on this property today and wonder how you get from there to here, and the marker is happy to walk you through it.

When Friedrich and Juliane's son Conrad and his wife Margaretha, born a Walter before she married into this family, acquired the property in 1873, they didn't tear that old cabin down. They folded it inside. They built a two-story limestone house around it, enclosing that original one-room log cabin within the new walls, so the beginning of the place became the beating heart of everything that came after.

There's something in that worth sitting with for a moment. The old structure didn't disappear. It just got surrounded by what grew from it.

And the ranch kept growing. The barn you see here was built originally as a rock and log house. There's also a two-story log cabin on the property that serves as a guest house today.

Early structures, both of them, carrying that same layered sense of time the main house carries. The Welgehausen family held onto this land all the way until 1975. German immigrants arrived here in the 1850s, planted a cabin, and their family name stayed on the deed for well over a century.

Some roots go down deep, and some of them get built right into the walls.

What the marker says

German immigrants Friedrich Welgehausen and his wife Juliane built a one-room log cabin here in the 1850s. After their son Conrad and his wife Margaretha (Walter) acquired the property in 1873, they enclosed the cabin within their two-story limestone house. Other early structures here include the barn, built originally as a rock and log house, and a two-story log cabin, which serves as a guest house. The Welgehausen family owned the property until 1975. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983