Wunderlich Houses

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do it justice. Out here in Gillespie County, two houses sit side by side, and they've got a story older than most of us can imagine. It starts in 1883, when a man named Adolph Wunderlich married Martha Schumann.

Now Adolph was not a man who let the grass grow under his feet. Soon as those vows were said, he got to building. The first house he put up was the smaller of the two you see here, and he did something clever with it.

He combined log and stone construction, mixing what was at hand into something solid and lasting. It was a good house. A fine house, even.

There was just one problem. The family kept growing. Five children will do that to a place, fill it up fast, crowd the corners, spill into the yard.

So Adolph went back to work. In 1892 he built the larger house, this time in limestone blocks, the kind of construction that tells the Hill Country you mean to stay. And stay they did.

On this farm, Adolph raised cotton and corn. He grew sugarcane for molasses. He tended grapes for wine.

That's a man who knew how to work a piece of land from sunrise to sundown and still find something to put on the table. Those five Wunderlich children, meanwhile, made their way every day to Live Oak School, two and a half miles down the road, where classes were taught in German. Two and a half miles is a real walk when you're small, but that's the world they knew.

The Wunderlich family held onto this property all the way until 1956, the same year Martha Schumann Wunderlich passed. Adolph had gone before her, in 1935. Two houses, two lifetimes, one family that built something in limestone meant to outlast them both.

And it did.

What the marker says

When Adolph Wunderlich (d. 1935) married Martha Schumann (d. 1956) in 1883. He built the smaller of these two homes, combining log and stone construction. The family soon outgrew the first dwelling, and Adolph built the larger house of limestone blocks in 1892. On this farm, he raised cotton, corn, sugarcane for molasses and grapes for wine. The five Wunderlich children attended Live Oak School, 2.5 miles away, where classes were taught in German. The Wunderlich family owned this property until 1956.