Yerge-Hill Family Home

Duane's take

Here's how the marker on this place tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some homes just sit on a piece of land. But this one, this Colonial home standing right here in Bastrop County, carries the weight of two family names and a whole lot of Texas history inside its walls.

The Yerge-Hill Family Home, they call it, and there's a reason both names are on the door. John C. Yerger came down from Mississippi and put his roots in Texas soil back in 1840, making him one of the early settlers of this county.

By the time 1887 rolled around, he and his son-in-law, John W. Hill, a native of Bastrop County himself, born in 1836, set about building this Colonial home together. Two men, two generations joined by family, one house.

Now John W. Hill, for the record, lived all the way to 1928, which tells you something about the kind of stock that built this place. But the home wasn't the whole story.

The Yerger and Hill families also moved their family store, picked it up from Alum Creek and carried it right to the site of Smithville, a town being laid out at the time as a division point on the M. K. and T. railroad. Think about that for a second.

They didn't just build a home. They helped set a town in motion. The house, the store, the town site, all of it connected to these two men and the family they shared.

That's the kind of mark that outlasts a lifetime, and that Colonial home is still here to prove it.

What the marker says

John C. Yerger, 1840 settler from Mississippi, and son-in-law, John W. Hill (1836 - 1928), native of Bastrop County, built this Colonial home, 1887. Moved family store also from Alum Creek to site of Smithville, laid out as a division point on M. K. & T. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965