The Junior Historian, Volume 11, Number 6, May 1951 Page: 6
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THE JUNIOR HISTORIAN
Irish Creek Settlement. They were the
Taylors, Morrisons, Cottinghams, Kirk-
lands, Rankins, Myers, Cooks, Neels,
Suttons, Weisigers, and Andersons.
These early settlers lived in log houses,
some of which, like the Cottingham's
house, consisted of two rooms with a
passageway between.
Until Burns' death in 1856, the
Arthur Burns home was the community
center. Neighbors carried their grain to
be ground in the Burns' water-powered
mill on the banks of the Guadalupe
River. As was the early-day custom,
travelers along the roads stopped to
rest in the Burns home. In 1863 Sam
Houston enjoyed the hospitality of that
home as he made his way from Austin's
Colony on the Brazos to La Bahia.
With the coming of I)eWitt County's
first railroad in 1872, a townsite was
surveyed a short distance east of the
Burns home and given the name of
Burns Station in honor of the first
settlers. Irish Creek Settlement was
then changed to Burns Station Com-
munity.
Situated on the Charles Lockhart
survey on the southern boundary of the
Irish Creek Settlement, the house built
by Bill Weisiger in 1859 is still stand-
ing. It is located just west of United
States Highway 87 three miles north
of Thomaston. Since 1865 the home
has been owned and occupied by mem-
bers of the Anderson family. The orig-
inal two-story house has been enlarged
by a one-story addition on the west and
entrance porches on the north.
The Upper Cuero Creek Settlement,
located some eighteen or twenty miles
north of the Irish Creek Settlement,
was begun in 1827, one year after the
"Burns home was built. The first home
in this settlement and probably the
second in the county was built by John
McCoy on the headright grant he re-
ceived from Empresario Green DeWitt.
In 1829 Kimber W. Barton, his wife,
Margaret, and their child settled on a
grant adjoining the McCoy's. Other
newcomers settled near the Bartongrant.
Indications are that the earliest homes
in this section were built of a crude
cement. In his Memoirs, James Norman
Smith mentions that Concrete was so
named, when he surveyed the town in
1846, because early homes had been
built of concrete. No doubt this type
of building material was not practical.
for as early as 1840 logs were used in
building the homes of the Blair, Smith,
North, and Baker families. After 1846
the Upper Cuero Creek Settlement came
to be called Concrete.
The outstanding home in the Con-
crete area was built by Joseph Stevens
in 1847. This two-and-one-half-story
house contained a hall twenty feet wide
and two large north and south rooms
with extremely high ceilings on both
the first and second floors. On the north-
west was a one-story addition of two
rooms, which served as the kitchen and
the dining room. L umber used in build-
ing had been shipped from Florida to
Indianola and hauled to the site by
ox-cart. Surrounded by a rock fence,
the Stevens home was the show place
of its section for many years until it
was destroyed by fire in June, 1936.
A second home in the Upper Cuero
Creek section played an important part
in the lives of the settlers of early De-
Witt County. Just south of the Upper
Cuero Creek Settlement and four miles
north of the present site of Cuero, Dan-
iel Boone Friar in 1839 built a combina-
tion house and store at the junction of
the Gonzales and Victoria roads. The
two-story house consisted of two forty-
foot-square rooms on each floor and
was built of heavy lumber put together
with large wooden pegs. In this struc-
ture was established DeWitt County's
first post office on May 22, 1846. Be-
sides the store and post office, the Friars
ran a stage stop at their home.
In 1849 Crockett Cardwell bought
the building and for the next quarter
of a century operated the store, post
office, stage stop, and also a tavern there.
[continued on page 12]
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Texas State Historical Association. The Junior Historian, Volume 11, Number 6, May 1951, periodical, May 1951; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth391577/m1/8/?q=%22mex-tex%22: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.