Browse Exhibits (54 total)
Harrison and McCulloch Stage Stop
The Selma Historical Parks Committee was commissioned to document Selma’s historical cemeteries and to preserve the remaining historical structures in Selma as new development approached the city. One of those structures documented was the Harrison & McCulloch Stage Stop.
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Harrison, John S. - House
The John S. Harrison Homestead, located in northeast Bexar County along the Cibolo Creek at the rear of Forest Creek Subdivision on the access road of IH-35, consists of four historic structures/features. The house was built in the early1850’s by stage master, John S. Harrison and his wife, Martha Jane Harrison. Harrison ran three Star Routes (mail and passenger routes) through Central Texas from the mid-1840’s through the mid-1860’s. He died in Waco, Texas in December 1864. The house is owned by the City of Selma and has been restored as a community center and city park. It was officially opened in August 2016.
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Heermann Store
The Heermann Store stands as one of the few surviving examples of the commercial buildings of rural south Texas. It has served multiple functions throughout its history. During the first few years after its construction, this building was a combination general store, post office, and residence (1892 to 1896). As a general store and post office, it would have served the community of Oak Island, with an estimated population of 600 agriculturalists scattered throughout the area. The building later served as a residence for farmers (ca. 1910 to 1939), and between 1945 and 1970, possibly a support building for a cotton gin. In addition to the main building, the Heermann Store site also includes ruins of an historic building reported to have been a saloon, and possibly at one time a gristmill. The saloon likely operated sometime between 1910 and 1920. The overall property may have been the site of commercial activities serving the Oak Island community for much of the time between 1892 and 1920. Rural general stores throughout this area were often short-lived business ventures, and many of them were abandoned after they ceased to be stores. The Heermann store demonstrates the early rural commercial building’s inherent adaptive characteristics. (Source: HABS report)
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Heidemann Ranch Complex
Nine Historic Structures built in the 1860s: Log cabin, barn, smokehouse, water well, workshop, Heidemann-Barrera house, storage house, cemetery, possible early kiln.
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Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, July 6, 2011.
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In 2014, Professor Frances Gale of the University of Texas At Austin, School of Architecture, took the Materials Conservation Laboratory class to the Heidemann property to analyze the building materials of the log house and the barn.
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A Building Award was given to Mr. Roy R.Barrera, Sr. and Mr. Gilbert Barrera by the San Antonio Conservation Society in March 2016 for the restoration of the cabin, the barn and the smokehouse by Gilbert Barrera.
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In 2016, the Heidemann Family Cemetery was dedicated and designated as a Historic Texas Cemetery (HTC).
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Herrera, Blas Ranch
The Blas Herrera Ranch, located in southern Bexar County, Texas, represents an important survival of an early 19th century homestead complex in south Texas. The structures comprising the compound reflect the simple character of central Texas vernacular architecture during the early 19th century and the simple Tejano structures which were common to the area. Historic built features throughout the ranch reflect the evolution and changing uses of the land, from active ranching, to one of scaled back ranching activities, to social and community events, to the simple pasturing of horses. At the heart of the ranch stand two jacales dating from the 1830s-1840s, the larger jacal having been one of two Herrera-Ruiz homesteads. Other structures include two wooden buildings, a pavilion and a few additional structures related to ranching and social activities. The jacals are indicative of the early Tejano construction techniques.
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Hoffmann, Caroline and Jacob
Few women owned property in their own right in the nineteenth century. In the Helotes settlement, Carmel Marnoch owned her own carriage, 20 horses and 15 head of cattle; and Teodora Martinez owned 130 acres. However, by 1881, Caroline Hoffmann owned more than 4,000 acres, including horses and cattle, in her
own right. By 1890, Caroline and her husband, Jacob, had amassed more than 7,500 acres. By 1908, five years after Jacob’s death, the Hoffmann estate included 12,667 acres, a substantial portion in present day Government Canyon State Natural Area.
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Huebner - Onion Homestead
This site was home to two important area families, as well as a stagecoach stop in the 1800s. Development here began in 1858 when Joseph Huebner and his family, who arrived from Austria five years earlier, bought acreage surrounding what is now Huebner Creek and Huebner Road. A successful San Antonio businessman, he soon erected three limestone buildings here and began to acquire herds of horses, mules and cattle. He also opened a stagecoach stop at the family's homestead ranch on the San Antonio to Bandera stage line route. The stop included blacksmith services, change of stock and overnight accommodations if travelers were unable to pass over the flooded creek. Joseph Huebner died in 1882 and was buried on the homestead property.
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Jones, Enoch Farmstead
Enoch Jones, land speculator, son of Thomas Griffith and Susan (Jones) Jones, was born in 1802 in Wooster, Ohio. He immigrated to Texas sometime before 1837 and in partnership with John William Smith acquired a vast amount of land, which he sold at a profit when he returned to Detroit. Eventually he acquired almost 175,000 acres on the Medina River and built a large mansion, which Count Norbert von Ormay bought in 1885.
(See "Handbook of Texas Online: JONES, ENOCH")
[Special note:The name Norbert von Ormay is NOT misspelled. The Count’s family name was spelled with an “a”. When the people of Von Ormy decided to name their community after the Count they dropped the “a” from Ormay. The property was sold by the heirs of Enoch Jones to Count Norbert von Ormay.]
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Kallison Ranch
Kallison Ranch was purchased in 1910 by Nathan Kallison from two tracts that were originally part of the Jacob Hoffman Ranch, one of the earliest ranches in western Bexar County. Nathan and his wife, Anna, were Jewish immigrants from Russia who came to San Antonio in 1899 by way of Chicago. They operated a one-room harness shop which eventually became the largest farm-and- ranch supply business in the Southwest. The 1,683-acre ranch consisted of flat farmland on the southern end, with rolling, chalky pasturelands to the north. (Nick Kotz, The Harness Maker’s Dream: Nathan Kallison and the Rise of South Texas, Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2013)
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Kenney, Patrick - House
The Patrick Kenney House located in Bexar County near Somerset, TX was built around 1877-78, after Patrick Henry Kenny purchased 46 ½ acres of land for $186.00 from D.W. Heard on 22 December 1877.1 The acreage was originally a part of the Clemente Bustillo grant, Survey #348.2 This purchase added to the already extensive acreage Kenney had previously purchased located on from the Michael De Chaumes grant.
Special note: The name of Bexar Road is pronounced “Bex–sar” not “Bear”. There was actually a community of Bexar (Bex sar) in this general area!
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Featured Exhibit
Krause House
ANTON F. KRAUSE HOUSE San Antonio, TX. With political unrest and threats of war in Europe, Anton F. Krause and his future...