Building the Town

Building the Town. Lot 20. , San Felipe's First Townsfolk Arrived to find the "town" yet to be built. Many raised their houses, kitchens and stables with their own hands., Austin also enlisted skilled housewrights (house builders), sawyers, teamsters and blacksmiths to turn his vision for the capital into reality. They gradually added more refined homes, stores and inns for the town's growing population., Though improved buildings went up among the cruder cabins, San Felipe looked and felt like a frontier community until the day it was destroyed. Simple cabin or stately inn, all structures put to the torch during the town's burning in 1836 shared the same fate., "Uncle David built a new house, all the finer work about which he did or directed personally; the lumber in his house was gotten out of the woods by hand.... The walls... were hewed logs; the floors, window and door frames, facings and shutters, and the rafters, were whip-sawed... the roof was of... split shingles. , The house was proof against all stress of weather, and was roomy, comfortable and sightly." , David McCormick's great-nephew, recalling the house McCormick-likely assisted by Abe - built in 1833, David McCormick and Abe , David McCormick was a "useful mechanic" experienced in carpentry and construction-skills the growing village needed. In 1824, Austin contracted McCormick for a year of work in exchange for $800 and lots 20 and 21., McCormick brought with him an enslaved laborer named Abe, whom he trained in the art of carpentry. Together, they built some of the town's first structures, likely including Austin's original cabin and later hewn house, outbuildings and the land office. McCormick's own house was later used as the village's first church., McCormick's wife and children, who remained in Arkansas, died before he could send for them. McCormick left town to settle his grant, but offered Austin his "services at any time.", Round-Log Cabins were made from timber freely available in the area's river bottoms. They were quick to build and sturdy, but crude. As settlers built more refined homes, round-log cabins became outbuildings, store houses and other utilitarian structures., Log Houses of hewn lumber required the skills of a trained carpenter. Housewrights used broad axes to cut the surfaces of round logs flat. The finished logs were then notched and assembled., Sawn Lumber was used for building floors, siding and framing. At a pit saw, logs were fixed to a frame set over a hole in the ground or side of a hill. One man above and another below worked a rip saw to cut the log into planks. Sawmills powered by water and steam were eventually built to supply lumber., Brick was a durable and fire-proof building material especially suited to cellars, foundations and chimneys. Whether made locally or brought from Brazoria, brick was costly. Though some settlers dreamed of building permanent structures entirely of brick, none were ever completed., Images Courtesy: Rugeley-Moore Collection; Library of Congress; Beinecke Rare Book and Manscript Library; Yale University , Sponsor Plaque on top , This wayside is generosity underwritten by , Robert E. and Evelyn McKee Foundation