Dambach-Besier Home

Through the nineteenth century Texas milk production was mostly a haphazard subsistence business: town dwellers as well as farm families kept milk cows, drank fresh milk and made butter and cheese. Cheese making was the first dairying to leave the farm, though most cheese eaten in Texas after the Civil War came from the dairy belt between New York and Wisconsin. Several small creameries of the 1880s failed, but twelve operated by 1900, and by 1914 about 100 made more than five million pounds of butter a year, with a dozen times as much still made at home.

What the plaque says

Dambach-Besier Home This rock house was probably built by F. Dambach, who bought the lot in 1867 for $70 and sold it two years later for $450. This was a full-time residence rather than a weekend "Sunday House." The porch was added during the ownership of Anna Besier, who acquired the property in 1881. The widow of George Besier, Anna moved into town so her four children would be close to school. She kept cows in a pasture across the street and sold milk, butter, and cheese. The Besier family owned the property until 1966. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 0.3 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 0.7 mi
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.
• Fort Martin Scott — 2.7 mi
  An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.
• Luckenbach — 9.9 mi
  A store, saloon and dance hall on Grape Creek that a humorist bought in 1971, declared a free state of mind, and turned into a pilgrimage for Texas music.

More markers nearby

• Sunday Houses — steps away
• First Methodist Church of Fredericksburg — steps away
• Gun Cap Factory — steps away
• Gillespie County — 0.3 mi