Pochmann House

The family of cabinetmakers who lived here also produced a scholar. Henry August Pochmann, born in Round Top on January 5, 1901, was a great-grandson of the organ builder Traugott Wandke. He went to school here and in San Antonio, studied at Southwest Texas State, the University of Texas and North Carolina, and taught English at the University of Wisconsin from 1938 to 1971. His 865-page German Culture in America, 1600-1900, published in 1957, won the Loubat Prize. He died in 1973 and is buried in Nacogdoches, where the family papers are kept.

What the plaque says

Pochmann House German immigrant Zoellistin (Cellestin) Pochmann (1835-1862) came to Texas about 1856-57. He worked as a cabinetmaker in La Grange and married Karoline Wandke (1837-1910) in 1857. They moved to a 3-room house about three miles northwest of here in 1860. After making improvements to the house they relocated the structure to this site about 1861. Zoellistin died from a snakebite in 1862. His son, Heinrich (Hy) Pochmann (1860-1926) also became a skilled cabinetmaker and served as mayor of Round Top for four years. Heinrich and Clara (Ebner) Pochmann reared their four sons here. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Round Top and Festival Hill — steps away
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway — 15 mi
  Two park units on an 11,000-acre lake between Austin and College Station, joined by a thirteen-mile trailway for hikers, cyclists and riders with primitive camps along the way.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 16 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 18 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.

More markers nearby

• Schiege Cigar Factory — steps away
• Wandke House — steps away
• Schiege House — steps away
• Early Texas Hotels and Inns — steps away