Schiege House

The house's second life began with a Houston preservationist who had already saved a landmark nearby. After three generations of Schiege ownership, Hazel Ledbetter bought and restored this 1885 house in 1965. Four years earlier she had bought the Lewis-Wagner House at Winedale from the Wagner family and shown it to her friend Ima Hogg, and in 1965 she gave Lone Oak Cottage to Hogg's Winedale project, where it now carries her name. In 1991 Ted and Sandy Reed of Houston refitted the Schiege buildings as guest quarters, the start of the Round Top Inn.

What the plaque says

Schiege House Prussian immigrants Carl Johann Rudolph (Charles Henry) (b. 1815) and Caroline (Schubert) Schiege acquired land here in 1861. Only one of their four children, Charles Henry, Jr., (1858-1935), survived to adulthood. Charles Henry, Jr., built a 2-story home at this site abut 1885, the year he married Emma Frenzel. Emma died in 1892. In 1893 Schiege married Marie Becker; together they reared ten children. Schiege established a local cigar factory and also served as Round Top justice of the peace, mayor, city marshall, and alderman. Charles and Marie Schiege are buried in nearby Florida Chapel Cemetery. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Round Top and Festival Hill — 0.2 mi
  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
• Pochmann House — steps away
• Wandke House — steps away
• Early Texas Hotels and Inns — 0.2 mi