Wednesday – Saturday | 8 AM – 1 PM
History of the Farmhouse
Boggy Creek Farmhouse is located on one of the oldest urban farms in the United States, dating back to the 1840s. The farmhouse itself is a historic site where notable figures, including Sam Houston, dined.
Built Over the Winter of 1840/1841
Whereas most houses in and around 1830’s-1840’s Austin were either log cabins or simple plank dogtrot structures, the Boggy Creek Farmhouse is a Greek Revival design, with identical rooms flanking a central hallway. Its floor plan is similar to that of the French Legation, also one of the oldest existing houses in Austin (thought to have been built 1841). Both are essentially an enclosed dogtrot style.
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The two front rooms of the Boggy Creek Farmhouse, the parlor and the owners’ bedroom, are large, measuring about 16′ square. The two back rooms (children’s bedrooms) are smaller.
Each room has a fireplace, three with the original mantles intact. The fourth lost its mantle to a cooking stove fire, likely in the 1930’s.
After the Tornado of 2001, which dumped a huge pecan tree next to the house, damaging it severely, Larry milled a new fireplace mantle out of the Tornado Pecan wood, in a similar style to the original.
The fireboxes are shallow, a design popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (designed by Count Rumford.) They throw heat efficiently into the room and draw the smoke extremely well; no evidence of sooty or burned spots are found on the mantles.
The bricks forming the fireboxes and chimneys are Austin Common. There are two chimneys to serve the four fireplaces with duplex flues in each.
Left, the Living Room’s Tornado Pecan (children’s bedroom) fire place; Right, the “Pioneer Room” (children’s bedroom) fire place.
There are no closets in the house. The original Bastrop loblolly pine floor exists under a narrow pine floor installed in the 1930’s (by the Siegmunds). Walls and ceilings in the house were originally lath and plaster (except for tongue and groove boards in the current kitchen and one original children’s bedroom.) When wall paper became popular, the lath and plaster was exchanged for shiplap boarding, cheesecloth and wallpaper. There are no original light fixtures and most of the 7′ x 3′ cypress, pegged, four-panel doors were stolen during a period when the house was vacant. Two original exterior doors on the back of the house survived the theft.
The original kitchen, Texas style, was in a separate building probably near the white shed behind the house, but it later occupied 3 different rooms in the house. The first indoor kitchen was located in the east children’s room, which was closest to the well on the east side of the house. The wood-fired stove, flued through the chimney, at some point caught the mantle and floor on fire. The kitchen was relocated to the west children’s room, with the wood cook stove again flued through the chimney. When the City of Austin extended water and gas lines out to the area, probably in the 1930’s, the kitchen wood stove was retired, sparing any potential damage to the fireplace there. The 3rd and current indoor location of the kitchen is the back part of the central hall area (which may have been the dining room, originally — where President Sam Houston dined.)
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The exterior of the house is either Bastrop pine or cypress siding, fastened with square nails. All of the windows are original, with some “wavy” glass, except the master bedroom windows, which were installed as part of the renovation in the late 1930’s. At that time the windows on the two front rooms were moved side by side, eliminating the shutter space between them. We hope to restore them to their original position and also reconstruct the originally larger front porch. The roof is pitched up to a flat area between the two chimneys.
Old outbuildings on the property include a garage, probably built in the early 1900’s. A former resident remembers Grandfather Siegmund’s Model T car parked between hay bales in the garage. The garage is now used for for storage. Behind the house is an old shed, which is now the tool and laundry room. When we dug a water line out to the field, we uncovered, at a depth of 14 to18 inches, kitchen garbage such as chicken and round steak bones, pottery, and silverware, all in disrepair, very near this simple plank shed. This may have been the site of the original outdoor kitchen. We are told by the Siegmund family that two outhouses were located a little ways beyond this shed. (Thankfully, former families have installed bathrooms in corners of two of the rooms in the house.) Speaking of digging, it seems that every time we dig anywhere, we uncover “artifacts,” ranging from pottery fragments (identified as from the 1840’s) to horseshoes and shutter hinges, not to mention the old glass that erupts from the earth on a regular basis. There were no garbage services throughout much of the farm's history.
Various Restorations of the House
First photo shows the farm house in 1992 when we fell in love with it. The looming tree on the side of the house is, ominously, the giant pecan tree (see the second photo for its fate.)​
Second photo shows aftermath of the Tornado of Nov 2001. Volunteers working to fix the house after the pecan tree crashed into the bedroom Larry created the missing fireplace mantle out of part of this pecan tree.
Third photo shows restoration work in 2012, in addition to new porch foundations. A house made of wood always needs some kind of tender care. We are more than willing to take care of this old place.
And finally the old place is happy again
We would like to thank Preservation Austin for the matching grants they have awarded the old farmhouse for each of the following critical upkeep projects.
In 2019:
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All of the windows of the farmhouse were lovingly restored by Red River Restoration. We also thank our community for its donations to this expensive but critical project.
In 2020:
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The house received a new paint job after having old, chipping paint removed and rotten wood replaced.
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The house received a new, beautiful roof by Straight Solutions.