Uptown Blanco Headquarters

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This house was built in 1876 by German immigrant Henry Beckmann, Sr., who bought the property in late 1872 or early 1873 from Walter Hickey Howe, according to historian John Stribling Moursund in Blanco County History. Beckmann also built a mill and gin in 1873 just west of this house where the assisted living home now stands. The mill and gin were destroyed by fire in 1877.

By 1878 Beckmann had sold both the house and the mill property to Comparet and Avaline. The house is believed to have subsequently been owned and lived in by A. W. Capt and then Dr. T. G. Edwards, who gave it to one of his sons, Dr. George A. Edwards. The doctor's drug store was located across the street, where Oak Creek Cafe is now.

The second Dr. Edwards lived here with his wife Adrian until Edwards died in 1940. Mrs. Edwards later married Lee Conn. The Conns lived here until Lee died in 1947. The Blanco Chamber of Commerce operated out of the home in the early-to-mid-1960s. In 1997, the building housed the Blanco County Title Company, owned by the Stevenson family. Today Uptown Blanco, which owns the entire block north of the house, is headquartered in this historic house.

The original house, built of cut limestone and trimmed in native fieldstone, consisted of three rooms. Two were on the ground floor, an attic room over the front room was accessible via an outside stairway. When the home was later updated, the stairway was moved indoors, though the anchor marks for the stairway are still visible on the east wall. Mrs. Agnes Stevenson can still recall that remodeling, down to the placement of the furniture.

The exposed mill-sawed cypress beams in the front room are said to have been freighted to Blanco by wagon train. The six-inch pine flooring of the attic room forms the ceiling of the lower room. This wood-shingled house, thought to be the oldest structure in Blanco, reflects German architectural traditions common in the Hill Country. The old hand-dug well on the east side of the building has a cut limestone wellhead and a windmill. The well, wellhead, and windmill are the oldest in Blanco. The old storm cellar was used to store canned fruit and vegetables, milk, and butter.