Seguin's Sebastopol House - Sat., Jan. 20, 2018

If you missed yesterday's blog, I said I'd be giving the history of Seguin's Sebastopol House in today's blog. A couple of mysteries are involved and I'll get to those farther down on the page.

Colonel Joshua Young built the house circa 1856-1857 for his sister, Catherine LeGette. Later the house was owned by the local Seguin mayor Joseph Zorn and is sometimes referred to as the Zorn House.

Did you know that Seguin was hailed "The Concrete City" in the mid-1800s? How did it get that name when most families were building wooden dog-trot cabins?

Sebastopol House from the front

Sebastopol House side view - note
elevation change and how big this house is

Back of the house - kitchen was
on this lower level

A typical wooden dog-trot cabin

Here's the scoop from a historical marker in the Sebastopol House:

"The Spanish introduced aggregate wall construction to the New World in the 16th century, using shell as the base material. Although the use of natural cements and concrete began in the United States in 1817, with the building of the Erie Canal, not until the 1840s, did builders use gravel for common house walls. The pioneers in gravel wall construction were Joseph Goodrich in Wisconsin, Obadiah Parker in New York, and Dr. John E. Park in Seguin, Texas. 

"Dr. Park, an inventor who later held several patents on the use of concrete, came to Seguin from Tennessee in 1847, and finding local gravels very suitable, shortly thereafter built his house of 'limecrete.' During the next 30 years lots and streets all over the city were often pock-marked with gravel pits. By 1875, the city had over 90 'limecrete' buildings, of which fewer than 25 survive."

How do you make limecrete? Pretty much like you make concrete. Mix gravel, water, sand, and, for limecrete, burnt lime. Make a slurry and pour it into a continuous wooden form outlining all the walls in the structure, creating a new section of wall 15 inches high and a foot thick. Wooden spreaders held the sides of the walls apart while long bolts held them together. After the mixture cured, the bolts were driven out and the forms removed, leaving the spreaders embedded in the wall. Once one layer of limecrete dried, forms were moved up the dried walls and more wet limecrete slurry was poured in (called slip-form wall casting). Doors and windows were framed during the construction and the "limecrete" mixture poured around the openings. Labor was done by pre-Civil War slaves. 

This home is three floors and the limecrete walls were rock solid. (In the photo below, you can see little containers with the limecrete ingredients. You can also see how tall each layer of limecrete is by looking at the horizontal lines.)

On the black table are the limecrete ingredients--
left to right: gravel, water, sand, burnt lime

On the bottom floor in the back of the house were the kitchen with a large fireplace for cooking, a separate room for a storage area, and another room for sitting and relaxing. This part of the house is where the slaves worked. 

Kitchen area

Storage room off the kitchen with
an original black walnut door

From the lower level, we moved on to the middle floor. There we were able to see the hand-hewn beams holding up the main floor above. 

Also, there was an area behind bars. Many theories revolve around the mystery of what that room was for. Was it to punish slaves? Was it to hide from Comanche Indians? The room is underneath the front porch. There could have been floorboards in the porch that would have allowed people to hide underneath them. 

What I found fascinating was the exhibit of the stages of construction of this
Greek Revival-style home. Look at the finished house in the exhibit below. Do you see the type of roof?

The roof is supported by the outside walls of the house. When it rains, rainwater collects inside the walls on the roof. There is a drain a certain number of inches above the bottom of the roof that drains off excess water so the roof won't collapse. The water that remains on the roof helps cool the house through evaporation. 

We went up to the main level of the house. The living/sitting room was inside the front door. There was a fireplace that shared a chimney with the master bedroom behind it.

Sitting room with a piece of original furniture

The master bedroom had a huge bed that was purchased in New Orleans. The bed has been shortened to allow people to tour the room. It was quite a large bed when they lived in the house.  

The bedroom fireplace

Two bedrooms flank the master bedroom, one was for girls and the other for the boys. No indoor plumbing was available when this house was built. There was an outhouse for the slaves. The property owners had chamber pots that would be emptied by the slaves.

So, how long did the Sebastopol House survive before it needed to be resuscitated? It survived over 150 years! [NOTE: The house that is here today has been restored.]

NOTE: Information below is from historical exhibits in the Sebastopol House.

Something we learned that we don't think of very often, is what products people used in the 1800s. Pottery was both a necessity and an art. 

Three, freed-slave Wilson brothers started a pottery company. Stoneware was very useful for storing goods -- meat, molasses, vinegar, sauerkraut, preserves and cracklings -- and also for making a product, such as churning butter. 

The use of glaze on the vessels made the stoneware durable and easy to clean. Glaze could also make the stoneware waterproof, allowing liquids to be stored. The Wilson Potteries used two different types of glazes:

1. Alkaline glaze: This glaze came from the Edgefield, South Carolina style of pottery-making and is made from a combination of wood ash or lime, clay, sand, and water. Alkaline-glazed pottery from the Wilson sites is usually a glassy greenish color.
2. Salt glaze: Salt glaze originated in Germany in the 15th century and in the United States was common among Northern potters. The Wilson potters were unique in using this glazing process in the south. Salt glazing is created through a chemical reaction that occurs when common rock salt is thrown into a hot kiln. The reaction produces a transparent hard glaze on the pottery with an "orange peel" or dimpled texture.

There were three Wilson pottery sites which used clay from the banks of Salt Creek and surrounding areas in Guadalupe County. Below is a painting depicting two of the brothers making their pottery along Salt Creek near the Guadalupe River. The H. Wilson Company made pottery for a few years until a big flood on the Guadalupe River backed up into Salt Creek and wiped out their business. Later, Hiram Wilson went on to become a preacher and leader in the community. 

H. Wilson Company - potters

The biggest mystery of our tour: Why is this named the Sebastopol House? Our tour guide did not mention it and I didn't even think about it until we got home. After researching on Wikipedia and the Texas State Historical Association page, I found out that Colonel Joseph Young named it after an important Russian naval base in the Crimean War. As far as I can tell, no one knows why.

I would have to call this tour the highlight of our Volksmarch today. We really learned a lot.