Bee-leaving

 

If you have been following "The Friends of the Tiner House" Facebook page, you may have learned that last week we had to have two colonies of bees removed from the little house before we could proceed with setting it on its new foundation. The bees had moved in after these late spring rains and the proliferation of flowers at the old site. Maybe those bees were the descendants of the bees that Mr. Tiner kept in 1900—126 years ago. You can read more about "Mr. Tiner's 'Bees' ness" in an earlier blog.

The procedure, accomplished by Abel and Isaac Burgos (supported at times by my husband, Robert)  

required moving ten boards from the exterior of the house, 

vacuuming up the bees, 

 

and removing the combs with brood and honey. 

They harvested 31 pounds of honey. 

And the bees are leaving the Tiner Hendrick House for their new home on the Burgos Ranch in Mineral, Texas, Bee County.

A friend of ours commented on the post with a pun. He's quite famous for puns.

"He doesn’t need to vacuum those bees up, he should just take a close look at them. That’s because seeing is 'bee leaving'!"

It's taken quite a bit of "believing" to imagine saving the Tiner Hendrick House. We imagined that this, on the cusp of demoliton,

 

which 141 years earlier looked like this 

  

and now looks like this 

could one day look like this.

Thanks to the generosity of the Wilson County Historical Society, Tiner and Hendrick family members, Robin and Keith Muschalek, members of the Maeckel family, other members of the community, and some of you, we have raised enough funds to disassemble the chimneys, porches, and roof, move the house, set it on a new foundation on its new site. Soon we will rebuild the porches, reassemble the roof, rebuild the chimneys, and replace the old roof.

We will need more help with the restoration of the house. We hope to engage community members and other interested parties in restoring the windows and doors, rebuilding and restoring the staircase, replacing or repairing external siding, cleaning the interior, painting, and any plumbing and electrical work that needs to be done.

If you have any expertise (woodworking, plumbing, electrical) or inclination and would be willing to donate your time to restoring the Tiner Hendrick House, please contact Melinda Creech, mjcreech@mac.com, 832-978-8501.

If you would like to make a donation, any size, you can do it through Zeffy on the right sidebar. 

Thanks for all your help. Seeing is believing and believing is seeing.

 

 

 

A Moving Experience

 

The Tiner Hendrick House peaking through the oak trees at the new site.

We did it!

On Friday, May 29, 2026, the Tiner House made its way from the field in front of the old oak tree at its old location to its new place to stand, on FM 539 near the Polley Mansion, Whitehall. It is appropriate that the house stands here, because Connie Findley Tiner was the grand daughter of Joseph Henry Polley and Mary Bailey Polley and spent some of her childhood in the house after her father was killed in the Civil War. 

 

The disassembled portions of the Tiner Hendrick House

The five pieces of the Tiner Hendrick House (Cabin, House, and three sections of the roof) were moved up from the sandy land around the oak tree to higher ground. 

 

 

 

Later that week the houses were moved across the field to 7th Street, awaiting their 3 miles trek to their new home on FM 539. 

The move began around 9:30am with the trucks making a rather sharp turn onto 7th Street, then around the corner down 11th Street in Old Town Sutherland Springs. 

 

The trucks were preceded by a pilot truck that measured the height of the overhead wires. As the trucks approached the turn to prepare to enter SH 87, the boom truck had to lift the lines to provide clearance for the house.

 

The trucks turned right on SH 87 and turned left on FM 539. Lines had to be lifted again at that intersection.

 

The trucks continued on FM 539 

 

across the Cibolo Creek.

 

Continuing down FM 539, the trucks carrying the houses made their turn into the Muschalek's property.

The two story house was placed on the site looking through a grove of oak trees across the road and the Cibolo valley.

 

with the little cabin situated beside it.

 

The three sections of the roof arrived a bit later.

 

Three generations of the Tiner family were there for the move.  

 

There's still a lot of work to do to make the reality 

become the dream, 

but the move was a monumental first step.

In the next few weeks the house will be leveled and placed on a foundation, the three parts of the roof will be reattached, the porches will be rebuilt, the chimneys will be reassembled, and the roof restored. Later, exterior and interior restorations will be made; windows, shutters, and doors will be replaced and restored; the house will be refreshed with a new coat of paint. Restoration will likely take at least a year. We have funds to cover the reconstruction, but will have to raise funds for the later restoration. If you would like to help restore the Tiner Hendrick House, make your contribution through Zeffy on this page or contact me.

Raising the Roof

 

Last week we raised the roof on the Tiner Hendrick House. Well, actually we didn't. The Fowler House Moving Company and the LV Crane and Rigging Company did. It was amazing and a little frightening to watch.

Because of the height of the house, it was necessary to remove the roof and a portion of the second floor in order to move it. We removed all the doors, door frames, windows, and window frames from the second floor so that they could be refurbished and reinstalled. Fowler House Moving Company built a structure inside the the roof to accommodate the cables from the crane. The top of the house had to be sawn off, and the roof was cut into three sections. It was reattached with "scabs" temporarily awaiting the crane. Holes were made in the roof for the cables from the crane, and the cables were attached to the structure inside. When everything was attached, the "scabs" were removed and the roof was lifted up one section at a time and placed on a trailer for the transit to the new site.

The whole process went off without a hitch. Well, the huge crane did get stuck in the sand right off the bat, but he decided he could operate from where he was. It was amazing to see the roof separating from the house, being lifted above the house and gently placed on a trailer. The two sides weighed 4,000 pounds each, and the center section weighed 3,800 pounds. 

Here are some images of the event.

 

 

 

 

 

The roof as it is now consists of the original wood shingles Jesse Tiner put on in 1887. His diary records that on November 12, 1886 he ordered 17,000 shingles from the San Antonio Lumber Company. 

 

 

 The wood shingles are nailed on to furring strips with square nails. 

 

The wooden shingles are covered with asphalt shingles. Those must have been put on when the Hendrick and Hodge family owned the house. A tin roof was later put on over the other two layers. 

In the next couple of week all five pieces, the cabin, the two-story house, and the three roof pieces will move to their new home site, next to the Polley Mansion. With the house on a firm foundation, the crane will revisit  and put the puzzle back together again.

 

The Move Begins!

 

Last week, The Fowler House Moving Company began to move equipment to the present site of the Tiner Hendrick House in Sutherland Springs and began the immense preparations of securing the house to be moved the 3 1/2 miles down the road to the place it will finally stand, just down from the Polley Mansion, Whitehall. It will stand behind a lovely copse of live oak trees, looking through the trees to the Cibolo Creek below. The older portion of the house will look across the field to the Polley Mansion, where Connie Tiner's grandmother and grandfather lived and where she spent many hours of her childhood and, as an adult, tended her grandmother, Mary Bailey Polley, during her last weeks of life.

It has taken a lot of work to get to this place, and it will take many more hours of work to get the Tiner Hendrick House restored to the way it looked when Jesse Tiner finished construction on the house in 1887. A lot has already happened.

•  We became aware that the present owner intended to destroy the house to build a more accommodating structure. The house had always been admired by locals and we began to research a way to save the house.
• The house was evaluated by Preservation Texas to determine its value and its ability to survive a move. Preservation Texas affirmed these things and in 2025 placed the house on the 2025 List of Most Endangered Places in Texas.
• We began to investigate a new location. At first we contemplated moving the house just a few blocks away to county property. The Wilson County Commissioner's Court granted that move. Eventually, a spot near the Polley Mansion became available, and it was decided that we would move forward with trying to locate the house near the Polley Mansion, where the two examples of architecture in the county could be viewed side by side—one, a stone house from the 1850s and the other, a wooden house from the 1880s, both connected by family and holding over one hundred years of the history of Wilson County.
• We created a committee composed of Tiner and Hendrick family members, local historians, members of the board of the Sutherland Springs Historical Museum, and the owners of the new site for the Tiner Hendrick House.
• We began to raise funds for the enterprise. Wilson County Historical Society gave $50,000. The Maeckel Family matched that gift. Other Tiner and Hendrick family members have given substantial gifts, and we received gifts from other community members and other interested historians. Recently we have additionally received some large gifts from the Tiner and Maeckel families. We thank you all so much.
• We solicited bids from five house movers and finally settled on Fowler's.
• We cleaned out the house. This was quite a messy job. It had accumulated a lot of debris over the years and had become the roost for vultures, raccoons, and who knows what else. Along the way, we discovered names of lumber companies and brick makers.
• We also became aware that the building of the house was minutely documented by Jesse Tiner in the 300 page diary that he wrote in 1886-1889. Other diaries have also come to light, revealing more glimpses into the history of the time. An excerpt from an 1882 Tiner diary revealed that he built the small house in 1882 and Mr. Tudyck, who had built the chimney in the two-story house had also built the chimney in the small house. Another 300 page diary from 1898-1899 revealed many other interesting stories about the Tiner's life in the community of Sutherland Springs. We were also loaned diaries from the Hendrick family recounting parts of their stories when they lived in Stockdale and in Ireland before they moved into the house. 
• Keith Muschalek lead out in the deconstruction necessary for the move, removing an add on wash room at the end of the small house. 
• We hired Curtis Hunt Restorations, a local company to remove the chimneys. Their work was amazing. They took down the stones one by one, numbered them, placed them on pallets, and transported them to the new site. All this work was documented on a digital map of the chimneys. We do not have the funds at this time to pay for the rebuilding of the chimneys. However, when those funds become available the chimneys will be reconstructed just like Mr. Tudyck did in 1882 and 1887.
• Trejo Framing Company deconstructed the porches on both houses, saving as much of the lumber as possible. We found lumber company names marked on the lumber and square nails in much of the construction, indicating that most of that construction on the porches was original to 1882 and 1887. Trejo Framing Company will reconstruct the porches after the move.
• Members of the committee have removed screen doors, doors, windows, stairs, rails, banisters, shutters, and hardware, carefully storing those items to be returned in the reconstruction.
•  Right now the house looks a little ravished, with gaping holes where the chimneys and breezeways were. The truncated house without its porches lacks the Southern hospitality that once welcomed visitors. The roof looks a little tattered and piecemeal. We discovered a layer of wood shingles, nailed with square nails, a layer of composite asphalt shingles added later, and a tin roof put on top of all of them even later. In spite of all the necessary degradation, the house feels amazingly solid and sturdy inside. Jesse Tiner built a good house.
• Hastings Construction has prepared the site to received the house. One more interesting fact is that the land on which the house will sit once belonged to John and Shirley Grammer, rather famous local historians. 
• The last two jobs left are to topple a small brick chimney on the east side of the house that supported two wood stoves and to remove all the doors and windows from the second floor. Because the house is two-stories and will not fit under the power lines, it is necessary for the movers to cut the house horizontally and move the two-story house in at least two pieces.
• Over the next weeks Fowler House Movers will prepare the house for the move, move the house, and settle it in its new place, binding its cuts back together. Eventually, the porches and chimneys will be rebuilt, and a new roof will cover it all. The Tiner Hendrick House will welcome the community back to tell her stories once again, old stories and new ones.  

 

Joseph Tudyck's Chimneys

Brick and Stone Chimney on the New House (1887)

 

Stone Chimney on the little house (1882)

We have been working for several weeks preparing the Tiner Hendrick House for its move to its new place to stand, near the Polley Mansion, Whitehall. 

 

However, work began in earnest this week, removing the two stone and brick chimneys that had stood for 144 years. We have enlisted Curtis Hunt Restorations, Inc., a local company, to remove the chimneys. They take photographs of the chimneys and feed that information into a computer program that maps each of the stones. The workers are now carefully removing the stones one by one, labeling them with a number, and stacking them on a pallet. Half of the larger chimney is composed of 2000 bricks that Mr. Tiner got from A. R. Stevenson in exchange for the payment of a debt for two mares. You can read more about the story in "Sticks and Stones," an earlier blog. Later the stones and bricks will be wrapped in plastic and moved to the new site, awaiting the time when they can be rebuilt. Curtis Hunt Restorations was gracious enough to provide two bids for us; one to deconstruct the chimneys and one to reconstruct the chimneys later after the house is moved. We do not have the funds yet to reconstruct the chimneys. If you would like to contribute to the reconstruction of the chimneys, you can click on the amount you would like to donate in the column on the right or type in the amount that you can give. You can also contact me to discuss your donation at mjcreech@mac.com. 

You can see the progress that has been made this week in deconstructing the chimneys.

 

 

 

In my earlier blog "Sticks and Stones" you can read about Mr. Joseph Tudyck's construction of the chimney on the new house. With the help of Sandy Mitchell, he constructed the chimney in 11 days and the total cost was $75, $38.25 labor, $36.75 materials.

We were not sure who had constructed the smaller house or its chimney. We knew it was older, because the Tiner family was living in the smaller house while the new house was being built. I thought perhaps it was built by Jack Sutherland, who was a former owner of the property. However, last week I found 16 pages from an 1882 diary written by Jesse Tiner. It cleared up a few things. Mr. Tiner himself built the house between 1880 and 1882. 

 

Jesse and Connie were married in 1879. 

 

The 1880 Census finds them living at the Peyton Warren Hotel in Sutherland Springs. 

Connie's mother Susan Rebecca Polley Henderson Brooks is also living in the hotel with her husband, 2 year old Joseph, and 7 month old Mary. Connie's first child, Lane, would be born in November. 

These randomly photocopied pages from the journal indicate that Mr. Tiner moved down to his place in Sutherland Springs in January 1882. Elnora, their second child, was born on August 10th. Mr. Joseph Tudyck (Tiner spells his name Toodick), along with his assistant Oscar Palm, began work on the little chimney on October 16. He finished the work on October 23. The chimney was 21 1/2 feet high, He was paid $100 per foot, for a total cost of $21.50. It took 7 days to complete. His assistant, Oscar Palm earned 75¢ a day.

I tried to learn a bit about Mr. Joseph Tudyck, resident of St. Hedwig. I found out that he was married to Petronella Kosub, and that he was the great uncle of Allen Kosub, one of our excellent local historians. Allen has a great website called Lost Texas Roads. Allen Kosub reports: "We can document Joseph’s brick work in the first church built in 1868 in St. Hedwig and his own house in St. Hedwig.  Attached is a wedding photo circa 1890 taken with the old church as a back drop.   We believe that he built numerous chimneys in the area.  His specialty was building with 'rubble and partially dressed' native sandstone."  

 

What a neat thought to consider that Allen Kosub's great uncle Joseph was the last one to touch those stones 144 years ago until they were carefully removed from the chimney last week by the workers from Curtis Hunt Restorations: Armando, Jesse, Manuel, Omar, and Dani. Thank all you artisans for your great work.

The diary recounts on Oct 3 that they need "one load of white rock from the Cibolo for the back of fire place." Jesse Tiner, George Neely, and Oscar Palm collected the red sandstone from his own property. We have evidence to suggest that these red sandstone rocks may have been used in the construction of the mission chapel for El Rancho del Paistle, the mission ranch of Mission Concepcion in the mid 1700s. That's another story for another time. So other hands may have collected and stacked those stones into a mission chapel before nature disassembled them, and they found their way into Mr. Tudyck's chimneys on the Tiner House.