Save the Tiner House

Tiner House built in 1887

The Tiner-Hendrick House is listed on the Preservation Texas 2025 list of Most Endangered Places in Texas. The current owner plans to demolish the house at the end of the year. The Friends of the Tiner House are making diligent efforts to relocate the house before the deadline. The house is actually two houses: an older two-room cabin that may have belonged to Jack Sutherland, which the Tiners used as a kitchen and dining room, and the two-story, four-room house with central passageways and long front porch verandas on both floors. The two houses are connected by an enclosed stairway. We have received a bid of $195,600 to move the house. Wilson County Historical Society has pledged $50,000.

Jesse Lane and Connally Tiner on their honeymoon in Galveston. 1879

 

The house was built in 1887, and the entire process of construction is recorded in Jesse Lane Tiner’s diary written between 1886 and 1889. The diary is a treasure trove full of details about the construction of the house, the agriculture, education, religion, politics, and climate of the area.  

Polley Mansion, Whitehall, Sutherland Springs, built in the 1850s

Tiner’s father was one of the original settlers along the Cibolo, living  at the Gonzales crossing. Tiner’s wife, Connally, was the granddaughter of J. H. Polley, whose  1840s stone plantation house is also preserved in Sutherland Springs. 

 

President David G. Burnet to John Sutherland, 3 April 1836

 

 

The land was originally owned by John Sutherland, who served as an attaché to David G. Burnet, president of the Republic of Texas, and aided in the Runaway Scrape. The Sutherland Springs Historical Museum is the repository for many of his early letters and manuscripts. 

 

Spring-fed Swimming Pool near the Cibolo River, Sutherland Springs, Texas, 1913

 Sutherland Springs has a fascinating history, including one period at the beginning of the 20th century as a resort area with hotels, railroad access, a sanitorium, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

 

 

 

Painting of the Sutherland Springs Common School No. 9 by Edoleen Hodges

Wilson County Commissioner’s Court voted to allow the house to be moved three blocks away to a county-owned lot. The lot was originally the site of a two-story Black school built in 1899, described as the handsomest building in Sutherland Springs at that time. Jesse S. Wilson, the President of the Stevenson Colony Common School No. 9, worked for Mr. Tiner and lived 300 yards from the Tiner House. The school had an enrollment of 110 Black students in 1903. 

 

Members of the Richard and Rachel Nobles family, ca. 1910

The Cibolo Valley was the home to at least 14 Freedom Colonies, formed after plantation farming collapsed following the Civil War. The Stevenson Colony was located in Sutherland Springs. Relocating and restoring the Tiner House would give us a place to tell the stories of the Sutherland Springs community, including the amazing story of the Freedom Colonies along the Cibolo Creek. 

Please help us save the Tiner House.  

To donate or for further information or  contact:                                                                            

Melinda Creech mjcreech @mac.com 832-978-8501
 

You can learn more about the project at 

https://stitchedtogethernotebook.blogspot.com/