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.