Winedale - Buildings & Decorative Arts - Joseph Biegel House
Built after 1832 by Joseph Biegel, Fayette County's first German settler, this cabin is a finely wrought example of closely spaced planked cedar logs with half-dovetail corner notching. It is a story and a half structure typical of many early Texas frontier homes. The house was originally located on land granted in 1832 to Biegel by the Mexican government. Biegel and his fellow landowners were part of an agricultural community of German, Swiss, and Alsatian families, the first German settlement in Fayette County. The John Schuhmacher family of Houston donated the Biegel House to Winedale in 1976 when the structure's future was endangered by its location on the site of the planned Lower Colorado River Authority–City of Austin power plant and cooling reservoir. The donors had adaptively restored the house prior to donating it, and since its move to Winedale in 1977, the house has been modified further. Its projected use is as living quarters for a planned scholar/writer/artist-in-residence program.