COLE (CHARLES) HOUSE
Upper Balcones Rd.
HISTORY. "Charles Cole was born February 11, 1828 at Seneca, New York. When he was 18 years old he joined the U.S. Army and trained in Atlanta, Georgia. He saw active service in the Mexican War, and was wounded which led to his honorable discharge April 1850. He went to San Antonio and started in the mercantile business. He met and married Mary Ann Adrian in 1858. Mr. and Mrs. Cole were in business for about five years before they purchased a ranch near Boerne on the Upper Balcones Road.
Mr. Cole built his own
house, furniture, fences and barns from native lumber that grew on his ranch.
Tall cedar pickets and hand sawed rocks put together with plaster were used for
walls; hand sawed cypress boards for floors and hand cut cypress shingles for
the roof. The well was hand dug and the water was pulled up in a bucket by a
large wheel.
The bed and the other furniture was made from the native
walnut trees that grew wild on the place
The Cole's lived on their ranch
until Mrs. Cole's death in 1938. Mr. Cole preceded her in death. They raised a
family of eleven children and were one of the pioneer families of this area.
When the ranch was sold in 1938 , the old home was still as it was when it was
built.
It is my guess that all eleven of the children were born in the
bed that he made and I know Mrs. Cole died in this bed at the age of 95 years."
-submitted by Dorothy Whiting, great-grand daughter of Charles and Mary Ann
Adrian Cole.
This property was purchased by a family named Engelke. It
became known as the old Engelke property. Now in the year 2000 the place was
purchased by Roland who remodelled it extensively.
Source: Boerne Public Library files.
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