Author: Karen Sikes Collins
Forgotten preservationists of the Moore-Hancock Farmstead are its two owners 1902-1953, who unknowingly insured the continued existence of this place. By enclosing all the log walls in the big house, John P. P. and Hulda Wallis made it a “modern” house while retaining but hiding its rustic frontier bones. And with love and respect for old things, Dr. Harry Newton made enough additions to all three of the 1849 structures that the complex was economically feasible for another thirty-five years.
Unlikely hero John Paman Payke Wallis emigrated from Great Britain in 1888 at the age of 22. He got a job as the coachman for the Governor’s wife, Lucadia Pease. Fourteen years later it was rumored he won money in a sweepstakes which he used to pay cash for the 67-acre tract containing the Farmstead. He and his bride, Hulda Rosenquist, opened a dairy.
Neighbors remember seeing his white milk wagon with J.P.Wallis Dairy printed on its sides drawn by a black horse. The Wallises used the cool root cellar for milk storage. Inside the little log barn they stored sacks of feed and a metal trunk of old clothes. They bought their dairy feed from Dittlinger Mills in New Braunfels, Lancaster Mills, Greenville Mills and White Wolf Mills. In the little log barn, Wallis once hung a side of meat which was stolen by a mountain lion. Chased and killed, the large mountain lion was stuffed and displayed for decades at Petmecky’s Sporting Goods store on Congress Avenue.
Eight years after purchase, the Wallises made a very significant change to the log house. Maybe Hulda, who liked nice things, was embarrassed to be living in a log house. Whatever the reason, they set the stage for the survival of the house for the next eighty years.
They hired local carpenter Will Peterson and the Colorado Lumber Company, owned by Edgar J. Nalle, to enclose all the log walls, both inside and outside, in new boards. And they added a large room to the northeast corner of the house. The materials and workmanship were top notch.
Hulda tacked feed sacks to the new walls and glued wallpaper to the sacking. Her living room had a regal dark red and green wallpaper. Hulda had several beautiful things brought from Sweden including a chandelier with very thin glass pendants decorated with painted flowers and a candle holder with glass pendants.
But their lifestyle was less than modern. The couple had an outhouse and lived without electricity and running water. Hulda’s kitchen was an enclosed portion of the porch with a fireplace equipped with a crane. The crane had a hook for holding iron pots which could be swung over the coals for cooking. Hulda made cornbread almost every day. Without a sink Hulda washed dishes in a metal basin. John gave vivid descriptions of what he imagined the rats in the attic were doing to create so much noise.
By 1918 Wallis stopped dairying and sold several small tracts to developers. He planted the rest of his land in potatoes and used the root cellar as a potato bunk. They were recluse mainly because their pack of pit bull and Airedale dogs frightened people.
As the childless couple aged and the dogs died, neighbor women sent their children with cooked food for the old couple. A neighbor planted and tended a large garden south of their house which in later years supplied both families with vegetables. In the early 1940s that neighbor put a toilet in the little log barn. Another neighbor put a new tin roof on the big house. Another added boards over a dirt floor.
In 1946 the Wallises sold the house and outbuildings to developer Hilliare Nitschke but with the understanding that they could continue to live here until their deaths. At the age of 83, John fell while going to the little log building. He lay between the large house and the small outbuilding until a neighbor found him and took him to the hospital. He died soon afterwards but Hulda lived another three years.
Nitschke subdivided the area where the old couple had lived into lots, running a lot line through the middle of the big house probably assuming the old house would be torn down. Nitschke was on the board of the Austin Parks Department and knew one of its employees, Dr. Harry Newton. Newton liked old things and offered to buy the old house and outbuildings. His plan was to keep everything already there but add additions to turn it into a four-family rental complex.
Newton paid Nitschke $1,500 and signed a promissory note for $3,500. Nitschke transferred the note to Calcasieu which secured a vendors lien against the property. Newton contracted with Calcasieu and T. E. Fisher to remodel the big house and little barn for $6,000 and 2 months later to remodel a second structure on the corner for $5,000, both secured by mechanic’s liens.
Newton’s contractor and Calcasieu employee Fisher cut the logs in the little log barn for doors and windows and built new rooms connecting the little log building to the main house. He added three kitchens and three bathrooms to the complex. He hired J. S. Preece to move Mrs. Wallis cooking fireplace, stone by stone, to the north end of the little log barn.
There was very little left of the rock summer kitchen but Newton kept the ruin. He moved an old house from Longview Avenue to the site and connected it to the rock ruin. The remodel was underway when the police showed up and accused Newton of stealing Mr. Woodrow Knape’s rent house. Newton had been given an old house owned by Mrs. Smith and that’s the one he intended to move but got the wrong house. Mr. Knape sued for $3,000 and won. Newton paid Knape but was unable to meet the other $14,500 secured by the three liens held by Fisher and Calcasieu. In August 1953 title to the newly remodeled complex passed to Calcasieu and Fisher who sold it 6 months later.
Both the Wallises and Newton made improvements which made the buildings too good to tear down. First the Wallises modernized the look and then Newton increased the utility by expanding the size. They were unknowing preservationists.
And maybe the last bit of luck for the Moore-Hancock Farmstead occurred in 1988 when offers to buy the again deteriorated houses were not enough to meet the owners needs. Only weeks before foreclosure, the Collins stumbled upon it at a time in life when they could undertake its restoration.
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