Liebelt Cabin
Description of the Cabin
August Liebelt, Frontiersman
August Liebelt was seemingly a very active individual. Having lived on the 80-acres for barely a decade, on May 20, 1881, he sold the property, livestock, and all of his holdings- with the exception of a single mare- for $525 dollars to one John Simon Oechsner. Further official records of his activity are void for two-decades, until he purchased 60-acres of land in Grayson
County, Texas with a down payment of one-dollar, and six promissory notes in the amount of $200 dollars each at 8-percent annual interest due in November each year payable to J.A. McEver, who then held the lien on the property. It appears that Liebelt remained unmarried for his entire life, as his official death record shows that, as a single man, he passed away at age 79 due to heart disease in Sherman, Texas, on July 9, 1911. An exact replica of his headstone, which is located in Sherman, has been placed adjacent to the log cabin he constructed some forty-years prior to his death.
Cabin Restoration
In April 2011, the Heritage Center Archivist was contacted by local Sears franchise owner with an offer to apply for a historic preservation grant through Craftsman® Tools; a $2500 dollar grant was approved, awarded, and later accepted by the mayor of Lakeway in June 2011. In the meantime, the commercial developer who previously purchased the 40-acre Wunneberger tract offered to donate the historic log cabin to the City of Lakeway, with the caveat that it must be relocated before the end of the year; otherwise, the cabin was to be demolished with other structures on the property. Faced with these short-term elements of the prospective relocation and restoration project, in May 2011, the Archivist contacted the Texas General Land Office to determine who received the initial land grant for the property formally known as the Wunneberger tract.
In October 2011, the Lakeway city manager solicited for relocation and restoration proposals from local private contractors. He concurrently made a formal presentation to the Lakeway Civic Corporation for supplemental grant funding for the project, which was subsequently approved for over $20,000. In November 2011, the cabin was relocated from its original site to the location just north of City Hall. Notably, the orientation of the cabin is exactly as it was when it was originally constructed circa 1870.
In March 2012, a professional restoration and preservation historian, formally associated with the Austin Pioneer Farms project in North Austin, formally inspected the progress of Lakeway's August Liebelt Log Cabin Restoration Project. In his words, "If I had to offer a grade for the work up to date, I would give a B+...the structural integrity is done well to support the overall good condition of the cabin, the roof and stone work blend(s) well with a home-built structure giving the overall impression of a 19th Century do-it-yourself project, which this clearly is, and is portrayed well as such." Now, it remains the responsibility of the City of Lakeway and its dedicated citizens to continue with an accurate credible effort to complete the project and ensure the history of rural Texas is sustained for generations to come.
In early 2021, the Lakeway Heritage Committee approached Lakeway City Council on the need to preserve and restore the historic Liebelt Cabin. City Council voted in March of 2021 to have repair work completed to fix log rot, replace door thresholds and complete other repairs for a total of $17,304.58. A generous donation by the Lakeway Civic Corporation (LCC) helped cover a large portion of the costs for additional repair and preservation work to total nearly $48,000. Antique Timberworks out of Fredericksburg, Texas complete the cabin restoration project near the end of 2021. The updated renovations will allow for future generations to enjoy the historic cabin.