Heritage, Volume 14, Number 4, Fall 1996 Page: 18
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Students Document Korus/Rakowitz Rural Farmstead
As part of their study in architecture and
preservation at the University of Texas at
Austin, seven graduate students of Associate
Professor Dan Leary surveyed the remains
of an 1867 rural farmstead structure
in Atascosa County. The project, which
was included in the record of the Historic
American Buildings Survey, was funded in
part by a grant from the Jeanne R. Blocker
Fund, administered by the Texas Historical
Foundation.
The farmstead, located near Leming,
chonicles the development of 160 acres in
Las Gallinas (Spanish for wild turkey) by a
Silesian immigrant family. Members of the
first organized group of Polish immigrants
to America who founded and settled Panna
Maria, Texas, in 1854, the Koruses left 12
years later to operate and own this farmstead.
It has been owned and occupied by
direct descendants of the Koruses for nearly
130 years. Its four primary structures,
coupled with the numerous outbuildings,
provide a clear record of the changing
needs, attitudes, and social position of a
Polish immigrant family in Texas. Moreover,
the dogtrot-style house provides a
rare example of vertical log construction. It
and the other three primary structures retain
a fairly high degree of architectural
integrity.
Description
This focuses on the farmstead's four
primary structures: a dogtrot-style house,
two single-cribs, and a single-story Queen
Anne Victorian house.
The two main rooms of the dogtrot-style
house are enclosed by vertical split logs,
finished on the interior with lath and adobe
coated with white lime plaster. Enclosed
shed rooms flank the eave sides of the
western main room while the eastern main
room is flanked on the south by a porch and
on the north by a shed room. The latter
shed room was likely used as a kitchen and
is enclosed by two walls of the vertical log,
lath, adobe, and lime white plaster finish. A
Witch's hat roof of corrugated metal shelters
the building. Evidence remains in twoshed rooms that the original roof had a
different pitch. Cross-ties once spanned
the main rooms, but they have been cut.
Wooden planks floor the main rooms and
the two western shed rooms. In the western
main room, between the original double
top plate and the 4x4 plate for the new roof
is sandwiched the remains of tongue-ingroove
flooring for a second floor.
The two cribs are of horizontal log construction,
the west one with double saddle
notched joints and the east one with fulldovetail
joints. The west crib is flanked on
its eave sides by two enclosed shed rooms.
The sheds are attached as simple post and
beam constructions with vertical board siding.
The crib has wood flooring. Corrugated
metal roofing spans all three rooms.
The roof is probably not the original as it
uses only sawed lumber.
The east crib faces the west one across a
distance of approximately six feet, establishing
a dogtrot-type relationship between
the two cribs. The east one is flanked only
on its southern eave by a vertical and
horizontal sided shed, used today as a tack
room. Both have wooden floors.
The Queen Anne Victorian house is
located northwest of the other three buildings,
closer to the two main roads. It is a
single-story wood-framed building with
typical finish details. Its primary facade
faces west and is spanned by a hipped roof.
Two wings extend back from the facade.
The south wing terminates in gables with
fishscale patterned wood shingles.
History
The original 160 acres were obtained
from Sam Houston by Nicholas Welt via a
pre-emption certificate in 1860. The preemption
act of 1854 permitted one to settle
on 160 acres of "the vacant public domain,
live on it for three years and make improvements,
then obtain title to it...as an outright
gift with only the requirement of occupancy".
(Miller, Thomas Lloyd, "The Public
Lands of Texas 1519-1970", pp.35-36.
Title of the land passed from Welt to
F.F. Michand (May 27, 1859, to May13,1860) to Marianne Hervieux (September
8, 1860, to October 1860) to Anton
Wagledac (October 15, 1860, to October
21, 1867) who gave title to the north half
of the 160 acres to Maria Wierczoreck who
returned title to Anton Wygledac "except
household furniture" September 2, 1863.
Anton sold the 160 acres to Jahn Korus for
$600 on October 21, 1867. The Korus
family has lived and worked on the farm
until December 1994 when Jahn Korus'
granddaughter, Apolonia Korus Rakowitz
passed away. Over the years, the acreage
has dwindled, although the family did purchase
other land nearby. The remaining
112 acres is now owned by Apolonia's sons,
Herman and Wilfred Rakowitz.
Jahn Korus, his wife Marianne
Strzelczyk, and three of their children were
among the first organized group of Polish
immigrants to America. From Ligota
Toszecka (near the city of Tost today) in
Upper Silesia, the Koruses, with 99 other
Polish and Silesian families, arrived on the
Weser into the port of Galveston in 1854.
From there, they traveled west along the
Gulf of Mexico, then inland to found the
town of Panna Maria, Texas. In Panna
Maria, the Koruses are believed to have
rented a small farm, but in 1867, Jahn
Korus bought land in Las Gallinas and the
family moved there.
The two hortizontal log structures were
perhaps the original residences on the farmstead,
suggested by the deed from Maria
Wieczoreck to Anton Wagledac, but they
have been used for most of the 20th century
as cribs.
The Korus-Rakowitz family asserts that
Jahn Korus built the dogtrot as their family
home soon after 1867. A brief family history
in the Atascosa County History states
that "They built a two-room, dog-trot style
log home from native black-jack oaks".
(Jerome Korus stated that this information
is from Leroy Korus.) The log construction
is unusual: split in half and tapered at the
top end to fit into a channeled plate. Tightly
spaced, the flat face of the logs creates an
exterior wall. The rounded half of the logs18 HERITAGE *FALL 1996
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Texas Historical Foundation. Heritage, Volume 14, Number 4, Fall 1996, periodical, Autumn 1996; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth45407/m1/18/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Foundation.