“It would have been easier to build a brand-new house,” says innkeeper Margy Waldrip, “but we have so much history here.” Mrs. Waldrip and her son, Darrell, are the hosts at the historic Kuebler Waldrip Haus Bed-and-Breakfast, just outside of New Braunfels. And she is not exaggerating; the work of restoring the 160-year-old home of pioneers Andreas and Catherine Pape (pronounced almost like “poppy”) has been a monumental task, but even a brief visit is an impressive lesson in the history of German immigration to the Hill Country.

The old home has been owned by just three families. Andreas and Catherine built it around 1850 and passed it along to their son, Ludwig, who sold it to Albert Kraft in 1897. Albert sold it to his brother, Willie, in 1910. Willie’s heirs sold it to Larry and Margy Waldrip in 1974.

New Braunfels veterinarian Larry Waldrip just wanted some acreage not too far from town, where he could indulge his dream of raising cattle. The old house on the property was not really fit for human habitation, but it had “a roof, walls and doors,” Mrs. Waldrip recalls, so Larry, Margy and their three young sons (Dibrell, Darrell and David) moved in. A wood cookstove provided heat, but there was no air conditioning, and the plumbing did not work. Only the kind hospitality of their neighbors, Bob and Jean Pfeuffer, “saved our sanity” for the two weeks before the plumbing was functioning.

The original stone house was a 15-by-30-foot living and dining room by the time the Waldrips arrived. There was a porch along one side, and an outside stairway led to a primitive attic room. The Krafts had built a wood-framed addition with two bedrooms and a kitchen in the early 1900s.

Among the Waldrips’ first projects were: extending and enclosing the old porch to make a third bedroom, installing new plumbing, wiring and cabinets in the kitchen, and removing sheetrock, wallpaper, boards and adobe plaster to expose and re-mort ...

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