Hi everyone! I’m Ranger Douglas.
Welcome to “The Texas White House: Past, Present and Future” video series
In this video series, we will detail the history of the Texas White House from the area’s
first inhabitants to the modern day.
Let’s start at the very beginning.
For approximately 16,000 years, the Texas Hill Country has been home to diverse communities.
The earliest evidence of human activity in the area dates to 9,200 BC, during the Paleoindian period.
These early inhabitants gathered wild plants and hunted now-extinct megafauna, such as
mastodon, camel, horse and bison.
From the Archaic period and onwards, the Folsom, Clovis, and Plainview cultures hunted and
gathered throughout this area, creating nomadic communities, and experiencing the beauty and
difficulty of life in the Hill Country.
As the ages went on, increasingly developed cultures emerged, giving way to local and
incoming tribes such as the Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, and Comanche.
These Native American groups called this place their home through periods of both flourishment
and decline.
Eventually with the coming of the Spanish, creation of Mexico, and entrance of Texas
into the United States, native settlement in the Texas Hill Country became threatened.
Skirmishes, wars, disease, and forced removal by colonizers changed the landscape of the
Hill Country forever and left it a place largely bereft of its Native American population.
In the following period of Western expansion and settlement, a mass wave of immigration
descended on Texas.
Newcomers came from several southern states, such as Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia.
International immigrants came from such countries as Scotland, Germany and Czechoslovakia.
The land which would become the LBJ Ranch was in the heart of the fledgling German American
diaspora.
Records indicate that from 1845 on, it passed from owner to owner and was chiefly used to graze longhorn cattle.
In the early 1880’s German immigrants Wilhelm and Wilhelmina Meier bought 650 acres of the
land to farm and raise their family.
They built a log cabin beside the Pedernales River, cooked on an open fire behind it, and
tasked their children with working in the cotton fields.
By 1895, Wilhelm sought to build a large house for the family which would take almost a full
year to complete.
This very building, built of native limestone and containing two floors, would become the
very foundation for the Texas White House of the future.
Inside the new building, dances were held for people from all around, great meals were
prepared, and a Meier family wedding was conducted.
The home had thus become a new community hub for the people of the Pedernales.
In 1900, the Meiers sold their home and land, and the property went through a series of
different owners.
In 1909, the house was bought by Judge Clarence and Frank Martin, the aunt and uncle of 10-month-old
Lyndon Baines Johnson.
In the next few years, they enlarged their home to include a bay windowed bedroom, a
shaded porch, a dining room, and more.
They too grazed cattle on their land, built a new barn, and added acreage to the property.
Visiting as a young boy, the future President Johnson recalls hanging his Christmas stocking
on the mantelpiece of the home, reciting poetry to his extended family, and eating belly -filling
Thanksgiving meals.
It was these experiences, as well as the loving relationship he had with his aunt and uncle,
that cemented Lyndon Johnson's affection with what he called ‘the big house on the river’.
When Judge Martin died in 1936, his Aunt Frank lived with her children and then alone for
10 years in the home.
Before long though, that would all change and the greatest period of significance for
the house would come, by way of her enterprising young nephew.
Tune in for our next video, which will cover Lyndon B. Johnson’s years living in
the home before, during, and after his Presidency.