The Structures of Missouri, Part II: Then Came Stone

By Shaila Wunderlich

Photos by Sunny Lim

INTRODUCTION:

The German invasion of Rhineland began around 1840. By 1850, this wave of European immigrants had nearly replaced the region’s most common building material, log, with stone. The transition was predictable; anyone half-observant surely saw it coming. For one thing, the hills surrounding the Missouri River’s tail are essentially storehouses of limestone and cotton rock. For two, this wave of immigrants happened to know a thing or two about stone, especially how to work with it. The Census of 1850 documents 10 to 15 stonemasons living in Gasconade County—as well as in each of the surrounding three counties.

Such serendipitous conditions seem to position stone construction as an easy-breezy option. In truth, stone architecture was—and remains—one of the most laborious. Whereas log homes potentially could be erected by one man and one ax, stone construction required a team of tradesmen and equipment: quarrymen to extract the strata of rock from the ground, sawyers to cut individual blocks from the stratum, and fixers to assemble the rocks into walls, roofs and foundations. Their tools were projects in and of themselves and included giant kilns, cranes and custom trowels. Most awe-inspiring of all was the time it took to build them. Even the smallest and simplest of buildings could take years to complete. 1850 is the date written on the land grant to Joseph and Theresa Long’s Berger stone house. The date etched on the outside of the house: 1874. By the time the house was finished, in other words, the original land owners were deceased. “In that way, stone homes were sort of a legacy and a status symbol,” said Peter Diercks, owner of a stone house and mill in Hope, Missouri. “A lot of these buildings have a log outbuilding where the owners lived while they set their sights on building and mining for a stone house.”      

Unlike log houses, many stone houses remain on the landscape today—a tribute to the resilience of the rock and of the people who worked with it. Some, due to their expensive maintenance and upkeep, are abandoned. Others have been carefully restored beyond their original glory.     

                   
Set in Stone  
In the context of early stone architecture, Joseph and Theresa Long’s Berger house is about as impressive as they come. Its 2 ½ floors, tall ceilings and spacious interior rooms are easily twice the dimensions of the average stone house. The lower half of the house was constructed using the ashlar method of masonry, meaning each stone was “dressed” or smoothed before being laid into the wall. Yet even for ashlar construction, the Long’s walls are meticulous. They appear almost machine-made.

Of course, no machine-made walls take 24 years to build. That hard-earned history is documented in pictures, land deeds and verbal histories that were passed to the Longs when they bought the house and its surrounding 164 acres in 1995. “The family that built it arrived here straight from Germany,” said Theresa, passing around a negative showing a proud, dressed-up brood standing in front of their new house. “They hired a group of itinerant German stone masons who came here just for the job, and then went back.”            

The family’s name was Damme; the masons Wiebusch and Jennicha. The skilled tradesman quarried the stone from the surrounding hills and built an on-site kiln to fire the sand and limestone mortar. In the spirit of killing multiple birds with one stone (literally), they also built a second farmhouse, a schoolhouse (Lyon School) and a church (Bethany United Church of Christ) in the surrounding ½-mile radius.

Fayette Schutt represents the third generation of U.S. Dammes; the second to live in the house (the first, as mentioned, passed away before the house was complete). Graves of family members can be found next to the neighboring stone church. Schutt spent 60 years in the big rock house and recalls her life inside it to be nearly as challenging as its construction. “It took a lot of work to keep it clean,” said Schutt, now 90 years old.  “It seemed like we were always dusting.”

The Longs updated the house to more livable standards, but in general, they left its original footprint in tact. They even salvaged and repurposed many of the property’s architectural elements, from the corrugated tin sheeting that now covers the corn crib’s ceiling, to an old bead board ceiling that now serves as wainscoting in the kitchen. All of the drawer-pulls and door knobs were scavenged from around the property. Their son Quinn, a Ph.D. student at the University of Kansas, has been replanting the surrounding prairie during breaks from school. He spends summer nights bunking in the old corn-crib-turned-guest-cabin. “This isn’t his home, perse,” said Theresa, “But he loves visiting and helping our dreams unfold.”