Kyle, Claiborne, Log House

The Claiborne Kyle Log House stands on a high bluff overlooking the Blanco River in Hays County. This was the first dwelling built in the Kyle area during a time when there were frequent Indian raids. The rarity of the house rests in its floorplan; it is believed to be the only surviving example of the linear four-pen dog trot in Texas. Members of the Kyle family served in the Confederate army and the legislatures of two states.

Colonel John Claiborne Kyle and his wife, Lucy Bugg, both natives of Tennessee, left Hinds County, Mississippi, on the ship "New York" and landed at Port Lavaca in 1844. Making the trip with their parents were nine children under the age of twelve. Also with the family was an undetermined number of slaves.

While residing in Mississippi, Colonel Kyle served as a senator from Marshall County from 1837 to 1841. After going the bond of a political friend who absconded, Colonel Kyle was financially ruined and forced to sell his remaining properties and move to Texas. On September 6, 1850, Kyle bought from Zachariah Hinto 738 acres on the Blanco River. The log house was built shortly after the purchase of the land, for the Hays County census of 1850 lists the Kyle family as county residents.

The Austin-San Antonio Stage Coach line passed in front of the Kyle home, so with transportation readily available Colonel Kyle kept up his political activities. The book Members of the Texas Legislature (1846-1865) shows Kyle served in the Fifth Senate (1853), the Tenth House (1863) and the Eleventh House (1866).

From the log home, five sons were sent to war in 1861 to serve the Confederate cause. Each day during the conflict their mother went to a spring about a hundred yards from the house and prayed that her sons would return safely. All five brothers returned, but their mother had died on June 26, 1863.

Ferguson Kyle was ten years of age when he came to Texas with his parents and settled on the Blanco. At the beginning of the Civil War, Kyle enlisted as a private in the Eighty Texas Cavalry, Terry's Rangers. After the battle of Shiloh, he became a captain and acted as an aide to General Cheatham. William, Polk, Curran, and Andrew Jackson Kyle were privates in their brother's company.

Captain Kyle returned home in 1864, engaged in farming and stockraising, and was elected to the Twelfth Legislature. During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Legislatures, he served as Sargeant-at-Arms. The nearby town was named for him.

In 1874, seven years after the death of Claiborne Kyle on June 7, 1866, his estate was divided, and the next few years the property sold in eight different tracts. During the 1880's the land was purchased by R.J. Sledge who conveyed all eight tracts to R.L. Brown in 1892. This property changed ownership about every two years until it was purchased on May 1, 1905, by W. Scott Nance of Kyle. After he died in 1963, the estate sold the land to Robert Nance who traded the property to his sister, Martha Jane Nance Allen.

On February 11, 1976, Mrs. Allen sold the land to W.A. Childers who kept it until June 1977, when 274 acres were purchased by the Rio Blanco Bluffs, Inc. On September 22, 1980, the Corporation deeded to Hays County the house and the approximate acre on which it stands adjoining a large green belt extending to the river. A Claiborne Kyle Log House Commission composed of six members was appointed to direct the fundraising, restoration, and maintenance of the house.

In the summer of 1980, Curtis Tunnell, the Texas State Archeologist, visited the house. He determined that the area contains many cultural deposits worthy of investigation, but performed no testing. Restoration work should be designed to take on-site archeological resources into account.