HISTORICAL HOMESTEAD
Theiss family home to become part of Wunderlich Farm Interactive History Park
The Wunderlich Farm Interactive History Park is preparing for a new addition.
A home once belonging to the Theiss family, early founders of Klein, has been donated to the outdoor history museum located at 18218 Theiss Mail Route Rd.
Steven Baird serves as living history educator and district historian for Klein Independent School District, which manages the property.
He first heard about the possibility of acquiring the house in October and went to visit the property in January with Glenn Jiral, the current owner.
“We’re always looking for things to add to the museum that will add to the educational experience,” Baird said. “The problem is that we’re landlocked. We don’t have an access point for larger houses without cutting them in half and removing the roof.”
Luckily, the Theiss house is fairly narrow, Baird discovered.
And the home is in good shape with many original features still intact. “We don’t see those types of houses very much anymore,” Baird said.
The home is the site where Butch Theiss was born. He has become a fixture in the community, as an alumnus of Klein ISD, the namesake for the Butch Theiss Field and a former member of the district’s board of trustees.
Theiss said his father built
the home in 1924. “I was born in that house in 1928, and there was an old country doctor who delivered me,” he said. “I lived there all my life until high school.”
His father sold the house to Jiral’s family in the mid-1960s.
“Glenn has been living here and farming the land for a long time,” Theiss said. “Glenn just sold the property. He called me and told me he’d like to donate the house. He didn’t want to see it destroyed.”
The Theiss family agreed to donate $3,500 to help move the home to Wunderlich.
“I’m very excited about it, so I did everything I could to get it accomplished,” Theiss said. “We’re very proud to have it over there. It will be here for years to come.”
The school board granted an additional $12,000 to cover the expenses.
Baird said the home will pay tribute to the Theiss family and serve as a first stop at the museum.
“It will be the first house people walk into,” he said. “As you step into this new visitor’s center, you will step back in time right into the 1920s. Then people will step off the back porch and into the museum.”
The home will also serve as an office for museum staff and provide space for a research room.
Baird said Theiss has some furniture that is original to the home, which will be used in the interior.
“There’s a lot of good potential,” he said. “There’s a lot of history in this house. We’ll put up old black and white photos of the house and the people who lived here.”
Baird said that Pulte Homes purchased the property where the home is currently located and will be cutting down trees to prepare the land for development.
“Then we’ll come up with a timeframe to move the house,” Baird said. “Once we get it, it’s a one to two year process to get it ready.”
He explained that one section of the home is not original and will have to be removed. Then a portion of the exterior brick wall will be rebuilt.
Wunderlich will begin raising funds for the restoration but in the meantime, Baird is eager to move the house.
“Let’s get it moved and let’s get it saved,” he said.
Baird said the museum stands as a reminder of the way life in Klein once was when northwest Harris County was a rural area farmed by German immigrants. Now it is surrounded by suburban housing and rapid commercial development.
“Things are growing so quickly in this community and changing so quickly,” he said. “We have thousands of people moving in every month who don’t know the traditions here or how it all got started.”
Wunderlich Farm was occupied by the Wunderlich family until 1995 and was recognized with a Texas Historical marker and placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The home was transformed into a museum by the Klein Historical Foundation in 1995 with exhibits meant to capture life in Klein as it was from 1890 to 1920. The walls have never been sheet-rocked, wallpapered or painted. Outside, a chicken coop, smokehouse, barn, and other outbuildings remain and now serve as part of elementary school curriculum.
Hands-on activities also include corn-shelling and grinding, spinning, weaving and washing clothes on a washboard. Volunteer docents make everything more realistic.
The Klein Museum and Wunderlich Farm are open to the public the last Saturday of every month, except November, December and May.
“Any good community needs to know how and why it started to preserve its history,” Baird said. “If you don’t preserve your history, you lose your identity.”