In 1848, Judge Sebron Graham Sneed and his family moved to Austin from Fayetteville, Arkansas. In 1850, Sneed purchased a 470-acre farm from the Santiago Del Valle Land Grant for $1000. The homestead was built starting in 1852 by Sneed's slaves and was completed by 1857. The walls of the house were built with limestone that was quarried from the Sneed farm, and brought to the construction site to be finished by hand. Lumber that was used for the floors, roof, and millwork was obtained 30 miles east in Bastrop, Texas. It was likely purchased from the Higgins Mill, a sawmill that had operated out of Lost Pines Forest along Copperas Creek since 1841. It is one of the few surviving pre-Civil War structures in the city.
By 1860, the Sneed family owned 21 slaves. During the Civil War, Sebron Sneed's sons enlisted as soldiers with the Confederacy and the house was used as a recruiting station (or Confederate hospital) during the war. By the end of the war, Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves who would have maintained the homestead and farm. Sneed later willed 55 acres of the property and the house at Comal Bluff to his daughter Marinda Bledsoe on July 15, 1871, who then willed the property to her daughter, Rockie Bledsoe by 1916. The family lived on the premises until August 1, 1922, when it was sold with 196.4 acres to Bledsoe's cousin, Calvin L. Hughes for $8000. Hughes then willed the property to his daughter, Virgia Lo Cage, where she lived until her death there sometime in the 1960s.
- Wikipedia
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