Charles Schiege employed mainly single men to manufacture cigars in his factory. The workers were provided with sleeping quarters in the attic area of the factory building. The factory manager, however, was often a family man, and to house these employees Schiege built a cottage of German vernacular design at this site about the time the factory was opened in 1882. Early cigar factory manager Paul Herman Helmecke (1864-1894) and his wife Martha Mary Neuthard, daughter of prominent local Pastor Adam Neuthard, lived here with their five children in the 1880s and 1890s. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995