German natives F.W. (Fritz) and Carolyn (Krampitz) Hackbarth arrived in Galveston in 1846 with their two sons and settled in Austin County, where Fritz farmed and ranched and the couple had four more children, including F.W. Hackbarth, Jr., born in 1849. A carpenter, F.W. Hackbarth, Jr. opened the Hackbarth Lumber Company in 1885, one of Sealy’s earliest enterprises, and his sons Paul, Robert, and John later joined him. The lumberyard supplied materials for Sealy’s early growth and development, expanding to include a brick plant and then concrete masonry production used in commercial buildings completed for F.W. Hackbarth and John Hackbarth in 1907, in other businesses including an ice house, and in the Paul and Mahala Hackbarth house in 1911. F.W. Hackbarth, Jr. owned a block of frame buildings on Main Street, which he razed in 1907 to erect a new concrete block structure featuring load-bearing masonry blocks produced at their factory, a canopy with iron column supports, an angled corner, and a cast iron façade storefront ordered from George L. Mesker and Company of Evansville, Indiana. Citizens State Bank formed in 1907 and occupied part of the new building with capital of $25,000, assets of $46,000, R.A. Engelking as president, and John Hackbarth on the board of directors, but the bank outgrew the location by 1917. The building later housed many commercial uses, notably Fred Frimel’s Jewelry and Hackbarth General Store and Grocery; during World War II it served as the site of a Red Cross Office and War Bond Sales, and from 1942 until the late 1990s The Sealy News was printed there. Its craftsmanship reflects an important chapter in the history and commerce of the community.