A member of the venerable Sauls Family of Williamson County, Otto Sauls was born in 1906, one of 15 children of Wade and Louisa Sauls, and was a prolific builder and craftsman. He constructed homes in Georgetown and in and around Round Rock, as well as in Brenham and Fredericksburg. Many homes on Liberty, Burnet, Anderson, Spring and Sheppard Streets were built or remodeled by the hand of Otto Sauls. Many stand today like Papi’s Pies on Chisholm Trail in Round Rock.
Before his construction career, Mr. Sauls attended Paul Quinn College in the 1930s, an African Methodist Episcopal affiliated school which was started in Austin, moved to Waco, where Otto attended and is now located in Dallas. Afterward, he attended the Georgetown Flying School to realize his first dream of aviation, however, he was forced to quit because he was black. He did build model airplanes that would fly up to 50’ high. Aviation was his first love.
Otto Sauls was an American Veteran, serving in the Army in the Pacific front during World War II.
In 1958, Mr. Sauls helped relocate and rebuild St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, a church the Sauls Family helped establish in Round Rock in 1885, to make way for I-35. It still stands today in that same location off Sheppard Street in Round Rock with much of the lumber, pews, and the pulpit from the original church on the west side of now I-35 South of the location of Sprouts Grocery Market.
Even after Mr. Sauls became blind from an injury that he sustained falling off a house he was building and severed his optic nerves when he hit his head, he continued to perform maintenance on the house where he and his wife, Ethel lived. He could still do carpentry work from memory. He commented, “You can’t just sit around and wait to die.” While he lamented his loss of sight, he still enjoyed feeling the sunshine on his face. He was persistently sought for his knowledge as to how much lumber and hardware one would need to purchase for projects which he could do by memory.
His craftsman skills are still on display on a walk or drive through old Town Round Rock today.
Otto Sauls, a home-grown trailblazer and legendary carpenter, leaving a positive impact!