Memories of the Raleigh House: Restaurant owner found joy in sharing her recipes

Memories of the Raleigh House: Restaurant Owner Found Joy in Sharing Her Recipes 

Published in the Kerrville Daily Times on November 14, 2025

Martha Johnson

 Occasionally when I am surfing the world of social media, I see posts from other local historians and “old timers” talking about businesses that used to be here, and what they miss the most from the old days.  

Yesterday, as I was looking through my cookbook collection for dinner inspiration, I came across a favorite cookbook and was reminded of a woman I had the pleasure of meeting several years ago, Martha Robinson Johnson. Her restaurant, Raleigh House, was a fine dining experience that was only offered during the summer months. The restaurant was such a success that locals and tourists eagerly anticipated the restaurant's opening each summer.  Raleigh House even garnered rave reviews from Houston food columnists, causing many a Houstonian to make a pilgrimage to Kerrville each year.

Martha Eastman Robinson was born August 6, 1905 in Kane, Pennsylvania. She was the oldest of three children born to Thomas Edward and Flora Eastman Robinson.  Martha said she grew up learning to cook from her mother, who also taught her the love of cooking and the joy it brings to cook for others.

When Martha was 13, her family moved to Texas, when her father was offered an accountant’s position with an oil company that friends were forming in Houston.

Martha said of the move, “My mother's friends could not understand why we would choose to go to the wild state of Texas with all the cowboys and Indians.” She added that the family was amazed at arriving in Houston and discovering a city with a population of 30,000 people and the luxury of the 12- story Rice Hotel, where the family lived for a week until their home was ready for move-in.

Martha attended San Jacinto Junior High School and was a classmate of future tycoon Howard Hughes, who made her aware of her unusual accent, “I was not conscious of a Yankee accent but Howard leaned over one day in English class and asked what country I was from.”

Martha met her husband, Raleigh W. Johnson, when she was 17 years old, at a Nomad Club dance. She was impressed with the young man because he would take time to talk to her and tell her about the various guests attending the dance. The club membership was made up entirely of bachelors of marrying age and they were very selective about the guests they invited to club dances. Martha discovered from Raleigh that it was considered a privilege to be invited to the dances.

A week after their meeting, Raleigh invited Martha to dinner at the Brazos Hotel where they had steaks with “all the trimmings”. Martha said she made a good impression on her new beau “as I cleaned my plate. He could not abide the dates who picked at their food. The ‘die was cast’ so to speak. In two months we were going steady and in six months we were engaged.”

After a three-year courtship, Martha and Raleigh were married on December 19, 1925.  They had two children and a blissful married life.  Her love of cooking and wizardry in the kitchen put many beautiful meals on the family dining table and most likely was a huge contribution towards that marital bliss.

Her love of cooking led to her becoming active in the Women’s Association at Trinity Episcopal Church in Houston, a group that catered dinners to fundraise for the church. She quickly became a leader in the group and oversaw the remodeling of the kitchen in the church’s fellowship hall, equipping it with all-electric, stainless steel commercial grade appliances. The Women’s Association served meals to many organizations, including the Red Cross, YMCA and other church groups to raise funds for their budget. With the new kitchen the group was able to step up their catering business and become well-known for the beautiful meals they served.

Martha said it was a challenge at first learning how to use the new kitchen equipment and converting her favorite family recipes into quantities big enough to serve a large group of people. “The experience was very valuable in establishing Raleigh House and I have always been very grateful to my church,” she said

In 1951, tragedy struck when Raleigh died unexpectedly, “We had 26 happy years together, and then he died suddenly of a heart attack. I was only 46 years old. Our son and daughter were both married and my home and family had been my life. However, destiny stepped in. I loved to cook and that led me to a whole new way of life.

Shortly after Raleigh’s death, Martha decided to spend a summer with friends in Kerrville. She quickly fell in love with the Hill Country, the friendliness of the people, the easy pace of life and the climate. Before long, she was making regular summer visits to Kerrville.

At the end of her visit in 1955, her car packed for the return trip to Houston, Martha was having a final lunch with friends at the Bluebonnet Hotel (a building that once graced downtown Kerrville) before going home. One of her friends suggested she move to Kerrville and start a catering business, adding that the business would keep her from missing her family in Houston too much.

Martha decided to act on that advice. She returned to Kerrville with her children and their families over Labor Day weekend.  After a full day of searching for a house, she fell in love with a one-and-a-half story white cottage between Kerrville and Ingram, set back from the highway in a grove of oak trees.

“(The house) had honey colored woodwork, Williamsburg blue walls and a beautiful rock fireplace with rose satin glass sconces,” she remembered, noting the earnest money was paid “pronto” for the property.

She decided the house would not only make a good home but would also serve as a good base of operations for her catering business. She named the property “Raleigh House” in memory of her husband and set to work building a catering business.

As Martha made more friends in her new community and her exceptional culinary talents were discovered, her mostly female clientele started asking her to serve Sunday dinners from 12-3 so their husbands were able to taste the wonderful food at Raleigh House. From those Sunday dinners the restaurant business was born.

By the next spring, the camps and motels in the area that did not have restaurants of their own started asking Martha to be open during June, July and August for their patrons. “I knew absolutely nothing about the restaurant business, but with a nucleus of an experienced staff, lots of hard work and long hours on my part, we survived the first summer. Thus began 34 wonderful years.” 

According to Martha, when the Raleigh House was established, Kerrville did not have much to offer in the way of fine dining, let alone a place to get a good steak. Martha chose the menu of Bud Bigelow’s restaurant in Houston as the model for her own menu.  She served choice grade Angus steaks, fluffy baked potatoes with all the fixings and generous green salads with homemade dressings. She substituted homemade orange rolls and blueberry muffins for the French bread served at Bigelow’s and the dining experience was topped off with a selection of homemade desserts. While the desserts were divine, it was the orange rolls that kept bringing the diners back. There are people in Kerrville today who still wax poetic about those orange rolls.

Some recipes from the Raleigh House

 During the months when the restaurant was closed, Martha would attend culinary schools, including the Cordon Bleu, LaVarenne Cooking Schools in Paris and even a chef’s school in Japan. She was always looking for ways to improve her recipes and develop new skills in the kitchen and that work paid off – creating a successful business that lasted more than three decades.

At 82, Martha was interviewed in the Kerrville Daily Times about her business and staying vibrant at an advanced age. “If something looks difficult, that’s what I want to do. I don’t want to stand still. The secret to staying young is to find new ways of doing things. Very seldom has there been a year when I haven’t discovered a new way to cook something. Every meal at the restaurant is a family original, made from scratch.”

In 1989, Martha decided to close the restaurant after having knee surgery. For her, the decision to close wasn’t a retirement, it was a change in profession. At the urging of her family, Martha took on the challenge of writing a cookbook. “I had always been busy and knew that I would be bored without anything to do, so I began selecting and typing favorite family recipes with the thought of leaving them as a legacy to my family.”

What started out as a project for a family keepsake quickly became a full-blown cookbook and Martha started looking into having the book published. “When I talked to publishers, I found that the only way they would accept the manuscript was on a computer disk. So at 85 I learned to use a computer. It was rough going at first. I thought the computer would surely win out before I did.”

The computer didn’t win. Martha completed her first cookbook, “Raleigh House Cookbook” in 1991 at the age of 86.  Her second cookbook, “Raleigh House Cookbook II” was published in 1995.

In a 1998 interview she said, “I love cooking for my family and friends,” she said. “I rejoice in my good health which allows me to enjoy them. I still cook their favorite cookies and other favorite dishes for them as well as for the whole family.”

“Julia Child, whom I admire, says that one never gets too old to cook. Cooking never gets boring. There are always new foods and new methods of cooking them. Nothing can match the thrill of finding a truly great recipe, or better yet, the thrill of perfecting a recipe of your own.”

Martha Johnson died on December 1, 2003 at the age of 98. Her willingness to reinvent her life when circumstances changed and her refusal to stand still, even at an advanced age, are a huge inspiration to me.  An animal shelter now stands where Martha's restaurant once was, but the memory of an incredible woman, a first class restaurant and the amazing orange rolls she served there lives on.