Ulysses Cephas was born to freed slaves in a San Marcos that did not have a thriving university, debates about apartment developers, or a retail mecca located along a well-traveled interstate highway.

What the city had was horses, and many of the city's leaders rode through town on steeds that bore Cephas' handiwork. His skill as a blacksmith was so widely known in the area that he received the dubious endorsement of being the man to shoe many of the horses belonging to the members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Janis Hendrix, community initiatives program administrator for the City of San Marcos, said she has heard stories about Cephas' ability to recognize members of the Klan as they rode through town by looking at the hooves of the horses on which they rode.

Cephas' skill as a blacksmith, coupled with his work in the community, made him a treasure to the Dunbar neighborhood, one of the city's oldest communities. It also provided the catalyst that led the city to purchase the modest one-story home in which he spent much of his life, Hendrix said.

"What [residents of the Dunbar area] were seeing in their neighborhood was other vacant houses that were deteriorating. People were buying them up and tearing them down and either reselling the land or putting a new house on it," Hendrix said.

The effort to save the house was led by a group of Dunbar residents and community leaders, including the now-deceased Johnnie Armstead, who helped bring the Calaboose African American History Museum to reality, Hendrix said.

"Knowing the importance of Mr. Cephas to the community, especially the African-American community, and seeing all these houses being torn down, they came to us, and they said, 'You know this house is for sale, and it's really important to our neighborhood and our community,'" Hendrix said.

In 2002, the city received funds from the federal government as part of the Community Development Block Grant program, which aims to benefit and serve low- and moderate-income citizens in San Marcos.

The city used $43,799 in CDBG funds to purchase the Cephas House, located at 217 W. Martin Luther King Drive, in 2003. In December, after a process of fundraising, designing and reviewing that lasted nearly 10 years, restoration of the house is under way.

Hendrix said the city will be accepting local organizations' proposals for possible uses for the building in the coming months.

The city contracted Cougar Construction to handle the renovation and restoration job, which will include rebuilding the foundation, repurposing the inner rooms and providing better accessibility.

Hendrix said Richard Bates, chief executive of Cougar, does not fit the mold of a typical contractor because he is at the site during most of the project and does much of the work himself.

For the work that required more than one man, Bates assembled a team of laborers and carpenters. One of those laborers, Melvin Harris, has a close bond with the house, having grown up nearby it.

"It's kind of nice because I've been running around here all my life, and I've been seeing this house here forever," Harris said. "I used to go to the store for the lady who lived here."