Aldridge-Smith Home

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Brazoria County stands a house that has been quietly watching Texas history roll by since before most of Texas was even Texas. The Aldridge-Smith Home was built between 1837 and 1841, raised up for a man named William Aldridge, a farmer and a large landholder in an era when land was everything and everything was still being figured out.

That alone is a story worth telling. But this old house was just gettin' started. After William Aldridge, the place passed into the hands of a merchant named Henry Hansen, who held onto it for ten years before selling it along to a firm called J.

H. Dance and Company. Now, J.

H. Dance and Company wasn't just any outfit. They were a construction firm, and during the years of the Confederacy, they supplied arms to that cause.

So this house, which started its life sheltering a farmer, found itself connected to the machinery of a war that would tear the country in two. History has a way of moving through a building whether the walls invite it or not. Then the war ended, and the years moved on, and the house changed hands again, and again, until 1908, when a businessman named Thomas Masterson Smith and his wife Mary came along and leased it.

Thomas, born in 1882, and Mary, born in 1881, made that house their own long before they officially owned it. They leased it, they lived in it, they put their lives into it, and then in 1917 they purchased it outright. Thomas Smith would live until 1965.

Mary until 1964. And that house they bought together, it stayed in the Smith family for more than sixty years. Built for a farmer, touched by a war, and finally held onto by a family who decided it was worth keeping.

Some houses just insist on lasting.

What the marker says

This local landmark was built between 1837 and 1841 for William Aldridge, a farmer and large landholder. After a 10-year ownership by merchant Henry Hansen, the house was sold to J. H. Dance and Co., a construction firm that supplied arms to the Confederacy. Businessman Thomas Masterson Smith (1882-1965) and his wife Mary (1881-1964) leased the house from 1908 until they purchased it in 1917. The home has been in the Smith family for more than 60 years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983