DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and Duane's gonna do it justice. Way back in 1844, a man named Alexander Wilson Perry and his wife Sarah (she was a Huffman before she took the Perry name) packed up their lives in Illinois and headed for Texas. They were joining something called the Peters Colony, and they landed right here in what would become Dallas County.
They bought this land from a fellow pioneer settler, Joshua B. Lee, and sometime in the late 1850s they put up a simple frame house on the property. Simple, sure, but it would anchor a family for generations.
The Perrys had eight children who all grew to adulthood, and that family gave freely to the community around them: they donated land for Union Baptist Church, for Perry Cemetery, for a school, and for railroad right-of-way. When you give that much to a place, the place remembers you. Alexander Perry was born in 1819 and lived all the way to 1904.
Sarah, born in 1824, passed in 1896. That's a long run, and they used every year of it. Now, when the Perry property was divided in 1904 (the same year Alexander died), one of those eight grown children, a son named DeWitt Clinton Perry, born in 1856, received this particular portion, the one with the family home sitting on it.
DeWitt looked at that old pre-Civil War structure and made a decision. In 1909 he dismantled it (took it apart piece by piece) and he used some of the very same lumber and stone to build what stands here now: a one-and-a-half story residence with a central hallway dividing the interior and ornate columns holding up a wrap-around porch. He didn't throw the old house away.
He folded it into the new one. And behind the house, to this day, stand cedar trees that once shaded the front of that earlier dwelling. The trees outlasted the building they used to shade.
Now here's the detail that'll stop you cold. DeWitt's wife was Frances Grimes Perry (she went by Mrs. DeWitt Perry) and she was born in 1866.
She occupied this residence until her death. And when did she die? Just before her hundred-and-first birthday.
Frances Grimes Perry lived from 1866 to 1967. She saw this house go up, she kept it through a century of Texas history, and she held on nearly long enough to see her second hundred years. After Frances was gone, her daughter Pearl (Mrs.
William A. Gravley) made sure the story didn't end there. In 1975, Pearl gave the house and ten acres of surrounding property to the city of Carrollton, to be used as a museum and park.
Community volunteers restored the structure in 1975 and 1976. A family that once donated land for a church, a cemetery, a school, and a railroad ended up donating the homestead itself to everyone. That's not just a house.
That's a whole way of being in a place.
What the marker says
In 1844 Alexander Wilson Perry (1819 - 1904) and his wife Sarah (Huffman) (1824 - 1896) migrated from Illinois to Texas to join the Peters Colony. They purchased this land from Joshua B. Lee, another pioneer settler, and built a simple frame house here in the late 1850s. The Perrys had eight children who grew to adulthood. The family donated land for Union Baptist Church, Perry Cemetery, a school, and railroad right-of-way. When the Perry property was divided in 1904, one son DeWitt Clinton Perry (1856 - 1930) received this portion containing the family home. In 1909 he dismantled the old structure and used some of the lumber and stone to build this one-and-a-half story residence. A central hallway divides the interior, and ornate columns support the wrap-around porch. Behind the house stand cedar trees that once shaded the front of the pre-Civil War dwelling. Frances Grimes (Mrs. DeWitt) Perry (1866 - 1967) occupied the residence until her death just before her 101st birthday. In 1975 her daughter Pearl (Mrs. William A.) Gravley gave the house and ten acres of surrounding property to the city of Carrollton for use as a museum and park. Volunteers from the community restored the structure in 1975-76. (1976).