DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, if you're rollin' through Bastrop County and you happen to catch sight of a Victorian house with not one but two galleries wrapped around it, you might want to slow down. Because that house has a story, and it starts back in 1888.
That's when Benjamin Darby Orgain had it built. The man was a banker, an attorney, and a civic leader, and he carried all three of those titles in the same county at the same time, which tells you something about the kind of person he was. Born in 1843, and he lived until 1917.
His wife was Drucilla, born a Johnston, and she was no idle presence in this story either. She served as an assistant teacher in the local Colorado Institute. So you had a banker-lawyer-civic figure on one side of the front door and an educator on the other.
Now about that front door. The exterior of this home is dressed up in intricate detailing and fishscale shingling. Say that out loud.
Fishscale shingling. Victorian craftsmen were not here to be modest. And step inside, and the woodwork greets you in four voices: pine, cherry, mahogany, and walnut.
Four different woods, each one doing something different to the light and the room. This was a house built to mean something. The Orgain family clearly agreed, because they held onto it.
Generation to generation, the house stayed in family hands all the way until 1947. Drucilla herself lived until 1931, long enough to see the century turn and keep turning. That house in Bastrop County stood through all of it.
And in a way, it still is.
What the marker says
This double-galleried Victorian residence was constructed in 1888 for Benjamin Darby Orgain (1843 - 1917), a prominent area banker, attorney, and civic leader. His wife Drucilla (Johnston) (d. 1931) was an assistant teacher in the local Colorado Institute. The exterior of their home features intricate detailing and fishscale shingling. The interior includes woodwork of pine, cherry, mahogany, and walnut. Orgain family members owned the house until 1947. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1981