Bassett House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of the official marker for the Bassett House, out of Limestone County. Now, nearly two thousand five hundred acres of land straddling Limestone and Falls Counties go by the name Bassett Farms. That is a stretch of Texas that asks to be reckoned with.

And sitting at the heart of it all is a two-story red-brown brick house, built in 1875, that has stayed in the same family's hands for over one hundred years. Not a bad run. But to understand that house, you have to go back to the man who built it.

Henry Caleb Bassett was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1817. New Haven, Connecticut. About as far from a Limestone County ranch as a man can get and still be on the same continent.

He worked in a cotton factory. He apprenticed as a carpenter. He built things and contracted things.

Then he moved into banking. The man had range, you might say, long before he ever laid eyes on a Texas pasture. In 1869, Bassett made his move to Texas, settling first in Grimes County.

Then in February of 1871, he bought land near the Little Brazos River, northwest of Kosse, the very ground where the Bassett House would one day stand. He also picked up land closer to the Kosse townsite and put up a small wood-frame house there. A man getting his footing.

In 1874, Bassett married Hattie Ford Pope, born in 1851. And that changed the arithmetic of the whole operation. A first child was on the way, and Henry Caleb Bassett was not the kind of man who built small when he could build right.

So the couple constructed a two-story brick house, symmetrical and rectangular, the kind of structure that announces itself across a flat Texas landscape. It was one of Limestone County's first brick homes of its kind. The exterior walls, brick masonry all the way around, were unusual for Texas farmhouses of the mid-1870s.

And those bricks were likely made right there, from local clay in the Kosse area. The land building its own monument, more or less. Over time, a one-story gable-roof addition went up alongside the main house, and outbuildings spread across the property.

The farm and ranch worked at just about everything: livestock, corn, cotton, peach trees. The Bassetts kept acquiring acreage, grazing some, renting other parcels to farm tenants. Henry Caleb Bassett passed in 1888.

Hattie Ford Pope Bassett lived on until 1936. The land stayed in the family. That house, those bricks pulled from local ground, that Home Place tract northwest of Kosse, they stand today as what the marker calls an enduring example of rural large-scale Texas farming and ranching across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A Connecticut-born banker turned Texas rancher built something out there near the Little Brazos. And it lasted.

What the marker says

What is known as Bassett Farms encompasses nearly 2,500 acres of land in Limestone and Falls Counties. The 1875 Bassett House and surrounding Bassett Home Place tract represent the core of the property, retained in family hands for over one hundred years. Henry Caleb Bassett (1817-1888) was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and worked in a cotton factory, as a carpenter's apprentice and in the building and contracting trades before starting a career in banking. In 1869, Bassett moved to Texas, settling in Grimes County. In February 1871, he purchased land near the Little Brazos River northwest of Kosse, the future site of the Bassett House, along with land closer to the Kosse townsite where he built a small wood-frame house. In 1874, Bassett married Hattie Ford Pope (1851-1936). In preparation for their first child who was born in 1875, the couple constructed a two-story red-brown brick house, one of Limestone County's first. Symmetrical and rectangular in plan, the house's brick masonry exterior walls are unusual for Texas farmhouses of the mid-1870s and were likely built with local bricks from the Kosse area. A one-story gable-roof addition to the main house and numerous outbuildings are also on the property. A variety of agricultural functions took place on the farm and ranch, including livestock, corn, cotton, and peach trees, and the family continued to acquire additional acreage that was used for grazing or rented to farm tenants. The Bassett House and Home Place tract provide an enduring example of rural large-scale Texas farming and ranching in the 19th and 20th centuries.