Brooking-Lipscomb-White House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm going to tell it to you. Three families, one house, and a piece of Goliad that has been standing since before the Civil War was even a cloud on the horizon. Let's get into it.

A man named Bivian Brooking built this place before 1850. Before 1850, friends. That alone ought to make you slow down as you pass it, because this house has been watching Goliad change for a very long time.

Brooking put it up in the early Texas Vernacular style, which is a fancy way of saying the house was built the way Texas demanded: practical, sturdy, and built to breathe. It features a central hall with an enclosed dog trot, side entry bays, triangular lintels framing the windows, and a broken-pitch roof with chimneys standing at the gable ends. It is a house that knows what it is.

Now, Bivian Brooking eventually passed on, and when 1879 came around, it was his children who held the property. That year, a man named Dr. Leonidas S.

Lipscomb bought it from them. Lipscomb was born in 1827 and lived all the way to 1913, so he had time enough to know this house well. Then, in 1905, the house changed hands one more time.

Ruth P. and James A. White purchased it, and their name joined Brooking's and Lipscomb's in the long story of this address. Three families.

One home. Still standing in Goliad County, with those triangular lintels and that broken-pitch roof doing exactly what they were built to do.

What the marker says

Three early Goliad families are associated with this home. Bivian Brooking built the house before 1850. Dr. Leonidas S. Lipscomb (1827 - 1913) bought the property in 1879 from Brooking's children. In 1905 the house was purchased by Ruth P. and James A. White. The one-story early Texas Vernacular home features a central hall/enclosed dog trot, side entry bays, triangular lintels on the window frames, and broken-pitch roof with chimneys at the gable ends. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1986