DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the Carr-Taliaferro House in Grayson County. Now settle in, because sometimes the best stories are the ones that happen right inside four walls. Richard Bell Carr was a prosperous farmer and landowner, born in 1855, and he and his wife Susan, born in 1858, had been out in the cedar community doing what farmers do.
But at some point, they decided it was time to move into town. And when Richard and Susan Carr moved, they did not do it halfway. They brought in a highly-regarded contractor by the name of J.
R. Barrow to design and build them a dignified family residence. That was 1902.
Now, the marker calls it dignified, and you have to figure a man like Carr, a prosperous farmer-landowner who hired a highly-regarded contractor, was not settling for anything less. J. R.
Barrow delivered. The house stood. And the family grew into it.
Then came 1915. The front parlor of that very house became the setting for a wedding. The Carrs' daughter Susiebel married a man named John Cecil Taliaferro right there in the home her father had built thirteen years before.
That's the kind of moment a house remembers. Susan Carr lived on until 1940, long enough to see what came next. The Taliaferros, Susiebel and John Cecil, kept right on living there.
And in time, they inherited the house. Then they enlarged it, put their own mark on what Richard Bell Carr had set in motion back in 1902. One house, two families, one unbroken line.
That front parlor knew exactly what it was doing.
What the marker says
Prosperous farmer-landowner Richard Bell Carr (1855-1918) and wife Susan (1858-1940) moved into town from cedar community. They employed highly-regarded contractor J. R. Barrow to design and build this dignified family residence in 1902. Their daughter Susiebel married John Cecil Taliaferro in the front parlor in 1915. Continuing to live here, the Taliaferros later inherited and enlarged the house. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1978