Cathalorri

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how Duane tells it back to you. Somewhere in Montgomery County there stands a house with a name, and names like that don't come cheap. They're earned.

The story starts in 1854. A merchant by the name of R. S.

Willis wanted a house built, and he found his man in a craftsman named J. E. Shelton.

Now Shelton didn't cut corners. He planed the siding by hand. He pegged and morticed the framework, the kind of joinery that doesn't ask permission from nails and doesn't apologize to time.

That house went up the way good things go up: carefully, deliberately, with skill that shows. Decades rolled over it. Then more decades.

And the house waited, the way old houses do, patient and a little proud. In 1965, a couple named Mr. and Mrs. R.

Waldrop took it on. They restored it, brought it back to something worthy of the craftsmanship Shelton had put into it more than a century before. And then they gave it a name.

Cathalorri. You might turn that word over a few times before it gives up its secret. It isn't Spanish, it isn't old Texas, it isn't anything you'll find on a map.

What it is, is two granddaughters. The Waldrops took their two granddaughters' names and wove them into one word and hung it on that house like a lantern. A craftsman's work in 1854.

A family's love in 1965. One name holding both of those things together. That's Cathalorri.

What the marker says

Built in 1854 for merchant, R. S. Willis, by craftsman J. E. Shelton. Hand-planed siding, pegged and morticed framework. Restored in 1965 by Mr. and Mrs. R. Waldrop. Named for their two granddaughters. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966