Collins-Haines Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm going to give it its proper due. Way out in Wood County, Texas, there stands a house with a story older than most of its neighbors, older than a lot of the county's memories. The Collins-Haines Home.

And the first thing you need to know is this: when it went up, it was the first brick structure in all of Wood County. The very first. In a land of timber and mud and makeshift, somebody decided to build in brick, and that somebody was James A.

Collins and his wife Harriet C. Collins. They had come up from Mississippi in 1859, and they did not come to settle halfway.

They molded the bricks nearby. They burned those bricks nearby. They didn't ship anything in from somewhere fancier.

They pulled the material out of the earth close at hand and stacked it into something that was going to last. The furniture inside, that was crafted in a plantation shop, by Collins and by slaves. Fine gardens went in around it.

Landscapes, tended and deliberate, the kind of thing you plant when you intend to stay. Then the years turned, and the world outside that house got loud. From 1861 to 1865, Confederate units marched past that very home, heading off to the Civil War.

Think about that for a moment. You're standing in your garden, the one you planted to last, and soldiers are filing past your gate, year after year, heading toward something none of them could fully see. The house stood there through all of it.

After the war, the years kept moving, and in 1870 the home passed into the hands of the family of George W. Haines, and there it has remained ever since. A brick house, the first of its kind in Wood County, still holding its ground.

What the marker says

1860 - First brick structure in Wood County. Erected by James A. and Harriet C. Collins, 1859 settlers from Mississippi. Bricks were molded and burned nearby; furniture crafted in plantation shop by Collins and slaves. They also planted fine gardens and landscapes. Past this home, 1861-1865, marched Confederate units, to Civil War. Since 1870 owned by family of George W. Haines. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965