Crane Family Cabin

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Montgomery County, there's a cabin with a story that starts long before it ever stood where it stands today. It begins with a man named Nickolas Crane, born in 1830, who came to Texas from Alabama in 1848.

Now that right there tells you something about a man. Alabama to Texas. That's not a short road, and it's not a small decision.

Nickolas Crane made it anyway. Come the 1850s, he married Mary Ann Havard. Then the Civil War came along, as it did for so many, and Nickolas served the Confederacy.

When it was over, he did what a man does. He found his land and he got to work. In 1867, he occupied a claim in Angelina County, and on that land he built himself a cabin.

Not a rough-hewn, throw-it-together-and-hope-for-the-best kind of cabin. A large one. And he built it right.

The walls were pine logs, split and hand-adzed, worked until the interior surfaces came out smooth. Think about that for a moment. A man takes raw pine logs and works them by hand until they're smooth enough to live against.

The chimney was stick, mud, and moss. The roof was cypress board. And the kitchen, well, the kitchen stood separate from the main structure entirely, as was the sensible custom of the day.

The cabin had good bones, you might say, and good bones have a way of outlasting almost everything else. Now here's where the story takes a turn worth noting. The cabin didn't stay put.

In the 1970s, Carroll and Mae Tharp moved it and restored it. Moved it. The whole thing.

And restored it along the way. So what Nickolas Crane built with split pine and hand-adzed care in Angelina County in 1867 is still standing today, because somebody looked at it and decided it was worth saving. That's the thing about building something right.

You give it a fighting chance to still be here when the rest of the world has moved on.

What the marker says

Nickolas Crane (b. 1830) came to Texas from Alabama, 1848, and in 1850s married Mary Ann Havard. A Confederate veteran of the Civil War, he built this large cabin on the Angelina County land claim that he occupied in 1867. Walls were of pine logs split and hand-adzed to give smooth finish to the interior. Cabin had a stick-mud-and-moss chimney; a cypress board roof. Kitchen was detached. Carroll and Mae Tharp moved and restored the cabin in the 1970s. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974