Crocheron-McDowall House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Crocheron-McDowall House in Bastrop County. Now settle in, because this house has seen a few lifetimes worth of living. Henry Crocheron was born in New York in 1806, and somewhere along the way he made his way to Bastrop, Texas, where he built himself a life that was anything but small.

Lumbering, land, cotton. The man had his hands in all of it, and he became one of Bastrop's earliest leaders in civic affairs and local government. Around 1857, he and his wife Mary Ann Tipple, born in 1816, built this Greek Revival house, the kind of place that says something about who you are and what you intend.

And what Henry Crocheron intended, apparently, was to stay. He passed in 1873, Mary Ann in 1888, but the house didn't sit empty and forgotten. Not even close.

The Crocherons had raised a niece right here in these rooms, a young woman named Mary Ann Nicholson, though folks knew her as Mollie. Mollie McDowall, she became, after marrying William McDowall. She went abroad, saw something of the world, and then, as life has a way of arranging things, she came back.

Her husband William passed, and in 1888 Mollie returned to this very house and inherited it. What did she do with it? She opened a music school.

Right here. Pupils coming and going, scales drifting out the windows of a Greek Revival house in Bastrop, Texas. Eventually Mollie moved on to Houston, where she made a name for herself as a successful clubwoman.

Three families, one house, New York roots and Texas soil, and a music school in between. That house earned every year it's been standing.

What the marker says

New York native Henry Crocheron (1806-1873) and his wife Mary Ann Tipple (1816--1888) built this Greek Revival house about 1857. A prominent businessman with interests in lumbering, land, and cotton, Crocheron was one of Bastrop's earliest leaders in civic affairs and local government. Here the Crocherons raised a niece, Mary Ann "Mollie" Nicholson McDowall, who married, went abroad, and returned here after the death of her husband William McDowall and inherited the home in 1888. She later ran a music school here before moving to Houston, where she was a successful clubwoman. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1962 Incise on base: Lower Colorado River Authority - 1996