Crow Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the one passing it along. Somewhere in Erath County, there's a Queen Anne cottage with a story bigger than its eight rooms might suggest, and it starts, like a lot of good Texas stories do, with people who came from somewhere else. Dr.

Martin Swan Crow and his wife Mollie Jane, born Mollie Jane George, were Tennessee natives, both of them. They arrived in Stephenville in 1871, and they did not arrive quietly. Dr.

Crow set up a medical practice, ran a drug store, and invested heavily in real estate. That's the kind of man who hits the ground running and keeps running. He was born in 1833, and he died in 1892, and before he went, he and Mollie Jane had built something in that town.

Now here's where the story turns, and turns sharp. Dr. Crow died in 1892.

The cottage you can still go look at today was built around 1893. Likely, the marker says, by Mrs. Crow herself, after the death of her husband.

Let that land a moment. The man is barely gone, and Mollie Jane Crow, born in 1843, is not retreating. She is building.

And what she built was no modest grieving widow's quarters. It was a Queen Anne-style cottage, the kind with cross-gabled rooflines and cypress siding and fishscale shingles that catch the light just so. Eight rooms.

Five fireplaces. Tall double-hung windows that, and here's the detail that'll stick with you, matched the windows of the Crow Opera House over on the courthouse square. Mollie Jane was not just building a home.

She was building in conversation with everything else the Crow name stood for in Stephenville. And she wasn't finished with ambition either. She invested in real estate on her own account.

She founded the town's first savings and loan. She served as a director of an area railroad. Born in 1843, still standing tall and running institutions, and she didn't leave this world until 1910.

That cottage on the marker, with its cypress and its fishscale shingles and its five fireplaces for five cold Erath County winters at a time, that was Mollie Jane Crow's answer to whatever the world thought a widow ought to do. She built it anyway.

What the marker says

Tennessee natives Dr. Martin Swan Crow (1833-1892) and his wife Mollie Jane (George) Crow (1843-1910) arrived in Stephenville in 1871. Dr. Crow operated a successful medical practice and drug store, and he invested heavily in real estate. Mrs. Crow also invested in real estate, founded the town’s first savings and loan and served as a director of an area railroad. This Queen Anne-style cottage was built ca. 1893, likely by Mrs. Crow after the death of her husband. The original cross-gabled floor plan included eight rooms and five fireplaces. The exterior features cypress siding, fishscale shingles, and tall double-hung windows matching those of the Crow Opera House on the courthouse square.