DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the McFadin House out in Williamson County. Now, some houses just sit there. They endure weather, they endure seasons, they endure whatever history decides to throw at them.
The McFadin House is one of those houses. David H. and Jerusha Dyches McFadin built it in 1850, and they built it to last — twenty-seven inches of native stone in those walls. Twenty-seven.
You could lean a cannon against that wall and the wall would win. David McFadin was a Tennessee man by birth, but he came to Texas in 1828, which means he had already been in this country long enough to know its moods, its tempers, its possibilities. Long enough that when the moment came at San Jacinto, he was there — he fought in the Battle of San Jacinto.
So when this man finally set stone upon stone to raise a house, you have to believe he knew something about what it meant to hold ground. Now, the walls are one thing. But it's what sits beside that house that tells the second half of the story.
A spring. Cool, perpetual — those are the marker's own words, and they are the right words. A spring that just keeps coming, no matter the season, no matter the year.
Word travels about water like that, especially in hard country. And so it was that Confederate soldiers, on their way to the Civil War, camped right there beside it. Right there by the McFadin spring, on the edge of David and Jerusha's land.
Men heading toward something they couldn't yet fully imagine, stopping first to drink from water that never quit. Those twenty-seven-inch walls have been standing ever since, watching everything come and go. Some things endure.
This house is one of them.
What the marker says
Built 1850 by David H. and Jerusha Dyches McFadin. Mr. McFadin, born in Tennessee, came to Texas 1828; fought in Battle of San Jacinto. House has 27" native stone walls. By its cool, perpetual spring, Confederates camped on way to Civil War. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965