DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some houses just sit there. Four walls, a roof, a door.
But some houses — some houses have a whole story pressed into every inch of marble and sandstone and copper they've got. The Eddleman-McFarland House in Tarrant County is that second kind. It starts in 1899.
Architect Howard Messer designs a Victorian house — and not a modest one, mind you — for a woman named Sarah C. Ball. Sarah was born in 1825, and by the time this house goes up, she is a widow, the widow of a Galveston banker named George Ball.
You get the sense this was not a woman who did things halfway. The exterior alone comes dressed in marble, sandstone, brick, and copper. Copper.
On the outside of a house. In 1899. That ought to tell you something about the ambitions at work here.
Now, Sarah Ball lived in this house only a handful of years. She passed in 1904 — the very same year a local banker named William H. Eddelman, born in 1850, stepped in and bought the place.
One era closing, another one opening, right there on the threshold. Eddelman held onto that house for seventeen years. Then, in 1921, he gave it to his daughter Carrie.
That's a gift with some real weight to it — not a pocket watch, not a parcel of land somewhere distant. The house itself. Carrie, born in 1877, was the wife of a cattleman named Frank H.
McFarland, born in 1869. And Carrie McFarland, she did not take that gift lightly. She lived there seventy-five years.
Seventy-five years in one house. Think about what that means. The woodwork inside — finely crafted, the marker says — still holds most of its original fixtures and detail, and you have to wonder how much of that is owed to Carrie simply being there, decade after decade, a steady presence in a house that was built to last.
Carrie McFarland was born in 1877 and lived until 1978. The house that her father bought before she was middle-aged became the whole long frame of her life. Howard Messer designed it.
Sarah Ball commissioned it. William Eddelman preserved it. And Carrie McFarland made it a home for three quarters of a century.
Some houses just sit there. This one earned its place on the map.
What the marker says
Designed by Howard Messer, this Victorian house was built in 1899 for Sarah C. Ball (1825-1904), widow of Galveston banker George Ball. William H. Eddelman (1850-1932), a local banker, bought the home in 1904 and in 1921 gave it to his daughter Carrie (1877-1978), wife of cattleman Frank H. McFarland (1869-1948). She lived here 75 years. The finely crafted interior retains most of the original woodwork and fixtures. The exterior features marble, sandstone, brick, and copper. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark- 1980.