Emory Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, not every house has a story worth pullin' off the highway for, but some houses earn it. The Emory Home in Grandview, Johnson County, is one of those.

John Samuel Emory came from Maryland (about as far from Texas as a man could reasonably get and still speak English) and when he arrived, he planted himself deep. He and his wife Mary Elizabeth, born a Van Cleave, built their two-story residence in 1907. Two stories.

Queen Anne influences, classical touches. The kind of house that says something about a man before he ever opens his mouth. John became a successful farmer and stockman, and somewhere along the way Grandview started calling him one of its outstanding civic leaders.

That's not a title you buy; that's one you earn, slow and steady. Now here's where the story gets its teeth. 1920. A fire tears through Grandview (not a little kitchen mishap, mind you, but a destructive fire, the kind that rewrites a town's skyline and takes its history with it).

Most of the early homes didn't make it. The Emory place did. Stood right through it.

The family held onto that house, generation to generation, all the way until 1961 (fifty-four years after John and Mary Elizabeth first set down roots inside those walls). John Samuel Emory passed in 1953, Mary Elizabeth in 1957. They're gone, but the house they built is still standing in Grandview, one of the very few left that remembers what the town looked like before 1920 changed everything.

Some things, if you build them right, just refuse to burn.

What the marker says

Maryland native John Samuel Emory (d. 1953) and his wife Mary Elizabeth (Van Cleave) (d. 1957) built this two-story residence in 1907. A successful farmer and stockman, John Emory became one of Grandview's outstanding civic leaders. The Emory home, owned by family members until 1961, reflects influences of the Queen Anne and classical styles. It is one of the few early homes to escape Grandview's destructive fire of 1920. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1986