Evans House

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm drawing straight from the official marker record on this one. Now settle in. Somewhere around 1894, two newlyweds named John Thomas and Maude Martin Evans decided they needed a proper place to call their own.

And they got one. His mother gave them the land outright, and on that ground, John Thomas and Maude built their house. A wedding gift written in soil and lumber, right there in Navasota.

Now John Thomas Evans was not a man who sat still. By day he worked as a ticket agent for the International and Great Northern Railway Company, which means he spent his hours sending people off to somewhere else while he stayed put and served his town. And serve it he did.

The city of Navasota knew him as an alderman and as city treasurer. The man had a hand in the train schedule and the town ledger both. But let's talk about this house, because the house is something.

It is what builders and historians call a typical nineteenth-century vernacular house, and that phrase does not do it full justice when you're standing in front of it. The gable roof gives it that familiar Texas silhouette. Then your eye drops down to the porch, a three-bay porch, and that is where things get interesting.

Elaborate balustrade. Turned wood posts. A spindlework frieze.

Jig-sawn brackets. Somebody put real care into that woodwork, the kind of care that says this is not just shelter. This is a home.

John Thomas and Maude Martin Evans started with a piece of land his mother handed them, and what they raised on it has been standing in Grimes County ever since.

What the marker says

Newlyweds John Thomas and Maude Martin Evans built this house in 1894 on land given to them by his mother. A ticket agent for the International and Great Northern Railway Company, Evans also served the city of Navasota as alderman and city treasurer. The typical 19th-century vernacular house features a gable roof, and a three-bay porch with elaborate balustrade, turned wood posts, spindlework frieze, and jig-sawn brackets. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1991