Falconer Home

Duane's take

The way I tell it, this one comes straight from the official marker for the Falconer Home in Falls County. Now settle in, because this house has a story in two acts. The first act belongs to a school.

Constructed in 1880, the building was raised to house a private boys' school, and not just any school. It went by the name Stafford Military Academy. You can picture it, young men standing at attention, the whole enterprise carrying itself with that kind of serious, formal purpose.

And the building itself wore that seriousness on its face. Literally. The house features a formal Doric temple facade, the kind of columns and symmetry that says, we mean business here.

For a military academy, that was just about perfect. But here is where the story takes its turn. By 1886, financial difficulties had forced the school to close.

All that discipline, all that architecture, and in the end the money just wasn't there. Second act. Enter Willis Lang Falconer.

He had made his way to Marlin from Mississippi in 1885, and when the academy shuttered the following year, Falconer purchased it as a residence. A school built to shape young men became a family home. And that family, the Falconers, became well-known for their community service in the area.

They held onto that house for more than eighty years. The Doric columns kept standing, the same as ever, watching one chapter close and another unfold. Some buildings just outlast every plan made for them.

What the marker says

Constructed in 1880, this home originally housed a private boys' school known as Stafford Military Academy. When financial difficulties forced the school to close in 1886, it was purchased as a residence by Willis Lang Falconer, who had moved to Marlin from Mississippi in 1885. Falconer's family became well-known for its community service and maintained the home for more than 80 years. An interesting feature of the house is its formal Doric temple facade.