Gordon Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best by every word. Alonzo Peyton Gordon rolled into Granbury from Georgia in 1871, and if you're picturing a man who intended to leave a mark on this county, well, you'd be right. He started out teaching school, which is a respectable enough beginning, but Alonzo Peyton Gordon was not a man content to stay put in one lane.

Before long he had opened a mercantile store, and that store didn't stay modest for long. It grew into one of the largest in all of Hood County. And he didn't rent some back-alley space for it either; Gordon constructed a large stone building right on the Granbury Square and housed his business inside it.

Stone. On the Square. The man was making a statement.

He was also running a cotton gin on top of all that, and if you're keeping count, that's schoolteacher, merchant, stone-building constructor, and cotton gin operator. Hood County was not boring this man. Then he took on superintendent of the local school, because apparently the man had hours to fill.

And then came 1898, when the people of his district elected him to the Texas Legislature. Georgia boy, Granbury made. Now, somewhere in the middle of all this (1882, to be exact), Gordon built his home here.

The very home this marker stands beside. And here is maybe the quietest remarkable thing in this whole story: that home stayed in the Gordon family from the time he built it clear until 1982. One hundred years of Gordons under that roof.

Some legacies are carved in stone buildings on a courthouse square. Some are just a family that keeps coming home.

What the marker says

Alonzo Peyton Gordon came to Granbury from Georgia in 1871. He taught school for a time before opening a mercantile store that grew into one of the largest in Hood County. His business was housed in a large stone building that he constructed on the Granbury Square. A cotton gin operator, Gordon also served as superintendent of the local school and in 1898 was elected to the Texas Legislature. Gordon built his home here in 1882. Remained in the Gordon Family until 1982.