Governor Sayers House

Duane's take

The official marker for the Governor Sayers House in Bastrop County tells it like this, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Now, 1868 is the year to keep in mind. The Civil War had just finished its terrible business, and a young man named Joseph D.

Sayers was starting over. He built this Greek Revival residence that year, and he built it for his bride, Ada Walton. That right there is as good a reason as any man ever had to pick up a hammer.

Sayers had come to Texas as a boy, moving from Mississippi with his father back in 1851. Texas had a way of holding onto the people who arrived young, and it held onto Sayers. When the Civil War came, he went off and served as a Confederate officer.

When it was over, he came back. Back to Bastrop. Back to the work of building something.

He taught school. He practiced law. And somewhere in the middle of all that, a political career started taking shape around him the way a storm takes shape on a Texas horizon.

Slow at first, then very much not slow. State senator. Lieutenant governor.

United States congressman. Each step a little higher than the last, each one suggesting that the story wasn't finished yet. And it wasn't.

Because Joseph D. Sayers, the boy from Mississippi who came to Texas in 1851, who built a house in Bastrop in 1868 for the woman he loved, ended up serving two terms as Governor of Texas. Eighteen ninety-nine to nineteen-oh-three.

He lived until 1929. And that house he built for Ada Walton, still standing in Bastrop County, had a front-row seat to all of it.

What the marker says

This Greek Revival residence was constructed in 1868 by Joseph D. Sayers (1841-1929) for his bride Ada Walton. Sayers had moved to Texas from Mississippi with his father in 1851. After serving in the Civil War as a Confederate officer, he returned to Bastrop to teach school and practice law. An active political leader, Sayers was a state senator, lieutenant governor, and U. S. congressman prior to his two terms as the Governor of Texas, 1899-1903. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1971