Hardeman-Griffin House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Out in Henderson, in Rusk County, there stands a house that has been quietly outlasting everybody. The Hardeman-Griffin House.

And if walls could talk, these ones would have a lot of years behind them. Constructed in 1884 for Mr. and Mrs. John S.

Hardeman, this place went up when Henderson was still finding its footing, and it was built to make a statement. You can see it in the details. Ornamental woodwork in the exterior gables, elements of the Eastlake style, touches of colonial revival.

Somebody put real thought into this house. Somebody wanted it noticed. John S.

Hardeman, born in 1852, was a Henderson businessman, and this was the kind of home a Henderson businessman built when he meant to stay. And the house did stay, even after Hardeman himself was gone, passing in 1925. Because by 1918, the house had already found new hands.

H. L. and Nellie Griffin purchased it that year. Griffin, born in 1860, was himself a Henderson businessman, cut from much the same cloth as the man who built the place.

And the Griffins, it turns out, were not going anywhere. That family held onto this house for more than forty years. Nellie's husband Griffin lived all the way to 1947, long enough to see the world change in ways nobody in 1884 could have imagined, and still that ornamental woodwork in the gables stood right where it always had.

Some things in Texas just refuse to be rushed out the door.

What the marker says

Constructed in 1884 for Mr. and Mrs. John S. Hardeman, this home was purchased in 1918 by H. L. and Nellie Griffin. Both Hardeman (1852-1925) and Griffin (1860-1947) were Henderson businessmen. The house, which exhibits elements of the Eastlake and colonial revival styles of architecture, features ornamental woodwork in the exterior gables. It remained in the Griffin family for more than 40 years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1985