Hillcrest

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the one passing it along. Somewhere in San Augustine County, there stands a house called Hillcrest, and if you slow down long enough to really look at it, the thing starts to talk. It was built in 1872 by a man named Wm.

R. Leonard, and right from the start it was built to mean something. Those timbers holding it up, they weren't hauled in from somewhere else.

They were hand-hewn, cut locally, same as the heart pine floors, inch and a half thick, the kind of floors that don't apologize for being there. The ceilings too, all of it shaped right here in East Texas. Then comes 1878, and a man named Leonidas Cartwright gets hold of the place and enlarges it.

Twelve rooms. You heard that right. Twelve.

Whatever Hillcrest was before, Cartwright had a larger idea in mind. Now the brick in those walls, that came from the old Ayish Bayou kiln. Not shipped in, not borrowed from somewhere fancy.

Made right there at the bayou, fired and shaped and put to use. Seven fireplaces in that house, seven, which tells you something about the winters they were expecting, or maybe just something about the kind of comfort a man like Leonidas Cartwright believed a twelve-room house deserved. But here's where the story stretches a little, the part that makes you stop and picture it.

Those marble mantels above those fireplaces, they came from France. France. And they didn't arrive by rail or wagon road.

They came by Sabine boats, making their way up from the water to find their place inside a house in San Augustine County, Texas. French marble riding a Sabine boat to sit above a fireplace built with East Texas brick. That's Hillcrest.

The timbers are still hand-hewn. The floors are still heart pine. And the marble is still from France.

What the marker says

Built 1872 by Wm. R. Leonard; enlarged to 12 rooms, 1878, by Leonidas Cartwright. Hand-hewn timbers, ceilings and 1 1/2" heart pine floors cut locally. Brick made at old Ayish Bayou kiln. 7 fireplaces. Marble mantels from France, came by Sabine boats. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965