Hoggett Home

Duane's take

Here's how the marker on this old Kimble County house tells it: and it's a story worth tellin'. The Hoggett Home. First two-story house in the entire county.

That alone ought to stop you right there on the road. Just sit with that a moment. Out here on this caliche soil, in country that doesn't give an inch easy, somebody looked around and said, no, not one story.

Two. Back in 1877, a Civil War veteran by the name of B.F. Pepper set to work on this place, and he didn't finish in a weekend.

Took him clear through to 1879. And here's the detail that gets me every time: he built it on that caliche soil with no foundation. None.

Just set it down and let it stand, and stand it did. Now B.F. Pepper wasn't some man who stumbled into Texas by accident.

He had led a wagon train of settlers all the way from Missouri to Texas. Led them himself. So when this man decided to build a house, you had better believe he built one worth the journey.

Then the calendar turns to 1905, and the home passes into the family of Dr. R.H.P. Wright, and it stays there.

A family home in the truest sense. And within those walls, between 1941 and 1947, a young woman named Fay Wright spent her girlhood years. She would go on to become First Lady of Texas, wife of Governor Coke Stevenson.

So that's what's standing out there on the caliche. No foundation, two full stories, and a whole lot of Texas history holding it up.

What the marker says

First two-story house in county. Built 1877-1879 on the caliche soil, with no foundation, by Civil War veteran B.F. Pepper, who led a wagon train of settlers to Texas from Missouri. Since 1905 in family of Dr. R.H.P. Wright. The girlhood home of Fay Wright, 1941-1947, First Lady of Texas, as wife of Governor Coke Stevenson. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965.