DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, not every building on a Texas town square has a story worth stopping for. But some of 'em have been standing there so long, watching everything roll by, that you start to wonder what they've seen.
The Ingraham Building on Nacogdoches' main square is one of those. And it all starts with a man who came a long way to put down roots. George Francis Ingraham was born in New York in 1842, and by 1860 he had settled in Nacogdoches.
Now that's a considerable journey, in more ways than one. He married Martha Thompson Cooper in 1866, became an attorney in 1873, and if you think he stopped there, well, he did not. Ingraham served as county judge, county treasurer, and state representative.
That's a man who made himself useful to a community. And in 1897, he built this very structure to house his legal offices. Brick and mortar, right there on the square, like he was saying: I'm not goin' anywhere.
He passed in 1920, and two years later the storefront was removed. Just gone. Buildings change, times change, and sometimes what a place looked like in its prime gets stripped away without much ceremony.
But then 1997 rolls around, and renovations restored the edifice to its original appearance. More than a century after Ingraham first raised it, the building looked like itself again. The marker puts it plainly: the Ingraham Building has been witness to the history of Nacogdoches' main square for more than a hundred years.
A New York man came south, built something to last, and it did.
What the marker says
New York native George Francis Ingraham (1842-1920) settled in Nacogdoches in 1860. He married Martha Thompson Cooper in 1866 and became an attorney in 1873. Ingraham served as county judge, county treasurer, and state representative. He built this structure to house his legal offices in 1897. In 1922 the storefront was removed; 1997 renovations restored the edifice to its original appearance. The Ingraham Building has been witness to the history of Nacogdoches' main square for more than 100 years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1998