Ivy-Atchison Pioneer Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it right along to you. Out in Hill County, not far from a settlement that became the town of Peoria, there stands a frame house. Ordinary enough from the outside, maybe.

But step a little closer, and the walls start whispering something older. Because tucked inside that frame house, wrapped up like a gift nobody wanted to unwrap too fast, is a log structure built in the eighteen forties. One of the very first homes in the settlement that would grow into Peoria.

And portions of those original log walls are still there, visible right through glass panes, like the house itself decided to keep the evidence. It even has early Texas furnishings inside. The kind of place that makes you feel like time just got a little negotiable.

Now, the home was once the residence of Colonel V. H. Ivy, and three of his sons came along for the story.

Tom, Henry, and Preston Ivy. Tom and Henry, the marker makes a point of telling us, were both pioneer doctors. Preston, history is a little quieter about, but he was there.

After the Ivys, ownership passed to Greer McKissick, and then to a man named Frank Smith. Frank was not the type to leave well enough alone. He added rooms.

He completed the enclosure of that old log house, wrapping the past inside the present as neat as you please. Then in nineteen sixty-four, Frank Smith's son Knox sold the home to Mrs. Joe Atchison.

And Mrs. Atchison, to her credit, kept right on improving the place. The marker itself was eventually relocated to the Peoria School, which serves as the community center, and the home formerly stood about three hundred feet west of that site.

So that old log structure from the eighteen forties has been dressed up, added onto, enclosed, relocated in memory, and carried forward by name all the way to the present. Some houses just refuse to disappear.

What the marker says

Presently enclosed by a frame house, the original log structure was built in the 1840's and was one of the first homes in the settlement that became Peoria. Portions of the original walls are visible behind glass panes. Has early Texas furnishings. Once home of Col. V.H. Ivy, his three sons: Tom, Henry (both pioneer doctors), and Preston. Owners included Greer McKissick and also Frank Smith, who added rooms and completed enclosure of log house. In 1964 Smith's son Knox sold home to Mrs. Joe Atchison, who since has made further improvements. (1968) Supplemental plate: The Ivy-Atchison home formerly stood ca. 300 feet west of this site. The marker was relocated to the Peoria School (Community Center) in 2010.