DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the marker tells it, and I'll tell it right along with the marker's lead. Out here in Brewster County, there's a house with walls that were built in the dark — and that's not a figure of speech. In 1884, an early settler named J.C.
Carr laid adobe brick double walls at night, slowly drying to super-strength in the time-honored southwestern manner. Think about that. A man building his home under the stars, course by course, letting the desert air do its work while the rest of the world slept.
Those walls didn't just dry — they hardened into something that could outlast just about anything West Texas cared to throw at them. And they did. Now, fast-forward to 1903.
The house sells — goes to a man named Judge R.B. Slight, born in 1869. And here is where the story takes a turn that you could not make up if you tried.
Judge Slight was an English law clerk. Not a Texan. Not a rancher.
An English law clerk — who saw wild west shows, and decided right then and there that he was done with clerking and he was going to come here and be a cowboy. He did not send a letter. He did not ask permission from the frontier.
He just came. And the frontier, to its credit, took him seriously. Because R.B.
Slight became a civic leader, a rancher, and a merchant. He was influential in founding Sul Ross College — that's a legacy that reaches well beyond any one man's acreage. He added five adobe rooms to that house after he bought it, building on what Carr had started, adobe on adobe.
And he lived in that house for fifty years. Fifty years in the same walls that a stranger laid by night in 1884, walls that dried slow and held fast. Judge Slight passed in 1953.
The house, at the time of the marker, was owned by F.J. Ellyson. But those double adobe walls — built in the dark, one careful night at a time — they're still standing.
Some things, if you build them right and slow and true, just don't quit.
What the marker says
Bulit 1884 by an early settler, J.C. Carr. Adobe brick double walls were laid at night, slowly drying to super-strength, in time honoerd southwestern manner. Five abobe rooms were added after 1903 sale to Judge R.B. Slight (1869-1953), English law clerk who came here to be a cowboy after seeing wild west shows. Judge Slight was civic leader, rancher and merchant, influential in founding Sul Ross College. He lived in this house 50 years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1968. House now owned by F.J. Ellyson.