DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it straight along to you. Joseph Andrew Hamilton was a native of Ohio, and he carried that Ohio upbringing all the way through service in the Union army during the Civil War. Then the war ended, and Hamilton did what a good number of men did in those years after, he started looking for somewhere new to put down roots.
About 1866, he found it. Wharton, Texas. Now, a man doesn't just settle into a place like Wharton and blend into the woodwork, and Hamilton was no exception.
He held a variety of local political offices, which is a polite way of saying the town got to know him real well, real fast. Then in 1885, he made it official in the way that matters most in Texas. He bought land.
He purchased this very property and moved his family into the existing one-story frame house standing on it. That was the house as it was. But a house, like a family, has a way of needing more room over time.
So in 1907, they raised the original structure right up off the ground and built a brand new addition underneath it. Just slipped a whole new floor beneath the old one. The result was a home that carries the influences of the neoclassical style of architecture, all the grace and proportion that style is known for.
An Ohio boy, a Union soldier, a Wharton politician, and in the end, the man whose house is still standing here to make sure nobody forgets any of that.
What the marker says
A native of Ohio, Joseph Andrew Hamilton served in the Union army during the Civil War. About 1866 he settled in Wharton, where he held a variety of local political offices. Hamilton purchased this property in 1885 and moved his family into the existing one-story frame house. In 1907 the home was enlarged by raising the original structure and building a new addition underneath. The Hamilton house features influences of the neoclassical style of architecture. (Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1984.)