Judge Wm. Henry Lightfoot House

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and here's how I'll tell it to you. Somewhere in Lamar County stands a house that has been quietly outlasting the people who doubted it since eighteen seventy-six. This is the story of that house, and of the man who built it.

Judge William Henry Lightfoot. He had ridden with Forrest's Cavalry in the Civil War, which tells you something about the kind of man he was, steady under pressure, used to doing things the hard way. And building this house, it turned out, was going to be done the hard way.

Every plank of lumber had to be hauled all the way from Jefferson. Now if you've ever looked at a Texas map and traced that route in your head, you start to appreciate what it took just to get the raw materials to the lot. But Lightfoot was not the sort of man who let distance discourage him.

When the house went up, it went up to last. Square nails held it together, not the round wire nails that came later, square nails, driven into wide board pine floors that were pegged, not just nailed down. The floors alone are a kind of quiet argument for doing things right.

And somewhere beneath the back porch, there is a water well, still there, built into the very bones of the place. Now Judge Lightfoot was not operating in isolation out there in Lamar County. His law partner was General Sam B.

Maxey, who would go on to become a United States Senator. Think about that office, those two men working cases together, one a judge, the other a general and future senator. The kind of legal partnership that doesn't come along every generation.

The house stood through all of it, through the long years after Lightfoot built it, through changes in the county and the country both. And it might have faded quietly into the landscape if not for Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers Coleman, who restored it and gave it back its dignity.

Some houses, you see, are built with enough intention that they earn a second chance. This one had the square nails, the pegged floors, the well beneath the porch, and a story worth saving. It got its second chance.

What the marker says

Built 1876 by Judge Wm. Henry Lightfoot, veteran of Forrest's Cavalry in Civil War; law partner of Gen. (and U. S. Senator) Sam B. Maxey. Lumber was hauled from Jefferson. Has square nails. Wide board pine floors are pegged. Water well beneath back porch. Restored by Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers Coleman. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965