Lankford-Stinson House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm going to tell it to you. Somewhere in Wood County stands a house that carries two names, two stories, and a family connection that'll make you do a double-take. So let's slow down and give it its due.

The Lankford-Stinson House. Probably built in the early 1890s, and that word probably is doing some honest work there. History doesn't always hand you a ribbon-cutting date.

What it does tell us is that the home was built for a man named J. M. Lankford, a merchant and civic leader, and in those days that combination meant you were somebody in a Texas town.

The house started life as a one-and-one-half-story structure, which sounds modest until you see those stately columns and that front portico. The colonial revival style, they call it, and it carries that name well. Then comes 1906.

The house changed hands. J. A.

Stinson purchased it, and soon after, it was remodeled into the configuration it holds to this day. Now, J. A.

Stinson was a Civil War veteran, which already puts some weight on the man's shoulders. But here's the detail that'll make you sit up straight around the campfire: Stinson was the father-in-law of Texas Governor James S. Hogg.

The Governor's own family. That front portico wasn't just decorating a house. It was framing the entrance to a home with deep roots in Texas history.

And those roots held. The house remained in the Stinson family all the way until 1956. That's a long time for a family to keep a place, long enough that the columns and the portico stopped being architecture and started being memory.

Some houses outlast the people who built them. Some outlast the people who loved them. This one, it seems, just keeps standing.

What the marker says

Probably built in the early 1890s for merchant and civic leader J. M. Lankford, this home was originally a one-and-one-half-story structure. It was remodeled into its current configuration in 1906, soon after it was purchased by J. A. Stinson, a Civil War veteran and father-in-law of Texas Governor James S. Hogg. The house, which remained in the Stinson family until 1956, exhibits influences of the colonial revival style in its stately columns and front portico. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1988