Lemon-Edens House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Navarro County stands a house that's been keeping its own quiet kind of score since 1895. A Corsicana resident by the name of A.

L. Lemon built the place that year, and he didn't cut corners on materials. He brought in Louisiana cypress to do it right.

Now, Louisiana cypress has a reputation, and Lemon apparently knew it. The house went up, and it stood. It's still standing.

But Lemon wouldn't hold onto it forever. In 1902, the home was sold to a man named John Wesley Edens, and that's where the story starts picking up some real weight. See, Edens wasn't just a man looking for a comfortable place to hang his hat.

He was running two thousand four hundred acres of local farm and ranch land. Two thousand four hundred. He'd also served the area as deputy sheriff, tax collector, and city councilman.

The kind of man a county leans on, in other words, and leans on hard. The house itself was built in the late Victorian style, with some Eastlake and Queen Anne detailing worked into it, which gave the whole structure a certain character that a plain box never could. And the Edens family, they held onto it.

For more than forty years, that house stayed in the family. Forty years of seasons, of the land being worked, of Navarro County going about its business outside those cypress walls. Some houses just become part of a place, and this one did exactly that.

What the marker says

Corsicana resident A. L. Lemon built this home in 1895 of Louisiana cypress. In 1902 it was sold to John Wesley Edens. The owner of 2400 acres of local farm and ranch land, Edens had served the area as deputy sheriff, tax collector, and city councilman. The late Victorian style house, which features some Eastlake and Queen Anne detailing, remained in the Edens family for more than forty years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983