M. L. Weems House

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Sometime around 1847, a doctor by the name of Mason Locke Weems the Second put up a Greek Revival house right here in Brazoria County. Now that name, Mason Locke Weems the Second, carries some weight.

He was the first in what would become a whole succession of Weems family physicians to call this place home. Doctors, generation after generation, walking these same floors. You don't just stumble onto a legacy like that.

It builds, quietly, room by room. The house itself is something to behold, even now. A center passage plan, a raised cottage form.

Out front, a six-bay inset porch with square posts topped by molded caps and turned-wood balusters. That's not a house thrown together in a hurry. That's a house somebody was proud of.

But the Brazos River, well, the Brazos has never much cared about anybody's pride. Floods have a way of making that point, repeatedly and without apology. So around 1869, rather than surrender to the river, the family did what stubborn Texans do.

They moved the whole house to higher, safer ground. And that still wasn't the end of the story. Later it was enlarged, remodeled, shaped and reshaped by the hands of the people who lived inside it.

A Greek Revival house from about 1847, still standing, still here. The Brazos never did get it.

What the marker says

This Greek Revival house was built about 1847 by Dr. Mason Locke Weems II, the first of a succession of Weems family physicians to live here. The house features a center passage plan and raised cottage form. Details on the six-bay inset porch include square posts with molded caps and turned-wood balusters. To avoid Brazos River floods, the house was moved to its present location about 1869 and later enlarged and remodeled. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1962