Magnolia Hall

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Harrison County, Texas, there stands a house with a story that starts the way the best stories do: with a father, a daughter, and a gift that couldn't fit in a box. The year was 1866, and John H.

Lee set out to build something worthy of the occasion. His daughter, Anna E. Pierce, was getting married, and John H.

Lee was not the kind of man who handed over a quilt and called it a day. He built her a house. Not just any house, mind you.

He built her Magnolia Hall. Now, the style they called a New Orleans raised cottage sounds modest enough when you say it plain, but when you see what the man actually put together, brick and pine and hand-cut cypress, raised up off the ground the way those fine Louisiana homes were, you start to understand that John H. Lee meant every bit of it.

That house became home to lawyers, two of them, John L. Pierce and Jack T. Pierce, carrying on under the roof that a father's love built.

And if that weren't enough life packed into one property, there was once a private school on those same grounds. Think about that. Children learning their letters in the shadow of a wedding gift.

The years kept moving, the way years do, and Magnolia Hall moved with them, until Eunice and Emory Elder stepped in and restored her in 1966, giving the old place back her dignity. One house. One gift.

Generations of living inside it. That is Magnolia Hall.

What the marker says

Built 1866 by John H. Lee as a wedding gift for his daughter, Anna E. Pierce. New Orleans style "raised cottage", of brick, pine, and hand-cut cypress, was home of lawyers John L. and Jack T. Pierce. There was once a private school on grounds. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1968 Restored 1966 by Eunice and Emory Elder