May-Hickey House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Somewhere in the heart of DeWitt County, there stands a house that has been whisperin stories since the eighteen forties, and if you slow down long enough, you just might hear one. This is the May-Hickey House, and it is something else.

Not just old. Important. One of the most important early vernacular dwellings still standin in all of southeast Texas.

Let that settle for a second. All of southeast Texas. And there it is.

Still standin. The thing was built in the eighteen forties, raised up for the family of John Joseph May. Now, whoever was swingin those tools knew what they were doin, because this was not a rough-and-tumble frontier shack thrown together in a hurry.

This was a finely built home. Hewn logs, carefully shaped, with chinking packed between them to keep out the wind and the cold and whatever else the Texas nights had to offer. Then they went and covered the whole thing with milled siding, which tells you right there that somebody cared about how this house was going to look and how it was going to last.

One and a half stories tall, with stone chimneys rising up proud on either side. And then there is the dogtrot. That open breezeway running right through the middle of the house, splitting it in two, letting the wind walk through like it owned the place.

That was the style in early Texas, practical and clever, and the May-Hickey House wears it with distinction. By eighteen sixty-one, the James Hickey family had moved in, and eventually they acquired both the land and the house itself. Two families, one house, and decades of Texas life lived out under that milled siding roof.

The house has outlasted just about everything that has come at it since the eighteen forties, and it is still there to prove it. Some things, when they are built right and built with care, simply refuse to be forgotten.

What the marker says

One of the most important early vernacular dwellings remaining in southeast Texas, this structure was built in the 1840s for the family of John Joseph May. The James Hickey family lived in the house as early as 1861 and later acquired the land and house. This finely built one-and-one-half-story home, made of hewn logs with chinking and covered with milled siding, features the distinctive open dogtrot and stone chimneys popular in early Texas. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1988