DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the marker outside tells it, and here's how I'm telling it to you. Somewhere in Caldwell County stands a two-story brick house, and if you slow down long enough to look at it, you're looking at the home of a man who changed cotton farming the world over. The house belongs to the story of Alexander Duff Mebane.
Born in 1855, gone in 1923, and in between those two years — a life that left a mark on every cotton field that ever fought back against drought, storm, and boll weevil. Now that is a sentence worth savoring. In 1918, Alexander Duff Mebane built this house for his family.
Two stories of brick, pedimented portico entrances on two sides, carrying the influences of the prairie school style. It is a serious house for a serious man. Because here is what Mebane was doing when he wasn't building houses — he was farming cotton, and he was thinking hard about what cotton could be.
He developed a variety that was high-lint, resistant to drought, resistant to storm, and resistant to the boll weevil, which any farmer of that era would tell you was about as fearsome a combination of problems as the land could throw at you. That cotton would come to be known worldwide as Mebane Triumph Cotton. Triumph.
That is not a modest name, but then again, it is not a modest achievement. The home stayed in the Mebane family until 1947. Long after Alexander himself was gone, that house held the family name.
And the cotton? The cotton carried that name a good deal further than Caldwell County. That's the thing about a man who builds something to last — sometimes it's the house, and sometimes it's what grows in the field out front.
What the marker says
Alexander Duff Mebane (1855-1923) built this house for his family in 1918. A cotton farmer, Mebane developed a high-lint, drought-, storm-, and boll weevil-resistant cotton that would become known worldwide as Mebane Triumph Cotton. Exhibiting influences of the prairie school style, this two-story brick structure features pedimented portico entrances at two sides. The home remained in the Mebane family until 1947. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1986