DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker on the Metz House tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some houses just sit there. And then there are houses with a story baked right into the walls.
The Metz House in Grayson County is the second kind. Edward Metz was born in 1854, and somewhere along the line, this Michigan man looked south and west and decided Texas was where he needed to be. He came out to join his brother Charles, and together those two set about building something.
This was the eighteen seventies, and the business they landed on was leather goods — buying buffalo hides and other furs from Indian tribes in Oklahoma and moving that inventory to eastern markets. By any measure, it was a profitable trade. But here's the thing about Edward Metz that the marker wants you to hold onto.
That kind of commerce, out on the frontier edge between settlers and Indian tribes, was not exactly a tension-free enterprise. And yet Metz is credited with helping keep the peace between the Indians and the settlers in Grayson County. That's no small footnote.
That's a man threading a very difficult needle, and threading it well enough that history remembered him for it. Then comes 1883, and Edward Metz does something that tells you everything about the man. He builds a house.
Not just any house — a proper Victorian showpiece, dressed up with fish scale siding, the kind of detail that says somebody cared deeply about getting this right. And the reason he built it? He built it as a present for his bride, Lillian Craycroft.
A whole house, as a gift. The Metz House went on living long after Edward did. He passed in 1913, but the house kept its doors open.
From 1909 all the way to 1939, it was occupied by Dr. J. D.
Meadow, a prominent local physician. Thirty years of that house servin' the community in a different way entirely. By the time Byron Rice came along — born in 1957 — the house needed someone to believe in it again.
And he did. Between 1975 and 1976, Rice restored it. A Michigan man came to Texas, helped keep the peace on a rough frontier, and built his bride a Victorian house with fish scale siding.
That house is still standing. Some presents last.
What the marker says
Edward Metz (1854-1913) came to Texas from Michigan as a young man to join his brother, Charles, in a leather goods business. In the 1870s, they built a profitable trade, buying buffalo hides and other furs from Indian tribes in Oklahoma to sell to eastern markets. Metz is credited with helping keep peace between the Indians and settlers in Grayson County. In 1883 he built this house, with Victorian fish scale siding, as a present for his bride, Lillian (Craycroft). Occupied from 1909 to 1939 by prominent local physician Dr. J. D. Meadow, it was restored in 1975-76 by Byron Rice (b. 1957). Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1976