Morton-McCloy House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'll tell it to you. Way out in Fort Bend County, there's a house that has been quietly watching Texas grow up around it for the better part of two centuries. And if these walls could talk, they'd start with a name that carries real weight in this part of the world: Morton.

William Morton and his family were among the Old 300, those first settlers who came in with Stephen F. Austin's original colony. In the 1820s, right here on this ground, the Mortons were running Morton's Ferry.

Think about that a moment. Before there were roads worth naming, before bridges were anything more than a wishful idea, folks were crossing water because the Mortons made it possible. Now, the marker doesn't spell out exactly when the house went up, but the construction tells its own story.

Hand-hewn braced-frame work, the kind that takes real skill and real time, points to the mid-1830s as the moment somebody in the Morton family decided to put down something more permanent than a promise. That wood was shaped by hand, set in place by hand, and it held. It held through decades of Texas becoming Texas.

Then, somewhere between 1873 and 1904, the house changed hands and changed shape. Dr. John McCloy's family took ownership, and during those years the place was altered into what you'd recognize today.

An L-plan layout. A three-bay front porch running across the face of it. A single door entry with a transom above letting in the light.

A gable roof sitting over all of it like it was born there. It's the kind of house that looks like it belongs exactly where it is, because it does. After the McCloys, the Andrus family came through, and then the Whatley family, A.

W. Whatley's people, each one adding their own chapter to a story that started before Texas was even Texas. From a ferry landing in the 1820s to a hand-built frame house in the mid-1830s to a reshaped family home by the early 1900s, the Morton-McCloy House has been a lot of things to a lot of people.

Some places just have that kind of gravity. This is one of them.

What the marker says

"Old 300" settlers William Morton and his family operated Morton's Ferry here in the 1820s. Hand-hewn braced-frame construction suggests that at its core this house was built by the Mortons in the mid-1830s. Altered to its present appearance between 1873-1904 during the ownership of the Dr. John McCloy family, the L-plan house features a 3-bay front porch, single door entry with transom, and gable roof. Later owners included the families of Edgar Andrus and A. W. Whatley. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1995