Nance Farm

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice passin' it along. Now, some families leave a mark on the land so deep that even a century can't shake it loose; and the Nance family of Dallas County is one of those families. Otway Bird Nance, born in 1805, packed up his people and came west out of Kentucky in 1851, looking for ground worth putting roots into.

He found it. Five years later, in 1856, he made it official, buying this land through the Peters Colony. That's how the Nance Farm began.

The house they built went up in the 1850s: nothing fancy at first, just a solid farmhouse facing north, the way a sensible man builds when he's thinking about the wind and not about fashion. But time has a way of softening practicality. Somewhere along the way, the family enlarged the place and dressed it up with Victorian detailing; because apparently even Texas frontier families decided they deserved a little elegance.

And then, sometime in the early 1900s, the whole house got rotated. Not renovated, not rebuilt. Rotated.

The house that had faced north for decades now faced east. Just like that. Out near the farmhouse, a barn, a curing shed, and an elevated water tank have all been preserved, standing witnesses to the working life of the place.

Otway Bird Nance died in 1874, but his family held onto this land for a long, long time. A hundred years after he first arrived in Texas, the Nance family finally let it go; in 1951, a full century after that Kentucky wagon rolled in. The city of De Soto bought it in 1975, making sure the story didn't end with a bulldozer.

That farm waited a long time for someone to promise it a future; and it turned out, it only had to wait until someone looked close enough to see what was still standing.

What the marker says

Otway Bird Nance (1805 - 1874) brought his family here from Kentucky in 1851 and bought this land through the Peters Colony in 1856. Begun in the 1850s, this residence was later enlarged and Victorian detailing added. It originally faced north but was rotated in the early 1900s to face east. Near the farmhouse, a barn, curing shed, and an elevated water tank have been preserved. The Nance family owned this site until 1951. It was purchased by the city of De Soto in 1975. RTHL 1976