Old D.N. Arnett Home

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna let the house do the talkin'. Now, 1899 is when it all starts. A rancher by the name of F.E.

McKenzie built this place out in Mitchell County, and he didn't cut corners. Victorian architecture, they call it. Porch columns dressed up with spool trim, and decorative wood awnings framing every window like the house itself is raising its eyebrows at you.

For the frontier, that was something. That was a statement. McKenzie had barely broken it in, though, because by 1900, just one year later, the house changed hands.

A.B. Robertson, another rancher, bought it and took up the story from there. Then 1912 rolls around, and this is where the house finds the family it'll keep.

D.N. Arnett comes into the picture. Now Arnett wasn't just anybody.

He was the retired manager of the Great Spade-Renderbrook Ranch. You don't carry a title like that lightly. The man had range in his bones.

He made this Victorian house with its spooled columns and its wood awnings his home, and it held him until his death in 1934. But here's the thing about a house that's been loved right. It doesn't go quiet after a loss like that.

Arnett's daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. J.G. Merritt, moved in and carried the name forward.

Four generations of the Arnett family have lived within those same walls, under those same decorative awnings, on that same porch. McKenzie built it. Robertson held it a spell.

But this house, it belongs to the Arnetts. Some places just know where they're supposed to end up.

What the marker says

Built in 1899 by rancher F.E. McKenzie; Victorian architecture features porch columns with spool trim and decorative wood "awnings" over the windows. Sold in 1900 to A.B. Robertson, rancher; in 1912, to D.N. Arnett, retired manager of the Great Spade-Renderbrook Ranch. After his death in 1934, his son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. J.G. Merritt, made this their home. Four generations of the Arnett Family have lived here. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1968.