Old Kirkpatrick Home

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way up in Fannin County, there stands a house that has been standin since 1899, and if you know anything about houses, you know that is no small thing. This is the Old Kirkpatrick Home, and it was built by the family of Reverend W.

A. Kirkpatrick. Victorian architecture, the full treatment, the kind of house that says something about the people inside it before you ever knock on the door.

Now here is where the story gets interesting. Most houses from that era, you're lucky if the porch is still attached. But this one, this one held on to its original cypress roof.

Its foundation is bois d'arc, that dense, stubborn, almost ornery Texas hardwood that practically laughs at rot and time. And some of the very first furnishings are still inside. Think about that for a moment.

The chairs, the tables, whatever the Kirkpatrick family arranged just so back in 1899, some of that is still right where it belongs. But a house is more than wood and roof and furniture. This one was the beating heart of something larger.

It served as the center of the social life of old Grayson College and the Presbyterian community that gathered around it. Gatherings, conversations, the kind of fellowship that holds a community together, this house was where that happened. The Kirkpatricks built more than a home.

They built a place that mattered. And more than a century later, it is still standing to prove it.

What the marker says

Victorian architecture. Built 1899 by family of Rev. W. A. Kirkpatrick. Still has original cypress roof, bois d'Arc foundation, some of first furnishings. Center, social life old Grayson College, and Presbyterian community. RTHL - 1967