DUANE
Duane's take
Now, I'm giving you my telling of what the Texas Historical Commission put down on the marker for the Old Stone Fort up in Nacogdoches County. Pull up a chair, because this one stone building lived more lives than most towns ever dream of. It started with a man named Don Antonio Gil Y'Barbo, who sometime between 1788 and 1791 stacked up something remarkable near the crossing of El Camino Real and La Calle del Norte — what you'd find today at Main and Fredonia.
Y'Barbo was a military and civic leader, which meant his home was never quite just a home. From the moment the mortar set, that stone house was pulling double duty as an unofficial government building. That's the kind of man Y'Barbo was.
The kind whose front door the whole territory felt comfortable walking through. Now, the stones themselves deserve a word, because they weren't ordinary stones. They came from a formation called Weches glauconite — a sedimentary rock laced through with iron clay minerals.
The interior walls were sun-dried adobe blocks. The window sills, the casements, the beams — all hand-hewn black walnut. The architecture carried French and Spanish colonial influences: exterior doors for each room, stairs right there on the gallery porch, and a fireplace in every single interior room.
This was not a shack. This was a statement. Y'Barbo sold the property in 1805, and right about there is where the story stops being one man's story and becomes everybody's story.
Over the next century — and I want you to hear that word, century — that building was, at one time or another, a home, a grocery store, a restaurant, a set of offices, a courthouse, a cobbler shop, a jail, a military barracks, and a saloon. It served as a fortification during three separate filibustering expeditions and held its ground through periodic raids by Native Americans. In 1833, a young Sam Houston walked through one of those exterior doors and set up the first law office he ever had in the state of Texas.
By the late 1870s, proprietors were taking out advertisements in the Nacogdoches News, promoting their saloon and billiards room at the location. That's when people started calling it what it had earned the right to be called — the Old Stone Fort. A name that fit like it had always been there.
And then, in 1902, they tore it down. Now here's where Nacogdoches showed its character. The citizens wouldn't let those stones just disappear into the ground.
They gathered them up and first used them in a memorial building on Washington Square. Then, in 1936, they used those same original stones again — every iron-clay mineral, every hand-cut walnut beam they could recover — to build a historically accurate replica on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College.
The walls of that replica are the actual walls of Y'Barbo's house, reassembled, standing again. One building. One set of stones.
Courthouse, saloon, Sam Houston's law office, and now a landmark that's been recorded by the Texas Historical Commission since 1962. Some things, it turns out, are just too stubborn to be gone.
What the marker says
Stones recovered from a razed 18th century structure form the walls of this historic replica building. The stone house stood originally near the intersection of El Camino Real and La Calle del Norte (present main at Fredonia), and was built by Don Antonio Gil Y’Barbo circa 1788-91. Because he was a military and civic leader, his home also served as an unofficial government building. Y’Barbo sold the property in 1805, and over the next century, owners and tenants used the building as a home, grocery store, restaurant, offices, courthouse, cobbler shop, jail, military barracks, saloon, and as a fortification during three filibustering expeditions and periodic raids by Native Americans. Sam Houston had his first law office in Texas in the building in 1833. The building became commonly known as “The Old Stone Fort” by the late 1870s, when proprietors began advertising in the nacogdoches news a saloon and billiards room at the location. The landmark structure was demolished in 1902. Citizens used the original stones first in a memorial building on Washington Square, and again for a historically accurate replica built on the Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College campus in 1936. Y’Barbo’s stone house was an important example of 18th century residential architecture, with French and Spanish colonial influences—exterior doors for each room, stairs on the gallery porch and fireplaces in each interior room. The stones are from a formation known as weches glauconite, a sedimentary rock containing iron clay minerals. Sun-dried adobe blocks formed the interior walls. Window sills, casements and beams were of hand-hewn black walnut. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1962