Pleasant Grove

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and here's how I tell it back to you. Somewhere in Lamar County, a man named Jas. Shelby Williams, who folks called Sheb, came out of Kentucky with his wife Mary and decided this particular patch of Texas was exactly where they were going to put down roots.

The year was 1857, and putting down roots meant something different back then. It meant you built it yourself, or it didn't get built. So that's what Sheb and Mary did.

They built. The lumber was dressed right there on site, no hauling it in from somewhere civilized. The sills and studs, the bones of the whole structure, were hand-hewn from heart oak.

Now heart oak is not a forgiving wood. It does not apologize for itself. It is dense and stubborn and it lasts.

And to hold it all together, they didn't reach for iron nails, because iron nails were a luxury. They used pegs, bois d'arc pegs, driven in by hand. If you know anything about bois d'arc, you know it is about as hard a wood as Texas grows, and that is saying something.

Those pegs were not going anywhere. Out front, the porch steps and the hearth were laid from native stone, quarried from nearby, meaning Sheb and Mary looked at the land around them and said, the land itself is going to be part of this house. And so it was.

What they raised in 1857 was not just a structure. It was a statement. A Kentucky family, a Texas site, heart oak and bois d'arc and native stone, and the whole thing joined together by hand.

That house is still telling that story.

What the marker says

Built 1857 by settler from Kentucky, Jas. Shelby (Sheb) Williams, and wife Mary. Lumber was dressed on site. Sills and studs, hand-hewn of heart oak, where joined with bois d'arc pegs. Porch steps and heath are of native stone, quarried nearby Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966