R. L. McMullan Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'll tell it to you. Way out in Scurry County, there's a house with a quiet kind of stubbornness to it. The kind of place that just keeps standing, keeps holding its ground, keeps collecting firsts.

It started as two rooms. Two rooms, built in 1885 by a Dr. A.

O. Scarborough. Now, two rooms doesn't sound like much, but you'd be surprised what a man can fit inside a good foundation.

Four years later, in 1889, the whole structure was picked up and moved to the site where it stands today. And once it got there, it grew. Enlarged, the marker says, like the house itself decided it had more to say.

Then the firsts started piling up. Snyder's first telephone got installed right there in that house. Think about that for a second.

The first voice to travel down a wire in that town, it arrived in this house. And out in the yard, somebody built the first greenhouse in the area, half-dugout, half-glass, dug into the earth and reaching up toward the sun at the same time. In 1902, R.

L. McMullan bought the place. And that's where the quiet stubbornness really takes hold, because the McMullan family kept it.

Preserved it. Didn't let it go. Some houses just pass through hands and disappear into time.

This one found a family that held on. And that, right there, is the whole story.

What the marker says

Two-room house built in 1885 by Dr. A. O. Scarborough. Moved to present site in 1889; enlarged. Snyder's first telephone installed in house; first greenhouse (half-dugout with glass) built in yard. Bought by R. L. McMullan in 1902; preserved by family. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1966