DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll give it to you straight. Fifty yards north of where you're standin' right now, back in 1854, somebody raised up a large colonial home on this Gregg County land. They called it Rockwall Farm.
And from the moment it went up, that house had a life that most buildings only dream about. It sat right on William T. Brooks' stagecoach line — the run that connected Monroe, Louisiana all the way to Tyler, Texas.
Travelers pulled in here for the night, rested their bones, and moved on. Mail passed through too, headed to a place called Earpville, a site that today sits inside what we know as Longview. So this was no quiet country house.
This was a crossroads. The lumber those walls are built from? Slaves hewed it.
The chimney bricks? Slaves made those too, right there on the place, from the trees and the clay the land itself provided. That detail deserves a long, slow moment before we move on.
Now — the first floor. Those partitions didn't just sit there lookin' pretty. They folded away.
Fold 'em back and suddenly you've got yourself a ballroom. A genuine ballroom, right there in the middle of Gregg County. But here's where the story takes a turn that only Texas could produce.
The house's owner, a man named John Harris, had a black walnut coffin built for himself. And that coffin — his coffin — became the favored poker table for the games played upstairs. Whether that says more about the players or about John Harris, I'll leave to you.
The last families to hold this place, the J. Roy Sparkman family and the Jack Castleberry family, they restored the old home and opened it up so people could walk through and feel all of that history under the same roof. And then, in 1952, the house burned.
A hundred years of stagecoach stops and ballroom nights and black walnut poker and it ended in fire. The land remembers it, even if the walls are gone.
What the marker says
Large colonial home built 50 yards north, 1854. Overnight stop on Wm. T. Brooks' stagecoach line from Monroe, La., to Tyler. From here, mail went to Earpville, a site now in Longview. Slaves hewed lumber, made the chimney brocks from trees and clay on the place. The first floor partitions folded away to make big ballroom. The black walnut coffin built for house owner John Harris was favored table for poker upstairs. Last owners, J. Roy Sparkman and Jack Castleberry families, restored, opened to visitors. House burned in 1952.