Rosemont

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'm happy to pass it along. Now settle in, because this one's got some weight to it: twenty rooms, ten fireplaces, and a story that stretches across most of a century right here in Ellis County. The place is called Rosemont, and the name came from the original owners themselves, Eliza and Burt Ringo Moffett, who had it built in 1894 for twelve thousand dollars.

That was real money in 1894, and they spent it like they meant it. The Moffetts owned a flour mill nearby, and apparently when you're movin' flour through Ellis County at that kind of scale, you build yourself a house to match. Twenty rooms.

Ten fireplaces, every one of them dressed out with carved oak mantels. Wide verandas wrapping around the outside. Gingerbread trim doing what gingerbread trim does: making the whole thing look like somebody decided a Texas home ought to be a little bit of a celebration.

And then there's the onion dome. Elaborate, the marker calls it. I'd say that earns the word.

This is a house that had opinions about itself, and the 1890s agreed. Then 1930 rolls around, and a woman named Amanda B. Cox walks through that door and makes Rosemont hers.

Now, Amanda B. Cox was the mother of fourteen children. Fourteen.

You get the feeling she looked at twenty rooms and thought, well, that's a start. Her heirs held onto Rosemont all the way until 1978; nearly half a century of one family filling up those rooms, gathering around those ten fireplaces, living underneath that onion dome. Some houses just hold people the way they're meant to.

Rosemont held them well.

What the marker says

This 20-room home was built in 1894 for $12,000 by Eliza and Burt Ringo Moffett, who owned a flour mill nearby. Amanda B. Cox, the mother of 14 children, purchased the residence in 1930 and her heirs occupied it until 1978. Named "Rosemont" by the original owners, the home reflects the elegant architectural stylings of the 1890s in the use of wide verandas, ten fireplaces with carved oak mantels, an elaborate onion dome, and gingerbread trim.