Shaw House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker on the Shaw House tells it, as best as I can bring it to you out here on the road. Now, Thomas J. Shaw was a Tennessee man, born in 1819, and sometime in 1854 he pointed himself toward Parker County, Texas.

He was a farmer, a rancher, and a carpenter; a man who could work the land and shape the wood both. Two years after he arrived, he put up the original log room of what would become the Shaw House. Just one room, notched and fitted by hand, but it was his.

He and his wife Louisa Ann (she was a Long before she was a Shaw, born in 1827) they moved into that cabin and they lived there. Twenty years they lived there. And in those twenty years, eight of their thirteen children were born inside those log walls.

Think about that for a second. Thirteen children total. Eight of them drew their first breath in that single room.

That cabin wasn't just a structure; it was the whole world for a good long while. Then came 1876, and Thomas Shaw, the carpenter, picked up his tools again. He added a board and batten room right alongside the original log pen.

Now it was a double-pen house: two rooms, two eras of a family's life standing side by side. And that's where Thomas and Louisa Ann Shaw stayed for the rest of their days. Thomas made it all the way to 1904.

Louisa Ann passed in 1890. After they were gone, the house kept standing, though the years reduced it to a storage shed. But here's the thing; the Shaw family held onto it.

All the way until 1975, that structure remained theirs. One log room built in 1856, still carrying the weight of everything that happened inside it.

What the marker says

Tennessee native Thomas J. Shaw (1819-1904), a farmer, rancher, and carpenter, migrated to Parker County in 1854. Two years later he built the original log room of the this house. He and his wife Louisa Ann (Long) (1827-1890) lived in the cabin for twenty years during which time eight of their thirteen children were born. In 1876 Shaw enlarged the cabin by adding the board and batten room. This double-pen structure served as the Shaw's residence until their deaths. Later used as a storage shed, the structure remained in the Shaw family until 1975. (1982)