Steakley Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out on an old stagecoach road in Bell County, there stands a house that was already old news before the town around it even had a name. The F.

L. Wright Home went up in 1874, and here's the thing worth sitting with for a moment: Temple, Texas wasn't founded until 1881. Seven years after that house was framed and roofed, the town finally caught up to it.

The road came first, the house came second, and the town came third. That's how it goes out here sometimes. Now, the man who built it was F.

L. Wright, a settler who had come up from Alabama in 1867. He was a Confederate veteran, and he clearly knew how to build something meant to last.

The foundation he set that house on wasn't lumber or poured stone. It was bois d'arc stumps. If you know bois d'arc, you know why that matters.

That wood laughs at rot, laughs at insects, laughs at the years rolling past. And the years have rolled past. The original chimneys are still standing.

The original roofline is still intact. The foundation, those same bois d'arc stumps from 1874, still holding the whole thing up. Some houses tell you a story.

The F. L. Wright Home just keeps on proving one.

What the marker says

The F. L. Wright Home was built on old stagecoach road in 1874, seven years before Temple was founded. It is still on original boid d'arc stumps foundation. Has original chimneys, and roof line. The builder was 1867 settler from Alabama, Confederate veteran F. L. Wright. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1964