Taylor House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every good story's got a beginning you almost miss, and this one starts across the street. Sometime in the 1860s, somebody put up a structure right there in Collin County, on the other side of the road from where it stands today.

Modest enough start. But then 1868 rolls around, and a man named Armistead Joshua Taylor comes into the picture. Cabinet maker by trade, born in 1840, and he'd be gone by 1888; but in between, he made his mark.

He bought that house, and then he married Tabatha Jane Scott, daughter of a Collin County pioneer by the name of Preston Scott. So now you've got a craftsman, a pioneer's daughter, and a house full of potential. What do you do with all that?

Well, the Taylors had an answer. They opened that place up to travelers. Drummers, they called 'em: traveling salesmen working the roads, always needing a place to rest their bones and their sample cases.

And the Taylors were happy to oblige. For the princely sum of twenty-five cents a night, you had yourself a bed. Now that quarter (two bits in the currency of common sense) well, that's exactly where the name came from.

The Two-Bit Taylor House. You can't buy a story like that; it just happens. That house stayed in the Taylor family all the way until 1933.

Nearly seventy years of family hands on the same front door. And then, in 1976, somebody made the call to move the whole structure here: right to where you can find it today, finally resting on the right side of the street. Not bad for a two-bit operation.

What the marker says

Built in the 1860s, the structure originally stood across the street from the site. It was sold in 1868 to Armistead Joshua Taylor (1840-1888), a cabinet maker. He married Tabatha Jane Scott, daughter of Collin County pioneer Preston Scott. The tailors operated the house as an in for traveling salesman or drummers. Because overnight lodging was available for 25¢, it was called the Two-Bit Taylor House. Owned by that family until 1933, it was moved here in 1976. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1982