The Bickham House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Bickham House, out here in Shelby County. Now, every good house has a story that starts before the house does. And this one starts with a home that isn't standing anymore.

On this very site, a man named J. M. Crawford built himself a place back in 1850.

It stood for thirty-five years, which is a respectable run for anything in East Texas. Then, in 1885, fire took it. Just like that, gone.

But here is where the story turns, because out of that ash and memory, something finer rose up in its place. Crawford's stepson, Frederick Lee Bickham, born in 1866, was the man who decided this ground deserved another house. And not a modest one, either.

He got to work in 1885, and by 1888 he had himself a proper home standing on the same land his stepfather had once claimed. Now, what makes a house worth remembering isn't always the man who built it. Sometimes it's what he cut it from.

The timber for the Bickham House, cedar, cypress, and heart pine, was cut right there on the property. That house didn't come from some distant mill. It came from the land itself.

Frederick Lee Bickham was by all accounts a prominent landowner and rancher, and this house was the center of that life. He and his wife, Nevada Levonia Mhoon, raised their children here. And it wasn't just their own children filling those rooms.

Bickham's stepsisters and stepbrothers were brought up here too. That is a full house, and a loud one, I'd wager. Bickham died in 1907, and the house carried on without him, the way houses do when they're built well enough.

Then comes 1972. A man named N. O.

Thomas bought the place, restored it, and gave it a new name: Welcome Hall. Which, when you think about it, suits a house that spent its whole life holding people. From a Crawford home burned to the ground, to Frederick Bickham raising cedar and cypress and heart pine into walls and a roof, to N.

O. Thomas opening it back up to the world as Welcome Hall. That's not just a house.

That's a place that keeps deciding it isn't finished yet.

What the marker says

On site of J. M. Crawford home, built 1850, razed by fire, 1885. Erected by Crawford's stepson, Frederick Lee Bickham (1866-1907), prominent landowner and rancher, in 1885-88. Here he and his wife, Nevada Levonia Mhoon, brought up their children and Bickham's stepsisters and stepbrothers. Timber (cedar, cypress, and heart pine) for house was cut on the property. In 1972, N. O. Thomas bought, restored, and renamed the house "Welcome Hall." Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1973