DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. You're looking at a Victorian house in the Tivy Addition of Kerrville, and this place has seen some living. S.
W. and Laura Smith built it in 1890, and already that's a story, a Victorian home going up in the Texas Hill Country at the turn of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Now, houses like this one don't stay with one family forever, and this one changed hands a few times before Dr. R.
H. P. Wright moved in.
He was a prominent Kerrville physician, and he occupied the property from 1896 to 1905. Nine years under the roof of a doctor. But here's the detail that'll make you sit up a little straighter: one of Dr.
Wright's daughters, a girl named Fay, grew up to marry a man named Coke Stevenson. Texas Governor Coke Stevenson. So somewhere in those rooms, a future governor's wife was just somebody's daughter.
The house doesn't advertise that. It just stands there. Then in 1905, D.
H. Comparette arrived. Born in 1871, passed in 1952, and described on the marker as a civic leader, which already tells you something.
He was the organizer and manager of the Kerrville Telephone Company. The man who helped wire this part of the Hill Country into the modern world came home every evening to this Victorian house. His wife Beatrice was a school teacher, and together the Comparette family held onto this place from 1905 all the way to 1977.
Seventy-two years in one family's hands. Some houses just find the people they belong to, and then they hold on.
What the marker says
This Victorian house was built in the Tivy Addition by S. W. and Laura Smith in 1890. After several other ownerships, Dr. R. H. P. Wright, a prominent Kerrville physician, occupied the property from 1896 to 1905. One of his daughters, Fay, married Texas Governor Coke Stevenson. D. H. Comparette (1871-1952), civic leader, organizer and manager of Kerrville Telephone Company, lived here with his wife Beatrice, a school teacher. The Comparette family owned the home 1905-1977. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1979