The Gann House

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Deep in Angelina County, there stands a cabin that's been keeping secrets in its logs since before the Civil War. We're talking about the Gann House, and friend, this place has a story woven right into its timbers.

Those walls are hewn pine, interlocking, fitted together by hand in the way craftsmen built things to last generations. And last they did. The cabin went up before 1860, the work of John D.

Gann, the first district clerk of Angelina County. First. That's a title you only get once, and Gann earned it.

Now the house he built had what old Texans called a dog trot, an open center hall running right through the middle of the structure, catching the breeze in the heat of summer, giving the place a kind of breathing room that modern houses forgot how to have. You can picture it. Pine logs, open hall, East Texas timber all around.

In 1864, the house changed hands. W. H.

Bonner took ownership, and the Bonner family held onto that place like a good secret. Nearly a century later, in 1955, L. F.

Bonner, owner at the time, had the house remodeled. The dog trot was closed in, the open hall gone, the old form altered. But those interlocking hewn pine logs, they stayed.

They always stay. Some things in Texas are just built that way.

What the marker says

Early Texas double log cabin built of interlocking hewn pine logs. Originally had a "dog trot" (open center hall). Erected before 1860 by John D. Gann, first district clerk of Angelina County. Sold to W. H. Bonner in 1864. Remodeled in 1955 by L. F. Bonner, owner. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1970