The H.P. Barkley Home

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Somewhere in Ennis, Ellis County, there stands a house that has seen more lives than most folks get to live. It started in 1892, when a local contractor by the name of B.

F. Sargeant put it up for a man named H. P.

Barkley. Now Barkley wasn't just anybody; he was a conductor and yardmaster for the Houston and Central Texas Railroad. Railroad work, in those days, was the kind of thing that put a town on the map and kept it there.

And Barkley, it seems, did well enough by it to commission himself a proper Victorian home, the kind with elaborate gingerbread detailing along the eaves and trim: the sort of flourish that says, plain as day, that somebody here had arrived. Then comes 1905. A local businessman named T.

H. Floyd purchases the house, and here's where the story slows down and gets quiet for a spell, because Floyd didn't just pass through. He stayed.

He resided in that home until 1949. Forty-four years under the same roof. Whole decades rolling by.

Two world wars. The whole country changing around him, and T. H.

Floyd still there in that Victorian house with its gingerbread trim. After Floyd, the house found yet another calling: it served as a church parsonage, shelter for those tending to a congregation. And today?

The Barkley home stands as a reminder of Ennis' early days as a growin' railroad town. Three lives, three purposes, one house; still standin'. That's a story B.

F. Sargeant built to last.

What the marker says

Local contractor B. F. Sargeant constructed this residence in 1892 for H.P. Barkley, a conductor and yardmaster for the Houston and Central Texas Railroad. Built in the Victorian style, it features elaborate gingerbread detailing. T.H. Floyd, a local businessman, purchased the house in 1905 and resided here until 1949. Later used as a church parsonage, the Barkley home now serves as a reminder of Ennis' early days as a growing railroad town.