DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do my best to give it its due. Somewhere in Williamson County, there stands a Victorian house that has outlasted the ambitions of just about everyone who ever walked through its front door — and that, friends, is saying something. The Harrell-Stone House.
Let's talk about it. Built about 1895, and built for a lumberman — Henry W. Harrell — which, when you think about it, means the man who supplied the wood for other people's houses got himself a pretty fine one of his own.
Victorian style, which in 1895 meant you weren't shy about a little ornamentation. And it wasn't alone on the block, either. The C.
S. Belford Lumber Co. put up others just like it in that same neighborhood, so you can imagine what that street must've looked like — a whole row of handsome, ambitious houses rising up out of the Texas earth, all cut from the same cloth and the same company. Now, nothing stays in one family forever, and in 1907 the house was sold to a storekeeper by the name of W.
F. Magee. A new chapter, a new family moving through those rooms.
Then came 1937, and that's when the house found what you might call its most consequential owner. Judge Samuel Vaughan Stone — civic leader, and county judge for thirty-five years, which is the kind of tenure that makes a man almost synonymous with the county itself — he and his wife Berenice purchased the place. And here's the part that earns Berenice Stone her own mention in the story: she restored it.
Three prominent families, one house, and decades of social and church gatherings filling its rooms with voices. Some houses just have a talent for that — for gathering people in. The Harrell-Stone House turns out to be one of them.
What the marker says
Built about 1895 for lumberman Henry W. Harrell, this Victorian house resembles others erected in this neighborhood by the C. S. Belford Lumber Co. It was sold in 1907 to storekeeper W. F. Magee. In 1937 the structure was purchased by Judge Samuel Vaughan Stone, civic leader and county judge for 35 years, and his wife Berenice, who restored it. Occupied by three prominent families, this residence has been the scene of numerous social and church gatherings. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1976