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. Francis Lemuel Kay came a long way to build something lasting. A South Carolina planter by background, Kay settled in Smith County in 1856, and he didn't waste a single season getting to work.
Between 1856 and 1860, he bought up 640 acres of land and raised a two-story home on it, a proper house, built for his wife Mary Ellen, born a Black before she was a Kay, and their eleven children. Eleven. Two stories might not have felt like quite enough.
By 1860, Kay was operating 1,300 acres of farm and ranchland. That is a man who arrived with a plan and executed it. Francis Lemuel Kay was born in 1814 and died in 1867, and the family he left behind held onto that land for decades, the house standing through all of it.
Then, in 1909, the Kay family sold the property to the Combination Orchard Company, and the old home found a new purpose. It became the headquarters for the company's pecan orchards, which is a fine second act for any building. The story didn't stop there either.
In 1937, Hunt Oil Company bought the house and the land, and here's the part worth savoring, they kept right on running the pecan business. A South Carolina planter builds a home, a family tends it for half a century, an orchard company moves in, and an oil company carries the whole thing forward. That house on Francis Kay's 640 acres has been a lot of things, but it has never once been forgotten.
What the marker says
South Carolina planter Francis Lemuel Kay (1814-1867) settled in Smith County in 1856. Between 1856 and 1860, Kay bought 640 acres of land and built this two-story home for his wife Mary Ellen (Black) (1826-1896) and their eleven children. By 1860 Kay owned and operated 1300 acres of farm and ranchland. The Kay family sold the property to the Combination Orchard Company in 1909, and the house became the headquarters for the company's pecan orchards. In 1937 the Hunt Oil Company bought the house and land and has continued to operate the pecan business.