The Marshall-Chapman Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. There's a house in Hays County with a story that spans the better part of a century, and it starts with a man named Burrell J. Marshall.

Born in 1826, Marshall was the kind of fellow who didn't wait around. In 1871, he took an existing frame structure and added rooms of native limestone to it, turning the whole thing into a proper residence. And while he was at it, he went ahead and used that very home as a post office, serving as postmaster himself.

The man had the whole operation under one roof. Now, here's where the story takes a turn. Marshall died in 1872, just a year after he'd built the place.

Left behind his widow, Martha, born in 1835. Martha was not a woman who let the world stop turning. She married William Thomas Chapman, also born in 1835, and Chapman stepped into more than one role that Marshall had left behind.

He too became postmaster. He also became a trustee of the Dripping Springs Academy. The house kept its name from both men, the Marshall-Chapman Home, carrying both families forward.

And those families held onto it. Marshall and Chapman descendants owned that house generation after generation, all the way up to 1942. That's when John and Clara Wilson finally bought it, and a new chapter quietly began.

One house, two families, one long unbroken line of limestone and memory.

What the marker says

Burrell J. Marshall (1826-1872) built this residence in 1871 by adding rooms of native limestone to an existing frame structure. He used his home briefly as a post office while he was postmaster. When Marshall died in 1872, his widow Martha (1835-1924) married Wm. Thomas Chapman (1835-1917), who also became postmaster and a trustee of the Dripping Springs Academy. Marshall and Chapman family members owned the house until 1942, when John and Clara Wilson bought it. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1976