The Patterson Home

Duane's take

The way I tell it, I'm going by what the official marker says, so let's see what this old place has to say for itself. Now, out here in Smith County, there sits a house with layers. Not just wood and plaster layers, mind you, but layers of time, of family, of a whole way of life that kept building on top of itself, decade after decade.

They call it the Patterson Home, and that name tells part of the story. But only part. Because it didn't start as the Patterson Home.

It started as something older, simpler, and a whole lot more humble. Before 1854, a man named John Lollar put up a dog-trot cabin on this land. Now if you've ever seen a dog-trot cabin, you know what that means: two rooms, open breezeway running right down the middle, and a general philosophy that says air ought to move through a Texas summer any way it can.

That was the foundation, literally and otherwise, of everything that came after. The place passed along to a pioneer doctor, J. C.

Moore, who made it his own for a spell. Then in 1871 it was sold to a man named John M. Patterson, born in 1817.

He would live until 1894, and during that stretch of years he made this property his. But here's where the story picks up speed. In 1880, John M.

Patterson's son, John P. Patterson, born in 1847, acquired the place. And two years after that, in 1882, something changed you could see from the road.

They added a second floor. And not just any second floor thrown up plain and practical. They decorated the exterior with Victorian detailing.

Think about that. A structure that began as a dog-trot cabin, born of pure frontier necessity, suddenly wearing the ornamental flourishes of the Victorian age like a man who's done well and wants the world to know it. The house that John Lollar built for survival, dressed up in 1882 like it was going somewhere.

And it was the center of a large farm. Not just a home. The hub.

The place everything else on that land turned around. By 1975, when this marker was recorded, the house belonged to Pearl Patterson, and here's the line that ought to stop you in your tracks: the Patterson family had been living under that roof for over one hundred years. One hundred years of the same family inside the same walls, from John M.

Patterson buying it in 1871, through his son John P., right on down to Pearl. Dog-trot cabin to Victorian showpiece to a century of family. That old place just kept becoming something more, and somehow it kept becoming theirs.

What the marker says

This structure began as a dog-trot cabin erected before 1854 by John Lollar and later owned by pioneer Doctor J. C. Moore. It was sold in 1871 to John M. Patterson (1817-94) and acquired in 1880 by his son, John P. Patterson (1847-1911). In 1882 the second floor was added and the exterior decorated with Victorian detailing. The house was then the center of a large farm. Owned (1975) by Pearl Patterson, it has housed the Patterson family for over 100 years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1975