The Roland Jones House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to give it its due. Now, in Nacogdoches, there stands a house with a story that runs four generations deep. It's called the Roland Jones House, and it goes back to 1896 and 1897, when an architect by the name of D.

A. G. Rulfs drew up the plans and put the thing together.

Late Victorian style, which means whoever walked through that front door was stepping into something built to impress. And the people who commissioned it? They had reason to want exactly that.

You had Mr. and Mrs. H. P.

Matthews on one side of the family ledger. Matthews was a railroad executive, which in that era meant he was the kind of man who moved goods, moved people, and moved money across a good stretch of Texas. On the other side, you had their daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs.

Roland Jones. Jones was a businessman. So right from the start, this house had two families under one roof, linked by blood and by ambition.

Rulfs built it for all of them, and he built it to last. And last it did. Four generations of the Jones family called that place home.

Think about what that means. The same walls, the same rooms, the same address, passed down and passed down again. A railroad executive's vision, an architect's craft, and one family's long tenure.

That's the Roland Jones House, still standing in Nacogdoches, still carrying every year of it.

What the marker says

Late Victorian residence built 1896-97 by architect D. A. G. Rulfs for Mr. and Mrs. H. P. Matthews and daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Roland Jones. Matthews was a railroad executive; Jones, a businessman. Four generations of Jones' family lived here. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1973