The Scales-Fortson House

Duane's take

The official marker's the word on this one, and here's how I tell it. There's a house in Navarro County that's been keeping secrets in its woodwork for well over a hundred years, and the wood alone is worth the story. Walnut.

Maple. Redwood. Whoever built this place wasn't cuttin' corners, not by a long shot.

H. L. Scales put this residence up in the 1890s.

Now, Scales wasn't just any neighbor, he was the owner of a local gin and a cottonseed oil mill, which is to say he was a man who understood the value of fine construction. The galleried house went up with Victorian and Classical Revival detailing, the kind of place that makes you slow down when you drive past it. Then comes 1911, and a man named John Thompson steps into the picture.

Thompson was president of the Corsicana National Bank, and he purchased the house that year. Presidents of banks tend to know a good investment when they see one. The house changed hands again in the 1920s, passing to Joe B.

Fortson, a banker and landowner, a man who clearly had an eye for the same things Thompson did. And here's where the story settles in and gets comfortable, because the Fortson family held onto that house, held tight, all the way until 1976. Decades of Fortsons under those high ceilings, beside those walnut and maple and redwood walls, in that galleried home with its Victorian and Classical Revival bones.

Some houses just outlast the noise of history. The Scales-Fortson House is one of them.

What the marker says

This residence was constructed in the 1890s by H. L. Scales, owner of a local gin and cottonseed oil mill. In 1911 it was purchased by John Thompson, president of the Corsicana National Bank. It became the home of banker and landowner Joe B. Fortson in the 1920s and remained in his family until 1976. The galleried house features Victorian and Classical Revival detailing and interior woodwork of walnut, maple, and redwood. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980