The Terrell House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just along for the ride. Now, Navasota has its share of stories, and the one attached to this particular two-story house is the kind that moves quiet and steady, like a river that knows exactly where it's going. It starts in 1897, when a woman named Elizabeth Owen made a decision.

She was going to build something. Not for herself, but for her daughter, Emmeline B. Terrell, born in 1849, who had just lost her husband.

Joel W. Terrell the Second had been a local pharmacist, and he died the year before that house went up. So Elizabeth Owen did what a mother does.

She had a two-story residence constructed, and she handed her daughter the keys. Now, you take a moment with that. A widow, a mother, a house rising from grief and love and timber.

That right there is the whole story, or at least the beginning of it. The house itself was built in the Queen Anne style, and whoever drew those plans did not hold back. The gallery and the gable ends are dressed in intricate Eastlake ornamentation, the kind of detail that makes you stop on the sidewalk and look up, even if you're in a hurry.

Two years passed. Then, in 1899, John H. Mickleborough came into the picture.

Leading banker, leading businessman, a man of some standing in Navasota. He and his wife Georgia purchased the home, and just like that, the Terrell House stepped into its next chapter. The name stayed.

The beauty stayed. And out here on a Texas road, that is sometimes the most a place can ask for.

What the marker says

In 1897 Elizabeth Owen had this two-story residence constructed for her daughter Emmeline B. Terrell (b. 1849), the widow of local pharmacist Joel W. Terrell, II, who had died the previous year. In 1899 the home was purchased by John H. Mickleborough, a leading Navasota banker and businessman, and his wife Georgia. An example of Queen Anne styling, the Terrell House features intricate Eastlake ornamentation on the gallery and gable ends. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1981