Thomas and Mattie Brown House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Now, some houses just sit there. And then some houses have a story built right into the walls, and this one on the marker for the Thomas and Mattie Brown House in Collin County, well, it's got a few layers worth peeling back.

William Thomas Brown was born in Illinois in 1848, and somewhere along the way he found himself a bride: Martha J. Housewright, who went by Mattie, as any sensible person would. They married in 1871, and life moved along the way it tends to do.

Then came the railroad. In 1886, the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad Company laid down a new line running from Paris to Dallas, and a town called Wylie sprang up right alongside it. Thomas and Mattie didn't waste much time.

They moved to Wylie shortly after it was established, drawn, it seems, to wherever things were happening. Thomas had a business partner, a man by the name of John H. Burns, and together, in 1887, the two of them purchased over thirty-one acres from Nancy and James Vaughn Russel.

This very site was part of that deal. Then in 1888, the Browns secured this particular home site for themselves. Now here's where Thomas Brown, whether he knew it or not, was building something meant to outlast him.

In 1905, he and Mattie replaced their original residence with something considerably more ambitious: a Queen Anne style structure, ornate, Victorian to its bones. Six rooms downstairs, one large room upstairs. An asymmetrical plan.

An elaborate roofscape. Four dormers, each one capped with a gable still wearing its original fishscale shingles. Wrap that all up with a wraparound porch held up by slender paired Doric columns, a dentil frieze, Palladian windows, and polygonal bays with cutaway corners on their side elevations.

That is a house announcing itself. But here's the part that'll slow you down if you think about it too long. Thomas Brown died in 1907; just two years after that beautiful house was finished.

Two years. Whatever he imagined when he commissioned those fishscale shingles and those Palladian windows, he didn't get long to enjoy them. Mattie, though.

Mattie stayed. She lived in that house until her own death in 1922, holding the place together the way certain people do, quietly and completely. After she was gone, the house passed to the Browns' adopted daughter, Tennie Lee Rattaree Creel, and it remained in her family until 1931.

Over four decades from when Thomas and Mattie first secured that site, this house stood watch over Wylie, through a railroad town's growing pains, through the deaths of the people who built it, through the hands of the daughter who inherited it. The fishscale shingles are still there. The Doric columns are still standing.

Some houses, it turns out, are very hard to let go of.

What the marker says

William Thomas Brown (1848-1907), a native of Illinois, married Martha (Mattie) J. Housewright in 1871. They moved to Wylie shortly after its establishment on a newly constructed railroad line from Paris to Dallas built by the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad company in 1886. Thomas and his business partner John H. Burns purchased over 31 acres, which included this site, from Nancy and James Vaughn Russel in 1887. The Browns secured this home site in 1888 and replaced their original residence with this ornate Queen Anne style structure in 1905. The house, with six rooms downstairs and one large room upstairs, exhibits an unusual variety of material, elaborate roofscape and asymmetrical plan typical of the Victorian era. The gables of the four dormers are covered with original fishscale shingles. Prominent features include a wraparound porch with slender paired doric columns, dentil frieze, palladian windows and polygonal bays with cutaway corners on their side elevations. Although Thomas Brown died just two years after the house was built, Mrs. Mattie Brown continued to live here until her death in 1922. The house was then inherited by the Browns' adopted daughter, Tennie Lee (Rattaree) Creel and remained in her family until 1931.**Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1992***