Ahab Bowen Home
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1861, Tennessee-born Ahab Bowen (1807 - 1900) moved to Dallas, where he was a farmer and feed dealer. He owned and cultivated the surrounding area, including this site which was located outside the Dallas city limits at the time of purchase in 1867. This house was built for the Bowen family about 1874. It is one of the few remaining examples of the simple, wood frame, vernacular farmhouse prevalent in Dallas County during the latter part of the 19th century. RTHL 1982
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ahab Bowen came to Dallas in 1861 from Tennessee and made his living as a farmer and feed dealer, buying this land in 1867 when it still lay beyond the young city's limits. Around 1874 he built this modest wood-frame farmhouse for his family, a plain vernacular home of a kind once common across rural Dallas County. As the city swelled around it, the house survived as one of the few reminders of the county's 19th-century agricultural roots.
Why it matters
Ordinary vernacular farmhouses rarely survive urban growth, so this one preserves the everyday domestic world of the settlers who farmed the land before the city reached it.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ahab Bowen
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Colonel C. C. Slaughter
Dallas, TX
Christopher Columbus Slaughter, the first native-born cattle king of Texas, ranged the west Texas frontier as a ranger, Confederate beef supplier, and trail driver before building a ranching empire of more than a million acres. In the early 1870s he moved to Dallas, where he founded and led three early banks and helped launch the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Renowned for his philanthropy to Baptist schools, churches, and hospitals, he left a mark on both the open range and the growing city.
First United Methodist Church of Dallas
Dallas, TX
Methodism reached Dallas as early as 1846, when circuit riders stopped at the small village, and the first organized group met in 1850 without a building of their own. The Civil War swallowed their building funds, but members persevered to dedicate the Lamar Street Methodist Church in 1868; after fire and mergers, the congregation borrowed space at Temple Emanuel before completing new homes in 1889 and 1926. Renamed across denominational changes, it became First United Methodist Church in 1968 and helped seed Methodist churches across North Texas.
First Baptist Church
Dallas, TX
The First Baptist Church of Dallas organized in 1868, when Dallas was a frontier town of just 2,500 people, and members financed their first one-room frame building by selling handwoven rugs, hominy, preserves, and cheese at area fairs. A Victorian-style red-brick section rose in 1890, and the congregation remains the only downtown Dallas church still standing on its original site. Its pulpit gained national renown under George W. Truett, who preached here for 47 years before W. A. Criswell succeeded him in 1944.
Central National Road
Dallas, TX
In 1844 the Congress of the Republic of Texas commissioned a road to link the U.S. military highway crossing on the Red River with the Trinity River in Dallas County. Surveyed by George W. Stell, the 130-mile Central National Road ran thirty feet wide through five counties and met the Preston Road, which Col. William G. Cooke's soldiers had opened in 1840 toward Austin. Together these routes joined north and south Texas, easing the way for pioneers to settle the young republic.