Aston House
Granbury, Hood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
When Hood County native Andy C. Aston (1857-1917) married young Dorothy Ficklin (1875-1961), he promised her a fine home. He had gifted designer and builder E.J. Holderness erect this ornate Queen Anne Style House in 1905. A warm-hearted person, active in her church and community, Mrs. Aston often opened the house to large gatherings. An Andy Aston grandchild was born here before the property passed from the family in 1925.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Andy C. Aston kept a promise of a fine home to his young bride Dorothy by commissioning builder E.J. Holderness to raise this ornate Queen Anne house in 1905. A warm and community-minded hostess, Dorothy Aston often opened the home to large gatherings until it left the family in 1925.
Why it matters
The house preserves the domestic and social world of a turn-of-the-century Texas town, centered on a woman's role in church and community life.
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Related people
- · Andy C. Aston
- · Dorothy Ficklin Aston
- · E.J. Holderness
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Aston-Landers Building
Granbury, TX
Andy Aston and George Landers erected this native-stone building with a patented iron front as a saloon in 1893, and it saw its share of frontier drama, including a 1901 duel that wounded a bystander on the square. When temperance crusader Carrie Nation visited Granbury in 1905, sentiment was shifting, and voters outlawed liquor the next year. Aston then turned the space into a buggy and harness shop staffed by skilled leather craftsmen, and it later held many other businesses.
Nellie Gray Robertson
Granbury, TX
Born in 1894 into a struggling Hood County family, Nellie Gray Robertson entered the University of Texas in 1912 and passed the state bar in 1918, breaking into a profession then closed to women. She returned home to win election as Hood County attorney—the first woman to hold that office in Texas—and served multiple terms, and in 1925 was named to sit on an all-woman Texas Supreme Court, though she narrowly lacked the required years of practice to serve. She later wrote law books in New York and led title companies in Houston and Beaumont.
Granbury House
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Widowed and raising three children, Martha Washington Stringfellow came to Hood County about 1871 and supported her family by running a boarding house here known as "The Granbury House." In 1874 she married local stonemason and builder Joseph W. Anderson, who likely erected this structure and went on to construct many of Granbury's homes, churches, and Victorian commercial buildings. Over the years the building also housed hotels, saloons, cafes, and clothing stores.
First Baptist Church of Granbury
Granbury, TX
After the Civil War, a small band of worshippers gathered near where Lambert's Branch meets the Brazos, and in 1866 a traveling preacher named J.N. Chandler agreed to lead them for nearly two decades. The congregation organized a Sunday school, joined the Paluxy Association, and dedicated its first sanctuary in 1884. Its women's missionary societies raised funds for buildings and community causes, and the church has supported missions from neighboring hamlets to overseas.