Barton Home
Calvert, Robertson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
After her home north of Calvert was destroyed by fire, Minnie Walker Burnitt Barton, widow of plantation owner Francis Davis Barton, built this structure in 1909. She intended the brick home with slate roof to withstand as many natural disasters as possible. Classical revival in style, the house boasts colonnaded porches and balconies on three sides, 18-inch exterior walls, and 12-foot ceilings. The three Barton daughters hosted large house parties here. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1979
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
After fire destroyed her home north of Calvert, Minnie Walker Burnitt Barton — widow of plantation owner Francis Davis Barton — resolved in 1909 to build something that could survive nearly any disaster. The result was a Classical Revival brick house with a slate roof, 18-inch exterior walls, and 12-foot ceilings, wrapped by colonnaded porches and balconies on three sides. Here the three Barton daughters hosted the large house parties that made the home a center of local social life.
Why it matters
Built to a widow's exacting specifications, the Barton Home reflects both the ambitions of turn-of-the-century Texas plantation society and the women who shaped its domestic and social world.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Minnie Walker Burnitt Barton
- · Francis Davis Barton
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Stricker-Sneed House
Calvert, TX
Jeweler Herman Stricker and his wife Katy—daughter of Confederate General William H. Hamman—built this Victorian house in 1900 and stood among Calvert's business, civic, and social leaders. Katy Stricker helped lead the drive to erect a women's meeting house, now the Calvert Library. In 1913 banker H. Marvin Sneed and his wife Cara bought the home, which passed through their heirs before its sale in 1970.
Katy Hamman Stricker Library
Calvert, TX
When railroads turned Calvert into a cotton-trade center, its women joined the national club movement, chartering an American Woman's League chapter in 1908. On land donated by Ella Hamman, the league built this Prairie-style chapter house in 1909, complete with a commissioned bas-relief titled "Woman's Mission." Though the league soon folded, local women revived it as the Calvert Woman's Club and ran a community library from the building for decades.
Howard House
Calvert, TX
Calvert boomed as a cotton and railroad town in the late 1800s, and its homes reflected the era's taste for exuberant Victorian styling. In 1897 Mrs. S. M. Howard built this Eastlake-style cottage, a year after buying the property from her sister-in-law, giving it fishscale shingles, a wide gingerbread veranda, and finely detailed interior woodwork. The house stayed in the Howard family into the 1940s and typifies Calvert at the turn of the century.
Adams-White Place
Hearne, TX
Erected in 1896 by Horatio "Rashe" Adams, a Hearne citizen who worked as a public relations man in Washington, D.C., this Victorian house passed through a succession of owners over the following decades. Contractor A. A. White built it complete with a detached kitchen and a backyard artesian well that once supplied its water. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1968.