Birdwell House
Henderson, Rusk County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built in early 1840s for Allen Birdwell, 1851 county commissioner; member Texas Legislature 1853-54 and 1863-64. House is excellent example of "saddle bag" architecture-- story-and-half double house. Built of hand-hewn logs with squared morticed corners. Later "boarded over." Has four main rooms, two on each floor. First floor rooms have exposed beam ceilings. Moved to Monte Verdi plantation. Restored by Mr. and Mrs. E. F. Lowry, 1965-66.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Raised in the early 1840s for Allen Birdwell—a county commissioner and Texas legislator—this hand-hewn log dwelling is a fine surviving example of "saddlebag" architecture, a story-and-a-half double house with squared, morticed corners later boarded over. Its four rooms and exposed-beam ceilings speak to the craft of frontier East Texas building in the days of the young Republic and early statehood. Moved to the Monte Verdi plantation and restored in the mid-1960s, it carries the memory of the region's first political families.
Why it matters
Vernacular log houses like this document how ordinary settlers built durable homes on the Texas frontier, and how their occupants helped shape the institutions of a new state.
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Related people
- · Allen Birdwell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Monte Verdi
Rusk County, TX
Built by Julien Sidney Devereux (1805–1856)—a justice of the peace, county commissioner, and legislator—Monte Verdi was a frontier interpretation of southern Greek Revival architecture, set so high on his roughly 10,000-acre plantation that much of Rusk, Cherokee, and Nacogdoches counties could be seen from its upstairs porch. It was one of the most significant antebellum plantations in Texas, worked by scores of enslaved people whose labor made its scale possible. The house was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1964.
Glenfawn Cemetery
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This burial ground began in the 1850s with the death of planter Julien Sidney Devereux, whose father and infant son were soon reinterred beside him. Known first as Devereux and Sand Field, it served the nearby Forest Hill community, home to an academy Devereux founded in 1850. When a post office opened in 1872 the settlement took the name Glenfawn, growing to include stores, a school, church, and Masonic lodge before fading away.
Richardson-Lowe House
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Raised in the 1850s in the East Texas piney woods, this Greek Revival residence carries the classical facade and central hallway fashionable in the antebellum South. Its handmade bricks were fired in a kiln right on the property, and its first family was that of pioneer physician and farmer Dr. Peterson T. Richardson. Purchased by the Lowe family in 1919, it was lovingly restored by a grandson in 1973.
Baysinger Cemetery
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In 1839, soon after moving his family from Tennessee, Martin Baysinger received a 640-acre land grant in what became Rusk County and built up a plantation with a grist mill, cotton gin, brick pit, syrup mill, store, and post office. His holdings eventually approached 7,000 acres, and he set aside this small burial ground at the death of his first wife in 1870. A wooden grave house and the markers of enslaved people said to be buried nearby are now gone, leaving graves that record the county's pioneer era.