Brown Cottage
Wylie, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
One of the oldest homes of Wylie, the 1889 Brown Cottage was the first home in Wylie of businessman William Thomas Brown and Martha (Mattie) J. (Housewright) Brown. The Browns moved to Wylie shortly after its establishment in 1886 to help build the community. Brown was one of Wylie’s first developers with the Brown & Burns Addition Subdivision, filed for record in 1887. In that same year, Brown was voted as one of Wylie’s first Aldermen. He also ran a mercantile store that served the gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe railroad and area farmers. In 1903 the Thomas and Mattie Brown Cottage, also known as the little white house, was moved from its original location on Ballard Avenue to its present location on the northeast corner of West Jefferson and North Jackson Avenue. This was in preparation for building the Browns a larger family home, called the Thomas and Mattie Brown House (designated a recorded Texas historic landmark in 1992). The Browns lived in the little white house for 16 years and then moved to the newer family home upon its completion in 1905. The cottage remained in the family until the Browns’ deaths, passing to their daughter Tennie L. Creel in 1926. When the Creels passed away in 1945, the estate was settled and Paul Pearson took ownership. He owned the cottage for a total of 49 years. Brown Cottage’s architecture is Folk Victorian with Carpenter Gothic detailing. Some of the features include cypress siding, a bay window, cross gabled roof, and an asymmetrical floor plan. Brown Cottage is one of the most prominent original residences still intact from when the town of Wylie was established in 1886. RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK – 2017
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1889, the Folk Victorian Brown Cottage was the first Wylie home of businessman William Thomas Brown and his wife Martha, who moved to the new railroad town in the mid-1880s to help build it up. An early alderman and developer of the Brown & Burns Addition, Brown ran a mercantile store serving the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe railroad and area farmers. In 1903 the "little white house" was moved to make way for a grander family home, and it remains one of Wylie's most intact original residences.
Why it matters
The cottage preserves the domestic beginnings of a founding merchant family, a small but authentic survivor from the birth of a Texas railroad town.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William Thomas Brown
- · Martha J. Housewright Brown
- · Tennie L. Creel
- · Paul Pearson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Murphy Community
Murphy, TX
Settled in the early 1840s by pioneers from a dozen states drawn to the fertile Blackland Prairie, this community farmed and ranched the tall-grass, black-soil country for well over a century. It took the name Murphy in 1888 when William Murphy granted right-of-way to the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad, though the city itself wasn't formally established until 1958. Founding Maxwell, McMillen, and Murphy families built the stores and schools of an agrarian town that faded by 1970—only to revive in the 1980s as a Dallas suburb.
Chambersville
McKinney, TX
Elisha and Peggy Ann Chambers brought their seven children to Texas in 1847, claiming headrights in Collin and Dallas Counties and donating land for a cemetery and school that seeded the community named in their honor. By the turn of the century Chambersville thrived with a sawmill, cotton gin, blacksmith, post office, and stores, while its school doubled as auditorium, dance hall, and even a roller rink. During World War I the Red Cross worked out of the school as local women rolled bandages for the troops.
Blue Ridge
Blue Ridge, TX
Named for the blue-flowering grass that hazed its hilltop between Desert and Pilot Grove Creeks, Blue Ridge drew pioneers beginning in the 1830s, including Republic of Texas land-grantee Matthew Mowry and the area's first doctor, W.C. Holmes. The Moyers brothers opened the first store—a one-room log cabin—in the 1870s, soon joined by a school, a Masonic lodge, cotton gins, a bank, and shops around the town square. Farmers and ranchers raising cotton, corn, and cattle sustained the town, whose 1937 high school was built with WPA labor.
Milliken House
Lewisville, TX
William Dickerson Milliken, a Kentucky-born merchant, opened a store in Lewisville in 1877 and the following year built this frame house of native oak. The siding tells its own story of a pre-railroad economy: it was freighted overland from Jefferson, the busy riverport of East Texas. Home to Milliken, his wife Margaret, and their eight children, the house earned Recorded Texas Historic Landmark status in 1969.