HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Cade House

Ingram, Kerr County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Alabama native Guilford Marion Cade (1821-1887) was a doctor in the Confederate Army prior to his moving to Texas in 1865. He and his family moved to Kerr County in 1883 and purchased this property. Cade's son, Gilford P. Cade, bought the property from his siblings in 1901 and built a frame house after the family's log cabin was destroyed in a storm. As the family grew larger in the early 1930s, he and his son, Marion, built this stone house on a high hill facing east. The two-story house is composed of irregular coursed rubble masonry with a rear wing addition made of random coursed faced ashlar. Marion Cade used the random stones of his house as demonstration models for clients of his carpentry business. The second story landing is supported on large stone posts and rough-hewn beams. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Alabama native Guilford Marion Cade served as a doctor in the Confederate Army before moving to Texas in 1865 and, in 1883, bringing his family to Kerr County. After a storm destroyed the family's log cabin, his son built a frame house, and in the early 1930s a grandson and great-grandson raised this two-story stone house on a high hill — its irregular rubble masonry doubling as a demonstration model for the builder's carpentry clients.

Why it matters

The house traces three generations of one family's climb from Civil War-era arrival to established Hill Country homesteaders, embodying the slow, hand-built permanence of frontier settlement.

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Related people

  • · Guilford Marion Cade
  • · Gilford P. Cade
  • · Marion Cade

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionCivil WarFrontier HistoryHome

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