Carlock Home

Winnsboro, TX

Organized in 1859 as Winnsboro's first religious body, this Methodist congregation fell apart during the upheaval of the Civil War before being revived in 1869 with just fifteen members. It moved from borrowed quarters into its own sanctuary in 1880, then rebuilt in brick in 1904 and again in 1963. Across more than a century it anchored the town's spiritual and civic life.

Winnsboro, TX

This Winnsboro home was probably built in the early 1890s for merchant and civic leader J. M. Lankford, then remodeled in 1906 after Civil War veteran J. A. Stinson bought it. Stinson was father-in-law to Texas Governor James S. Hogg, and the house—kept in his family until 1956—shows Colonial Revival touches in its stately columns and front portico. It stands as a well-preserved example of small-town Texas domestic architecture from the Gilded Age.

Quitman, TX

North Carolina natives Benjamin and Alice Lee arrived around 1853 and built up a cotton plantation of more than 1,230 acres worked by their large family and enslaved people. Benjamin became a community leader and county commissioner, and the family burial ground begun at his death in 1856 gradually opened to neighbors and grew into a thirteen-acre public cemetery. Its graves—including four Lee sons who served in the Confederate army, alongside bankers, a mayor, a doctor, and newspaper publishers—read like a roster of the community's history.

Mt. Vernon, TX

Founded in 1851, the Associated Cypress Baptist Church built its meetinghouse on land later deeded to the congregation by Spencer Shearer, whose gift also created a burial ground called to service by the tolling of the bell tower. Local tradition holds that Confederate troops drilled on the church grounds during the Civil War. The congregation helped seed other area churches, and descendants of its founders remain active today.