HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Cartwright House

Terrell, Kaufman County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Victorian residence, 1883. Built by third generation Texan, Matthew Cartwright (1855-1925), rancher, banker, civic leader; married Mary Cynthia Davenport. Had ten children. Entertained artists, statesmen in this house. One of first large homes in Terrell; enlarged 1893. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1968

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

This Victorian residence went up in 1883 for Matthew Cartwright (1855–1925), a third-generation Texan who was a rancher, banker, and civic leader, and his wife Mary Cynthia Davenport. One of the first large homes in Terrell, it was enlarged in 1893 to accommodate a household of ten children and a steady stream of visiting artists and statesmen. It reflects the prosperity of a leading family in a growing North Texas town.

Why it matters

The homes of ranching and banking families like the Cartwrights chart how frontier fortunes matured into the settled prosperity and civic leadership of Gilded Age Texas.

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Related people

  • · Matthew Cartwright
  • · Mary Cynthia Davenport

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Saint John Catholic Church

Terrell, TX

Terrell sprang up in 1873 when the Texas & Pacific Railroad reached this point, and this parcel—the oldest church site in town—was acquired by Bishop Claude-Marie Dubuis in 1876. The first church was dedicated that November, joined by an outdoor shrine in 1945 and a remodeling in 1949. The site has anchored Catholic worship in Terrell for well over a century.

First Christian Church of Terrell

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Organized in 1876 with fewer than two dozen charter members, the First Christian Church of Terrell met in borrowed rooms before building its first sanctuary here in 1881. Explosive growth—membership rose tenfold in less than twenty years—drove a succession of ever-grander buildings, from a steepled, stained-glass structure in 1895 to the brick sanctuary dedicated in 1923. Its expanding facilities trace the prosperity of a growing North Texas railroad town.

Robert A. Terrell

Terrell, TX

Robert Adams Terrell wandered from Tennessee through Kentucky, Missouri, and Louisiana before reaching the Republic of Texas around 1840. As a surveyor he located headright land grants across North Texas—paid in vast tracts of land—served in Republic expeditions, and enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861. The town of Terrell rose on land he had surveyed and took his name.

Frank Reaugh

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Frank Reaugh (1860–1945) fell in love with wild range cattle as a boy on his family's Kaufman County cotton farm, where trail herds passed close by in the 1870s. Working his way through art study in St. Louis and Europe, he settled in Dallas in 1890 and became the great pastel chronicler of the Texas Longhorn, the western trails, and the open range just as they were vanishing. His paintings now hang in Austin, Dallas, and beyond.