Col. G. R. Howard House
Palestine, Anderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1851 by Col. G. R. Howard, merchant and public official. Owned by family until sold to city, 1965, for a museum. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Col. G.R. Howard, a merchant and public official, built this Palestine residence in 1851, in the years when East Texas was filling with new arrivals and commerce. His family held the house for well over a century before selling it to the city in 1965 for use as a museum. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark the following year.
Why it matters
Surviving antebellum homes like this one anchor a town's memory of its earliest merchant class and the civic life they built.
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Related people
- · G. R. Howard
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Link House, The
Palestine, TX
This Palestine home was built and continuously occupied by the family of early physician Henry Harnsbarger Link and his wife, Hypatia McGee. The first rooms, raised in 1852 when Texas was barely a state, now form the front hall of the house. One of the couple's three sons, Dr. H. R. Link, remodeled the residence in 1912, and it was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1972.
Anderson County
Palestine, TX
Anderson County was created from Houston County on March 24, 1846, and organized that July with Palestine as its seat, just months after Texas joined the Union. It was named to honor Kenneth Lewis Anderson, who had served as vice-president of the Republic of Texas in its final years.
Micham Main
Palestine, TX
Little is documented of Micham Main before his 1820 marriage to Elizabeth Van Winkle in Illinois, but in 1833 the lure of favorable Mexican colonization laws drew the family to the Nacogdoches District of what became Texas. He received a land grant in David G. Burnet's colony in 1835, farmed as required, and briefly served in the Republic of Texas army in 1836. When Anderson County was created in 1846, Main was one of three Illinois-Palestine men appointed to choose and name the county seat—Palestine—though later accounts credit fellow settler John Parker with the naming.
Anderson County Courthouse
Palestine, TX
Anderson County was carved out by the Texas Legislature in 1846 and named for Kenneth L. Anderson, the last vice president of the Republic of Texas. Justice was first dispensed in a log house at Fort Houston, and the county worked through four courthouses — a frame building, two brick ones, and finally the grand Beaux-Arts structure completed in 1913-14 after fire claimed its predecessor. With giant Ionic columns and a dome crowned by a statue of Justice, the present courthouse still anchors the Palestine square.