Dr. A. H. A. and Ruby Jones House
Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Ruby Lee Williams (1900-1979) was born in Texarkana to George and Carrie Williams. In 1928, she wed Jamaica-born Austin Hervin Archibald Jones (1901-1962), a successful dentist with a degree from Howard University. Ruby designed this bungalow-style home, utilizing African American craftsmen to build it in 1938. The home features decorative brickwork and a unique cubical tower. The Jones family often opened its home to touring African American entertainers, including Louis Armstrong and Dinah Washington. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2002
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Ruby Lee Williams, born in Texarkana in 1900, married Jamaican-born dentist Austin Hervin Archibald Jones, a Howard University graduate, in 1928. A decade later Ruby designed this distinctive bungalow—crowned by a cubical tower and decorative brickwork—and had it built by African American craftsmen. The Jones home became a haven for touring Black entertainers barred from segregated hotels, welcoming guests such as Louis Armstrong and Dinah Washington.
Why it matters
The house is a testament to Black professional achievement and to the private hospitality networks that sheltered African American artists traveling through the Jim Crow South.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ruby Lee Williams
- · Austin Hervin Archibald Jones
- · Louis Armstrong
- · Dinah Washington
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Atlanta-Miller Grade School
Atlanta, TX
Public education in Atlanta, Texas dates to 1874, and for generations separate schools served Anglo and African American children. This building rose in 1936 as a school for white students, funded by the New Deal's Works Progress Administration, and grew with additions as enrollment climbed. Integrated in 1970 and closed as a school in 1974, it was later saved from demolition by concerned citizens who bought it in 2001.
Pleasant Hill School
Linden, TX
Pleasant Hill is one of Texas's oldest African American communities, its Baptist church organized in 1843 beside the Old Monterey Road. In 1925 residents built this school with help from the Julius Rosenwald program, matching their own contributions to erect a Craftsman-detailed schoolhouse to a standard Rosenwald plan, complete with an industrial room and movable partition. It taught roughly 1,200 students through eighth grade until 1964 and, restored around 2009, is the last of the twenty-three Rosenwald schools once built in Cass County.
George Webster Smith
Jefferson, TX
George Webster Smith, a New York–born Union veteran, settled in Jefferson after the Civil War and became an ardent Republican, sitting on the board that disenfranchised former Confederates and serving as a delegate to the 1868 Constitutional Convention. After a shooting dispute in 1868, he was jailed in the city calaboose under a promise of protection—only to be dragged out and assassinated with two freedmen by some seventy disguised men, many tied to the Knights of the Rising Sun. The outrage brought martial law, and of twenty-three men tried, three were convicted of murder.
Stilley-Young House
Jefferson, TX
Completed for Louisiana cotton broker Frank Stilley and his wife Minerva around their 1860 marriage, this Greek Revival house passed by 1885 to Charlie Young, a formerly enslaved man who became a well-known Jefferson barber. Young wore a Prince Albert suit as his working uniform and gave regular customers personalized shaving mugs lettered in gold. His family kept the home until 1983, a rare thread of continuity through Reconstruction and beyond.