Durst - Taylor House
Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The family of Andres de Acosta, who settled in Nacogdoches in 1779, owned this property as early as 1809. Acosta sold the property, which included a house to Joseph Durst (1789-1843) in 1827. Durst, who was Alcalde of Nacogdoches when he bought the property, sold it in 1836 to David Hoffman, then Alcalde. It included a house. The architecture of this dwelling is representative of a traditional house form of Anglo settlers in East Texas. It features gable end chimneys, slightly tapered square columns and balustrade, and paneled shutters. It is possible that this restored structure dates prior to 1827, but it is more probable, because of its Anglo characteristics, to have been constructed during Durst's tenure. Subsequent owners of the house include: Issac W. Burton, veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto; Bennett Blake, delegate to the 1875 Constitutional Convention; Thomas J. Rusk, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and one of Texas' first two United States Senators; and William Ochiltree, member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy. Lawrence S. Taylor (1842-1925), Civil War veteran and Nacogdoches County clerk, acquired the property in 1870. The property remained in the Taylor family until 1989. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This East Texas dwelling sits on land held since the days of Spanish Nacogdoches, owned by the family of a 1779 settler and sold in 1827 to Joseph Durst, then the town's alcalde. Its gable-end chimneys, tapered columns, and paneled shutters mark it as a traditional Anglo settler house, likely built during Durst's tenure in the Mexican-Texas years. Its later owners read like a roll call of Texas history — a San Jacinto veteran, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a Confederate congressman — before a Civil War veteran's family held it for over a century.
Why it matters
The house traces East Texas across Spanish, Mexican, Republic, and Confederate eras through the changing hands of the men who shaped each.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
To stand before this house in Nacogdoches is to stand in one of the oldest continuously settled spots in Texas. Long before the town was American — or even part of the Republic — it was a frontier outpost of Spanish Texas, a cluster of families holding land at the far edge of a vast empire. The property here was already in settled hands in the first decade of the 1800s, when this corner of the map answered to Spain and, after 1821, to a newly independent Mexico.
East Texas in these years was a borderland in the truest sense. It was the meeting ground of Spanish and Mexican authority and a rising tide of Anglo-American settlers pushing west and south. Land changed hands, allegiances shifted, and towns like Nacogdoches served as gateways where newcomers were registered, disputes were judged, and the business of a raw frontier got done.
The office that governed much of that daily life was the alcalde — a Mexican-era official who combined the duties of mayor, judge, and administrator in a single seat of local power. That this house passed between men who held that office tells you how central it was to the young town: not a house on the outskirts of history, but one at its civic heart.
People & events
The land's paper trail begins with a family that put down roots in Nacogdoches in the eighteenth century and still held this property in the early 1800s. In 1827 they sold it — house included — to Joseph Durst, a man then serving as the town's alcalde. It is Durst's tenure that most likely gave the dwelling its present character, its Anglo building traditions suggesting a home raised in the Mexican-Texas years rather than the Spanish ones before.
When Durst sold in 1836 — the very year Texas declared its independence — he sold to the man who had succeeded him as alcalde. From there the house passed through a remarkable succession of owners. Among them was Isaac W. Burton, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto, the fight that secured Texas independence. Another was Thomas J. Rusk, who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and went on to become one of the Republic's — then the state's — first two United States Senators.
The roll continues into later eras: a delegate to an 1875 constitutional convention, and a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy. Then, in 1870, the property came to Lawrence S. Taylor, a Civil War veteran who served as Nacogdoches County clerk. His family would hold the house for well over a century, keeping it in Taylor hands until 1989 — a single family's stewardship spanning from Reconstruction nearly to the close of the twentieth century.
Its place in the American story
Most of American history is told through great capitals and famous battlefields. This house tells it another way — through a single roof and the men who lived beneath it. In its deed book you can read the whole arc of how the Southwest became American: Spanish colonial land, a Mexican-era sale, a Republic born in 1836, a state that joined the Union, a South that seceded and returned.
The careers of its owners map directly onto that national story. A signer of a declaration of independence and an early United States Senator; a veteran of the battle that won a republic; a man who helped write a state constitution during Reconstruction; another who sat in a Confederate congress. These were the kinds of local leaders — judges, clerks, builders, soldiers — through whom sweeping national changes actually reached the ground.
That one modest dwelling could gather so many of them under its history is what makes it matter. It is a reminder that the nation was assembled not only in Washington but in county seats like Nacogdoches, where the alcalde's house became the senator's house became the county clerk's family home.
If you visit
Come to this house as you would come to read a document. Its plain, sturdy lines are the point: the gable-end chimneys anchoring each side, the slightly tapered square columns, the balustrade and paneled shutters. These are the marks of a traditional Anglo settler house of early East Texas — an architecture of function and craft rather than show, built by people making a home at the edge of settled country.
Stand back far enough to take in the whole form and imagine it as the town's alcalde would have known it, when Nacogdoches was a frontier seat under a distant government. Then think of the century-plus that one family kept it, and how many owners' lives — soldier, senator, clerk — the same walls quietly enclosed.
Nacogdoches wears its age well and rewards a slow visit; it bills itself among the oldest towns in Texas, and houses like this are why. Pair it with a walk through the surrounding historic district, and let this restored dwelling be the anchor of the stop — a single address where four eras of Texas met the same front door.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Joseph Durst
- · Thomas J. Rusk
- · Lawrence S. Taylor
- · Isaac W. Burton
Themes & tags
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