Early Teague Home
Longview, Gregg County, Texas
Marker Inscription
One of few remaining houses of Earpville (early Longview). North boundary of tract on Wm. t. Brooks' stagecoach line from Monroe, La. to Tyler, Texas. Built before 1882, when it was purchased by Latimus and Mary Teague, natives of Alabama. Two daughters, Misses Molly and Sarah Teague, held school sessions and taught music here beginning 1890. Classes moved to separate building where they continued until 1905. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This house is one of the few surviving structures of Earpville, the early settlement that grew into Longview, standing along William T. Brooks's stagecoach line running from Monroe, Louisiana, to Tyler, Texas. Built before 1882 and bought that year by Alabama natives Latimus and Mary Teague, it became a schoolhouse in 1890 when their daughters Molly and Sarah taught classes and music here until the school moved in 1905.
Why it matters
The home ties together two threads of frontier community-building — overland stagecoach travel and the informal schools that women often ran before public education took hold.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Before there was a Longview, there was Earpville, a small East Texas settlement in piney woods country, red clay hills, and creek bottoms. Like many communities in this part of the state, it was settled in the decades before the Civil War by families coming west from the Deep South, especially from Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
In the days before railroads, getting around East Texas meant rough roads, river crossings, and stagecoaches. Stage lines tied scattered towns to one another and to markets and ports farther east. This house stands on land whose north boundary ran along William T. Brooks's stagecoach line between Monroe, Louisiana, and Tyler, Texas, a route linking the cotton country of northern Louisiana to the growing towns of East Texas.
Then the railroad arrived. In the early 1870s, the Texas and Pacific Railway built through the area, and the new town of Longview grew up around it. Over time the older settlement of Earpville was absorbed, and today only a few of its houses survive. This is one of them.
Education was just as unsettled as transportation. Public schools in post-Civil War Texas were often short-term, underfunded, and uneven, so families in many towns relied on private schools and subscription schools, many of them taught by young women in their homes.
People & events
The house was already standing in 1882, when it was bought by Latimus and Mary Teague, both natives of Alabama. Their move west followed a well-worn path; so many East Texas families had Alabama roots that the region sometimes felt like an extension of the older South.
The Teagues' two daughters, Misses Molly and Sarah Teague, are the heart of this story. Beginning in 1890, they held school sessions and taught music right here in the family home. Picture children walking in for lessons in reading and arithmetic, a piano or parlor organ in the front room, and two sisters running what was, in effect, a neighborhood academy.
The school did well enough to outgrow the house. Classes moved into a separate building, and the sisters kept teaching until 1905. That is fifteen years of educating the children of a growing town, years when Longview was turning from a rail stop into a real city.
The road that bounded this land adds another character to the story: William T. Brooks, whose stagecoach line carried travelers and mail between Monroe and Tyler. Before the trains, the coaches rumbling past this property were how news, letters, and newcomers reached Earpville.
Its place in the American story
The Teague home captures a turning point that happened in hundreds of American towns: the switch from stagecoach to railroad. When the tracks came, old settlements were often bypassed or swallowed up by new depot towns. Earpville becoming Longview is a textbook example, and surviving houses from the earlier settlement are rare reminders of what came first.
The Teague sisters stand for one of the most important and least celebrated forces in American education. Throughout the 1800s, before strong public school systems existed in much of the country, women ran home schools, private academies, and music classes that taught a large share of the nation's children. Teaching was also one of the few respectable careers open to unmarried women, and it gave many of them independence and standing in their communities.
Music education mattered too. In an era before recorded sound was common, learning to play and sing was how families filled their homes with music, and teachers like the Teague sisters passed those skills along.
The school closing its doors in 1905 also fits the national story. In the early twentieth century, Texas and other states were steadily building up public school systems, and the era of the private home school gradually came to an end.
If you visit
This marker is in Longview, a city whose growth really took off with the railroad and, later, with the East Texas oil boom. The Teague home is a reminder of the quieter community that came before all that. Approach it the way you would any historic house: it may be private property, so enjoy it from the public right-of-way.
As you look at the house, try to picture it as both a family home and a schoolroom, with students arriving for lessons and music drifting out of the windows. Then think about the old stage road along the north edge of the tract, and imagine coaches on their way between Louisiana and Tyler passing by.
Longview is an easy stop on an East Texas road trip through piney woods country. Tyler, the western end of Brooks's old stage line, is a short drive away, and the region is full of small towns with roots in the same stagecoach-to-railroad story.
For a fun theme, follow the general route of the old Monroe-to-Tyler road on modern highways, and you'll be tracing the path the Teagues' neighbors once traveled by coach, at a fraction of the bumps and a lot more speed.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Latimus Teague
- · Mary Teague
- · Molly Teague
- · Sarah Teague
- · William T. Brooks
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Methodist Church of Longview
Longview, TX
This congregation dates to 1845, when a one-room log building served the community as church, school, and town hall, tended by circuit-riding ministers until 1850. Following the paths of trade and travel, the congregation moved to Earpville on the stagecoach road in 1860 and then relocated its building to Longview in 1874 after the railroad arrived. It has served the area for more than a century and a half.
Liberty City
Kilgore, TX
This rural Gregg County community was settled before the Civil War and carried a string of colorful names — Sabine, Mount Moriah, McCrary's Chapel, Goforth, and Hog Eye, the last for a settler with a keen eye for hogs. It took the name Liberty City in the opening days of the fabled East Texas oil boom, which transformed the county's economy. The area built its reputation on good schools, farming, ranching, and an admired network of all-weather county roads.
Site of Earpville
Longview, TX
Earpville was settled in the late 1840s by James Earp and his relatives from Alabama, growing along a stagecoach line into a hub with a post office, stage stop, Methodist church, and stores that served the region's farmers. When part of Earp's homesite was sold to the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1870, the new town of Longview rose beside the tracks and Earpville faded away. Its disappearance is a classic case of the railroad choosing a town's fate.
First Christian Church of Longview
Longview, TX
Twelve charter members organized this congregation in 1875, meeting first in a schoolhouse before building a frame sanctuary on land deeded by the Texas & Pacific Railroad — a reminder of how the railroads seeded churches and civic life in East Texas towns. James P. Holloway, a prominent local landowner, served as the first pastor. Successive buildings in 1906 and 1936 mark a congregation that grew steadily alongside Longview itself.