Easley Home
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A native of South Carolina, Samuel Allen Easley (1851-1933) came to Texas with his parents at the age of one. They settled on a large amount of acreage along the San Gabriel River in Williamson County. After managing the family farm for much of his life, Easley and his wife, Roberta (Crow), moved to Georgetown in 1913 and built this bungalow. The house, which features a broad hip roof, bracketed eaves, and wraparound porch, remained in the Easley family until 1968. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1984.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Samuel Allen Easley came to Texas from South Carolina as an infant, and his family settled along the San Gabriel River in Williamson County. After a lifetime managing the family farm, he and his wife Roberta moved into Georgetown in 1913 and built this bungalow with its broad hip roof and wraparound porch. The house remained in the Easley family until 1968.
Why it matters
It represents the transition of Texas farm families into town life in the early 20th century, in the popular bungalow style of the day.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early 1900s, Texas was leaving its frontier youth behind. The open range had been fenced, the railroads had knit the state together, and a generation of families who had arrived when the land was raw were growing old on farms they had spent their lives improving. This was the Progressive and Modern Era — a time of automobiles arriving on country roads, of new ideas about comfort and design, and of aging farmers beginning to think about who would carry on and where they themselves would live out their years.
Williamson County, watered by the San Gabriel River, was prime farming country, and Georgetown was its thriving seat. For families like the Easleys, who had held large acreage along the river for decades, the town offered something the farm could not: neighbors close at hand, shops and churches within walking distance, and a gentler pace for later life.
The move from farm to town, repeated across Texas in these years, marked a quiet turning point — the shift of a rural society toward its towns.
People & events
Samuel Allen Easley's Texas story began almost at the beginning of his life. Born in South Carolina in 1851, he was brought west by his parents when he was just a year old, part of the steady stream of Southern families who came to Texas in search of land in the years before the Civil War. The Easleys settled on a large tract along the San Gabriel River, and there Samuel grew up and, for much of his life, managed the family farm.
A farmer's life is measured in seasons, and Easley gave many of them to that land. In time he married Roberta Crow, and together, in 1913, they made the decision that this marker commemorates: they left the farm for Georgetown and built the bungalow that still stands here. It was the house of a man who had earned his rest — comfortable, well made, and squarely in the fashionable style of its day.
The home stayed in the family for more than half a century, until 1968, and it earned recognition as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1984. Easley himself lived until 1933, spending his last decades in the town he had chosen after a lifetime beside the river.
Its place in the American story
The bungalow is one of the most democratic house forms America ever produced. In the first decades of the 20th century it swept the country, offered in pattern books and even mail-order catalogs, prized for putting a well-built, tasteful home within reach of ordinary families. Its low, welcoming lines — the broad hipped roof, the deep eaves, the generous porch — were meant for a more relaxed, informal way of living than the tall, formal houses of the Victorian age.
Easley's home, with its wraparound porch and bracketed eaves, is a textbook example of that national style planted in Texas soil. Multiply this one house by the thousands of retiring farm families who built something similar on a town lot, and you have a portrait of a country in transition — from field to Main Street, from rural isolation to town sociability.
The porch itself tells the era's story. It was built for sitting out in the evening, greeting passersby, belonging to a neighborhood — the architecture of a newly settled, newly social America.
If you visit
This is a house to appreciate from the outside, as a piece of everyday history standing quietly on a Georgetown street. Look for the features the marker names: the broad hip roof that sheds the Texas sun, the decorative brackets tucked under the eaves, and above all the wraparound porch — the signature of the bungalow age and the part of the house built for human company.
Georgetown is famous for its beautifully preserved streetscapes, and a home like this fits naturally into a walking tour of the town's older residential blocks. Please remember it is a private property; enjoy it respectfully from the public way, and let the architecture do the talking.
If you're planning a day here, the Easley home pairs well with the courthouse square and the surrounding historic district. Together they tell the story of a farm county maturing into a town — and this bungalow is where one long-settled family finally came in from the river to enjoy it.
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
- · Samuel Allen Easley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The G. W. Riley House
Georgetown, TX
This Georgetown residence dates to 1872, built by a Southwestern University chaplain who helped found the town's First Methodist church. In 1903 it passed to the Rev. George W. Riley, a circuit-riding Methodist minister who planted or served congregations in a string of Texas towns across nearly half a century. Riley and his wife settled here in part to educate their children, and the house has stayed in the family ever since.
W. Y. Penn Home
Georgetown, TX
Built in 1895 for merchant, alderman, and mayor William Y. Penn, this Georgetown home was one of several Victorian houses raised by the local Belford Lumber Co. In 1907 it became the residence of the presiding elder of the Methodist Church's Georgetown District, and over the following decades it passed to a druggist, a doctor, and other families. The house reflects the comfortable prosperity of a growing central Texas county seat.
Founding of Georgetown
Georgetown, TX
According to local tradition, Williamson County's first commissioners gathered under a great oak here in May 1848 to choose a county seat. Landowner George Washington Glasscock offered a tract bounded by the tree and the San Gabriel River, and in gratitude the commissioners named the new town Georgetown in his honor. The landmark oak stood until a storm felled it in 1886.
Georgetown Fire House and Old City Hall
Georgetown, TX
By the 1890s Georgetown had grown enough to need a proper seat of government, and in 1892 it gathered its civic functions under one roof. This building held the mayor's office, council chambers, jail, fire department, and even the water company, a compact expression of a maturing frontier town. It survives as one of the few 19th-century combined city hall–fire stations left in Texas.