Erasmus M. Hanna House
Troup, Smith County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built about 1872 by Dr. Hanna, one of founders of Troup, and an investor in East Texas railroads and clay industries. Besides his medical practice, his interests included first hotel in Troup. Wife, Virginia Morris Hanna, was daughter of East Texas pioneers, Judge and Mrs. Stephen Decatur Morris. Five generations of Hanna descendants have lived here. Victorian architecture. Beaded bay windows; high-arched gables. Of cypress, pine, cedar woods. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1968
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Dr. Erasmus M. Hanna, one of the founders of Troup, built this cypress-and-pine Victorian home about 1872 while pursuing a career that ranged well beyond medicine—into East Texas railroads, clay industries, and the town's first hotel. His wife, Virginia Morris Hanna, came from a pioneering East Texas family. Five generations of Hanna descendants have since lived beneath its beaded bay windows and high-arched gables.
Why it matters
Homes of small-town founder-physicians like Hanna show how a single enterprising family could knit together the medicine, railroads, and industry of a new East Texas town.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Erasmus M. Hanna
- · Virginia Morris Hanna
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Town of Craft
Craft, TX
First called Independence, the town of Craft sprang up along the railroad in the 1890s and took its name from Thomas J. Craft, its first postmaster and leading citizen. In 1896 local growers launched commercial tomato production here, and within two decades this corner of East Texas shipped an astonishing ninety percent of the state's tomatoes. Though the town faded in the 1930s, its brief boom made it a linchpin of a regional farm economy.
Ponta
Ponta, TX
Ponta began in 1901 as a fresh townsite laid out along the Texas & New Orleans Railroad, first called Hubb for a county surveyor before taking the name Ponta—from the Latin for "bridge"—when its post office opened in 1903. As a shipping point for lumber, cotton, tomatoes, and peaches, it grew stores, banks, gins, and sawmills alongside a hotel, lodge, churches, and schools. The railroad's post-war decline and the post office's 1972 closing quieted the town, but large-scale greenhouse nurseries kept it economically alive.
Tyler Tap Railroad
Tyler, TX
In 1871 a group of Tyler boosters won a state charter for a short 'tap' line meant to link their fruit, cotton, and produce to the great trunk railroads then spreading across Texas. Construction stalled until the legislature offered land grants for each mile of track laid, and the first train finally rolled in 1877 toward a junction with the Texas & Pacific at Big Sandy. What began as a local shipping scheme grew fast, reorganizing into the Texas & St. Louis Railway and, by 1891, the St. Louis Southwestern — the line railroaders knew as the Cotton Belt, still headquartered in Tyler.
Old Rusk Tramway
Jacksonville, TX
After a rival railroad bypassed the area in 1873, local citizens rejoiced when the Rusk tram began running in 1875 with pine rails that warped and a top speed sometimes beaten by mule wagons. Its motley rolling stock included a used streetcar, three flatcars, and a steam engine called the "Cherokee," and passengers often had to help lift the train back onto its tracks along the 16-mile line to Jacksonville. Sold in 1879, the ramshackle tram had nonetheless done its job, drawing industry and growth to the region.