Everard Sharrock, Jr. Farmstead
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This farmstead was part of the first settlement in north Texas, the Peters Colony. William Smalling Peters received a land grant in 1841 to help populate the newly-formed Republic of Texas. The Sharrock family moved from Illinois. After receiving 640 acres, Everard Sharrock, Jr. (1826-1913) built his homestead here in 1847. The family left Texas in 1853 and the land passed to Irish immigrant Thomas J. Young. His son Andrew A. Young (1843-1900) built the farmhouse in 1872. Other outbuildings were added in the early twentieth century by subsequent owners. The farmstead includes a log cabin, log barn, hand-dug well and root cellar built of eastern red cedar and limestone, all dating from 1847. The buildings represent pre-railroad folk log construction and demonstrate how settlers used local materials. Settlers used v-notches at the corners to connect adjoining hand-hewn logs. Rafters were connected at the roof line with mortise and tenon joints, thus eliminating the need for a ridge beam. This popular construction method originated with German and Swedish immigrants, while the one-room rectangular design came from Scots-Irish and English influences. The city of Dallas received the property in 2006 and the Sharrock site became a city of Dallas landmark in 2013. Today, the farmstead is the earliest known collection of log structures in the Dallas area still standing on its original site. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark – 2016
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This farmstead traces to the Peters Colony, the first organized settlement in north Texas, established under a land grant to help populate the young Republic of Texas. Everard Sharrock, Jr. built his homestead here in 1847; after the family left, the land passed to an Irish immigrant's family who added the 1872 farmhouse. Its log cabin, barn, and outbuildings, joined with hand-hewn v-notches, survive as the earliest known collection of log structures in the Dallas area on their original site.
Why it matters
The farmstead preserves the folk building traditions and hard frontier settlement of Republic-era Texas, blending immigrant construction methods into a living record of early pioneer life.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Everard Sharrock, Jr. Farmstead belongs to the very first chapter of Anglo settlement in north Texas. In 1841 the newly formed Republic of Texas, hungry for population, granted an empresario named William Smalling Peters the right to bring settlers onto its northern lands. The Peters Colony that resulted was the first organized settlement in this part of Texas, and families answered the call from across the young United States.
This was frontier country in the truest sense — before railroads, before towns had hardened into cities, when a family's fortunes rested on what they could build with their own hands from the timber, stone, and soil around them. Settlers came with little and made do with what the land provided.
The result was a landscape of homesteads raised from local materials, using building traditions carried from the old country and the older states. The Sharrock farmstead is a survivor of exactly that world: pre-railroad, folk-built, and still standing where it was raised.
People & events
The story begins with the Sharrock family, who came from Illinois to take up land in the Peters Colony. Everard Sharrock, Jr., born in 1826, received 640 acres and built his homestead here in 1847. He did not stay long — the family left Texas in 1853 — but the buildings and structures he put up, including a log cabin, a log barn, a hand-dug well, and a root cellar of eastern red cedar and limestone, remain from that founding year.
After the Sharrocks moved on, the land passed to an Irish immigrant, Thomas J. Young. His son, Andrew A. Young, built the farmhouse here in 1872, and later owners added outbuildings in the early twentieth century — so the site grew in layers, each generation adding to what the last had left.
The craftsmanship tells its own immigrant story. The builders joined hand-hewn logs with V-notches at the corners and tied the rafters together with mortise-and-tenon joints, doing away with the need for a ridge beam. The marker traces these methods to German and Swedish traditions, married to the simple one-room rectangular plan favored by Scots-Irish and English settlers — different peoples' habits fused into one American building.
Its place in the American story
The log cabin is one of the enduring images of the American frontier, and for good reason: it was the practical answer to a continent of forests and a shortage of everything else. Structures like these show how settlers turned local timber and stone into shelter, using techniques handed down and blended from many homelands.
What makes this site matter is its authenticity and its survival. It is the earliest known collection of log structures in the Dallas area still standing on its original ground — not moved, not reassembled, but rooted where a Republic-era family first raised it. That continuity is rare and precious.
The farmstead also captures a truth about American settlement that a single-family story can miss: the land changed hands from an Illinois family to an Irish immigrant's family, and the buildings carry German, Swedish, Scots-Irish, and English influences. The frontier was a meeting place of peoples, and this quiet farmstead is a record of that mingling written in notched logs.
If you visit
Come to look closely, because the details are the reward. Find the corners of the log buildings and study the V-notches where the hand-hewn logs lock together, and imagine the labor of shaping each timber with hand tools. Look up, too: the roof was framed without a ridge beam, the rafters pegged together in a way that speaks of old-world skill.
Beyond the cabin, notice the full ensemble — the log barn, the hand-dug well, the cedar-and-limestone root cellar — because it's the collection, standing together on its original site, that makes this place unusual. Later owners added outbuildings over the years, so you're really seeing generations of frontier and farm life stacked in one spot.
The farmstead became a City of Dallas landmark, and it makes a grounding stop on a trip through the region's early history. Stand a moment and take in the quiet; it's easy to feel how far this was from anywhere when the first family raised these walls, and how much of that early Texas has vanished everywhere but here.
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
- · William Smalling Peters
- · Everard Sharrock, Jr.
- · Thomas J. Young
Themes & tags
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