Former Site of Head House
Lancaster, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Former Site of the Head House Lucy Frances Jeffries (1840 - 1931) of Virginia married Henry Head, and while bringing up their four children discovered her talent for cooking. From 1891 to 1918, in her large home on this site, Mrs. Head operated a boarding house famous for good food such as fried chicken, popovers, cakes, pies, and ambrosia. Commercial travelers ("drummers") spread the fame of Head House nationally. Crowds thronged here, especially on Sundays and great occasions. The hostelry also attracted many honeymooners. It retained the Head name until it closed and was demolished in 1936.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
From 1891 to 1918, Lucy Frances Head ran a celebrated boarding house on this Lancaster site, where her fried chicken, popovers, and ambrosia drew crowds—especially on Sundays and holidays. Traveling salesmen, known then as "drummers," spread word of her table across the country, and the house became a favorite of honeymooners. It kept the Head name until it closed and was torn down in 1936.
Why it matters
Establishments like the Head House show how a woman's domestic skill could become a regionally famous enterprise in the Gilded Age, when boarding houses knit together the traveling commercial economy of small-town America.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Lucy Frances Jeffries Head
- · Henry Head
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Presbyterian Church of Lancaster
Lancaster, TX
In 1856 the Rev. Michael Dickson and nine charter members gathered in a rough cabinet workshop to organize this Presbyterian congregation, worshiping first in a shared schoolhouse. After the Civil War the Ladies Aid Society raised the money for a permanent site, the first church rose in 1884, and the present sanctuary was completed in 1912 and dedicated in 1917.
First Christian Church of Duncanville
Duncanville, TX
In the young farm town of Duncanville, informal 1890s gatherings led by a visiting Lancaster minister grew into a formal congregation of seventeen charter members in 1893. Robert and Frances Daniel anchored the effort, funding the first sanctuary in 1913 and, in Frances's case, deeding the very land beneath it. The church weathered a devastating 1917 fire and a bank failure that swallowed its rebuilding funds, yet pressed on to complete a new sanctuary by 1919.
Pleasant Grove Christian Church
Dallas, TX
This congregation grew from a rural union church meeting in a cabin as early as 1875. In 1906 its Ladies Aid Society began raising money for a dedicated building, completed in 1908 — the first of several sanctuaries repeatedly struck by fire and rebuilt across the decades. Through it all the church continued to serve descendants of the area's pioneer families.
Good Samaritan Hospital (Leland Avenue)
Dallas, TX
Around 1920 Martha Schultze, a registered nurse trained in her native Germany before immigrating to the United States, opened Good Samaritan Hospital on Leland Avenue, where her husband Ernest ran an associated clinical laboratory. Starting with maternity care, the hospital added an operating room and general services by 1933 and treated neighborhood residents—elderly, infirm, and those unable to pay—until it closed in 1945. Schultze ran it for the whole of its roughly twenty-five years, and hundreds of children were born under its roof.