Hezikiah Haskell House
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The community of Clarksville is an early freedman’s community that was established after the Civil War. Freed slave Charles Clark founded the community in 1871 as a place where former slaves could reunite with their family members, direct their own lives and openly practice their religion for the first time. Peter Tucker, a former slave, purchased land from real estate speculators around 1875. It is believed he built the home around 1879. Between 1879 and 1887 Mary and Edwin Smith purchased the home. Later, Hezikiah Haskell, a union soldier and “buffalo soldier,” and a member of the black cavalry boarded with the Smiths and later married their daughter Catherine. In 1892, the Smiths deeded the home to their daughter. After the death of Hezikiah Haskell, Jr. In 1976, the home was deeded to the city of Austin and used as a senior lunch program site for a number of years. The Hezikiah Haskell house is a cumberland-style, single-wall construction, board and batten home with double separated front doors. The house sits on its original location and maintains a high degree of physical integrity. The exterior is unpainted board and batten and the roof is of rough-hewn cedar shingle shakes. The floor plan is unaltered, although rooms were added to the back. They no longer stand, but a few original windows and some of the square nails used for construction still exist. The Hezikiah Haskell house stands as a reminder of Clarksville’s historic and cultural roots and of the struggles of the people who moved there to live in freedom after years of servitude and separation. Clarksville is listed on the national register of historic places as a historic district. RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK – 2012
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Clarksville was founded in 1871 by freed slave Charles Clark as a place where former slaves could reunite their families, govern their own lives, and worship freely after emancipation. Around 1879 former slave Peter Tucker built this board-and-batten Cumberland-style house, later home to Hezikiah Haskell—a Union soldier and Buffalo Soldier who married into the family. Standing on its original site with high physical integrity, the house was deeded to the city of Austin and recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 2012.
Why it matters
The Haskell House is a rare surviving anchor of one of Texas's oldest freedmen's communities, testifying to Black Austinites' pursuit of freedom and self-determination after slavery.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Hezikiah Haskell House rises from one of the most hopeful and hard-fought moments in American history: the years just after the Civil War, when four million people freed from slavery set out to build lives of their own. In Texas, emancipation came late and was met with fierce resistance, and freedpeople who dreamed of land, family, and worship on their own terms had to carve those dreams out against enormous odds.
The community of Clarksville was one answer to that longing. Founded in 1871, it was a freedman's community — a place established by and for formerly enslaved people during the Reconstruction era, when Black Texans were, for the first time, free to direct their own lives. To gather your scattered family, to govern your own household, to pray openly in your own church: these were revolutionary acts for people so recently denied all of them.
The house itself is a document of that world. Built of unpainted board and batten in the Cumberland style, with single-wall construction, a rough-hewn cedar shingle roof, double separated front doors, and square nails, it is a working home of its time and place — modest, sturdy, and made to last, as it has.
People & events
The story begins with Charles Clark, himself a freed slave, who founded Clarksville in 1871 as a haven where former slaves could reunite with family, run their own lives, and worship freely — freedoms long denied them. Around 1875, another formerly enslaved man, Peter Tucker, purchased land here from real estate speculators, and it is believed he built this home around 1879.
Between 1879 and 1887 the house passed to Mary and Edwin Smith. Into their household came Hezikiah Haskell, a Union soldier and "buffalo soldier" — one of the Black cavalrymen who served in the U.S. Army in the years after the war. Haskell boarded with the Smiths and later married their daughter, Catherine, weaving his own story into the family and the home. In 1892 the Smiths deeded the house to Catherine.
The home stayed in the family for generations. After the death of Hezikiah Haskell, Jr., in 1976, it was deeded to the city of Austin and served for years as a senior lunch program site — a new kind of gathering place for the neighborhood. Rooms were added to the back over time and later removed, but the house sits on its original ground with its floor plan unaltered, and a few original windows and square nails still remain, small survivors of its earliest days.
Its place in the American story
After the Civil War, freedpeople across the South founded settlements where they could live beyond the reach of former enslavers — communities built on the radical premise that Black Americans would determine their own futures. Many of these places were later erased by segregation, displacement, and the pressures of a growing city. That Clarksville endures, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district, makes it a nationally significant survivor.
The Haskell House anchors that survival. Standing on its original site with a high degree of physical integrity, it lets a visitor touch the actual fabric of a freedmen's community — not a reconstruction, but the real thing. Its walls hold the story of people who moved through slavery and separation into freedom, and then set about the daily work of building a neighborhood.
The presence of Hezikiah Haskell, a buffalo soldier, links this quiet house to another strand of the national story: the Black soldiers who served the country that had so long denied them full citizenship. In one small home, the threads of emancipation, military service, family, and community come together.
If you visit
Approach the Haskell House knowing you are looking at something rare: a home standing on its original ground, its exterior unpainted board and batten, its roof of rough cedar shingle shakes, much as it has looked for well over a century. Notice the two separated front doors and the plain, honest lines of Cumberland-style single-wall construction.
Let the details reward your attention. A few original windows survive, and some of the very square nails used to build it still hold. These are the fingerprints of the people who raised this house in freedom, and they connect you directly to hands that worked here in the 1870s.
As part of the larger Clarksville historic district, the house makes an ideal starting point for exploring one of Texas's oldest freedmen's communities on foot. Walk the surrounding neighborhood, and let the house remind you of the struggle and determination it represents — a place built by people who had known servitude and separation, and who chose, against everything, to make a home.
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
- · Hezikiah Haskell
- · Charles Clark
- · Peter Tucker
- · Catherine Smith Haskell
Related events
- · Founding of Clarksville freedmen's community (1871)
Themes & tags
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Clarksville took root in 1871 when Charles Clark, a newly freed man, bought two acres on Tenth Street and set out—so tradition holds—to build a community for his people on Austin's wooded outskirts. Life gathered around the Sweet Home Baptist Church, whose members famously greeted the dawn with hymns sung from their porches, and the freedom colony produced figures like legislator Elias Mayes and the Rev. Jacob Fontaine, who founded Austin's first Black newspaper. By the 1930s the fourth church building stood, anchoring a close-knit village of nine square blocks.
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