Ivy-Atchison Pioneer Home
Peoria, Hill County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Presently enclosed by a frame house, the original log structure was built in the 1840's and was one of the first homes in the settlement that became Peoria. Portions of the original walls are visible behind glass panes. Has early Texas furnishings.Once home of Col. V.H. Ivy, his three sons: Tom, Henry (both pioneer doctors), and Preston. Owners included Greer McKissick and also Frank Smith, who added rooms and completed enclosure of log house. In 1964 Smith's son Knox sold home to Mrs. Joe Atchison, who since has made further improvements. (1968) Supplemental plate: The Ivy-Atchison home formerly stood ca. 300 feet west of this site. The marker was relocated to the Peoria School (Community Center) in 2010.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in the 1840s, this log structure was among the first homes in the settlement that grew into Peoria, and portions of its original hand-hewn walls survive behind glass within a later frame house. It was long the home of Col. V.H. Ivy and his sons, two of whom became pioneer doctors. Successive owners enlarged and enclosed the cabin, and the marker was moved to the community center in 2010.
Why it matters
A cabin literally wrapped inside a modern house preserves the physical starting point of a frontier Texas community and the family that helped found it.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · V.H. Ivy
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Peoria Cemetery
Peoria, TX
Peoria Cemetery was established in the 1830s as this small Texas community formed, its first plot donated by J. R. DeArman and later grants made across four generations of the William Thomas Hill family. Tradition holds that a child fatally bitten by a rattlesnake was the first laid to rest here, joined over the years by many rural residents and travelers in unmarked graves.
Bethlehem Cemetery
Whitney, TX
In 1879 farmers and businessmen founded the Bethlehem community, church, and cemetery beside the new town of Whitney, drawing families who wanted to be near the Houston & Texas Central rail line. The first burial came in 1880, and for generations residents chose these grounds or reinterred loved ones here. When the church closed after 1919, its land passed to the cemetery, which a community association has tended ever since.
Carver Homestead
Whitney, TX
This Hill County homestead traces an unusually complete arc of Texas settlement, beginning with an 1838 headright land grant to Mary Beacham and a two-room log cabin raised by Eliphas Spencer in 1845 under the wary protection of nearby Fort Graham. Passing through a line of determined women and the Carver family, the cabin was absorbed into a Victorian house in 1875 and finally crowned with a Neoclassical second story in 1912. Its surviving carriage house, smokehouse, and other outbuildings preserve the working texture of a frontier property that endured wars, droughts, and even a 1971 tornado.
Woodbury Missionary Baptist Church
Woodbury, TX
Woodbury Missionary Baptist Church was organized in 1871 by Elder Samuel Lacy, drawing its first members from the pioneer families settling this corner of Hill County. A Sunday School followed in 1902, and the congregation raised its present building in 1933. The church has anchored the small rural community for generations.