John Howland Wood and Nancy Clark Wood House
Bayside, Refugio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
John Howland Wood (1816-1904) was born in Dutchess County, New York. Trained in the mercantile trade and apprenticed to a painter, Wood enlisted in the New York Battalion to aid the Texas revolution. He arrived in Texas in 1836 in time to participate in the Battle of San Jacinto and several other major events at the close of the war. Wood settled at Victoria as quartermaster of the Texas Army, marrying Nancy Anna Clark in 1842. They became civic and political leaders and the parents of twelve children. The woods moved to St. Mary's, later called Bayside, where they opened a mercantile business and began to acquire vast land holdings throughout the state while John established himself as a cattleman. In 1849 they purchased this property, establishing a ranch which Nancy Wood dubbed "Bonnie View." Lightning damage to the original house led to the construction of this magnificent edifice on its foundations in 1875. Erected by contractors Viggo Kohler and Hugo Heldenfels, the structure combines a typical Greek revival plan with exuberant high Victorian Italianate detailing. The two-tiered, full-height projecting portico supported by Italianate columns establishes the house's imposing character. The house also features pedimented window surrounds, bracketed eaves and a "widow's walk" or "captain's walk," reflecting the architecture of John Wood's native New York. The house's presence on the rural Texas Coast, where few mansions were built, surely impressed visitors and area residents alike during the post-Civil War era. An outstanding example of the Italianate style, it remains one of the area's most substantial and least-altered country mansions of the period. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1998
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A New Yorker trained in trade and painting, John Howland Wood crossed to Texas in 1836 in time to fight at San Jacinto, then settled as a quartermaster, merchant, and cattleman. With his wife Nancy he built a mercantile empire and vast landholdings on the coast, naming their ranch 'Bonnie View.' After lightning destroyed their first house, they raised this 1875 mansion on its foundations — a Greek Revival plan dressed in exuberant Italianate detail, complete with a widow's walk recalling Wood's native New York.
Why it matters
Rare among the ranches of the rural Texas coast, this mansion shows how cattle and land wealth in the post-Civil War years could plant Eastern high style deep in frontier country.
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Related people
- · John Howland Wood
- · Nancy Clark Wood
Themes & tags
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