Judge Edwin Hawes House
Wharton, Wharton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Rosa F. McCamly had this home built in 1896. In 1897 she sold it to Edwin Hawes (b. 1852), Wharton County judge in the 1870s and 1880s. Hawes had returned to this area after temporarily residing in Kerrville, where he was mayor. Here he was a large landowner and a political leader. The double galleried home was purchased in 1944 by George Rust Hawes and his wife Emily ( Prasifka), the son and daughter-in-law of Edwin and Lizzie Milburn (Rust) Hawes. (Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1982.)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1896, this double-galleried house passed the next year to Edwin Hawes, a Wharton County judge of the 1870s and 1880s who had also served as mayor of Kerrville before returning to the coastal plains. A large landowner and political leader, Hawes made the home a seat of local influence during the Gilded Age. It stayed in the Hawes family, passing to his son and daughter-in-law in 1944.
Why it matters
The home reflects the rise of the landowning, professional class that governed Texas counties in the decades after Reconstruction, when local judges were pillars of community life.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Wharton County lies on the Texas coastal plain, crossed by the Colorado River as it heads toward the Gulf of Mexico. The soil is deep and fertile, and in the nineteenth century the county was farming and ranching country, tied to cotton, cattle, and the river-bottom plantations that had shaped the area since before the Civil War.
The years after the war brought large changes. Reconstruction reshaped politics and labor across Texas, and the county courthouse was where many of those changes were carried out. In the 1870s and 1880s the county judge was a central local figure, handling county business, roads, finances, and disputes. In a rural county the judge's decisions affected nearly everyone's daily life.
By the 1890s Texas was well into the Gilded Age. Railroads were bringing towns like Wharton into regional markets, and prosperous families were building houses that showed their standing. The 1896 house on this site belongs to that period of rebuilding, growth, and confidence on the coastal plain.
People & events
The house was built by a woman. Rosa F. McCamly had it built in 1896, and the next year she sold it to Edwin Hawes. The marker says little else about her, but her part is worth noting: at the close of the nineteenth century, a woman commissioned and then sold a substantial town house.
Edwin Hawes, born in 1852, was already a well-known figure in the county when he bought it. He had served as Wharton County judge in the 1870s and 1880s, through Reconstruction and the years after, when county government was being rebuilt. For a while he also lived in Kerrville, in the Hill Country, and served as its mayor. He then returned to Wharton, where he held a lot of land and was a political leader.
The house stayed in the family. Edwin and his wife, Lizzie Milburn (Rust) Hawes, had a son, George Rust Hawes. In 1944 George and his wife, Emily (Prasifka), bought the house. That kept the property in Hawes hands for close to half a century after it was first purchased, and Texas recognised it as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1982.
Its place in the American story
Across the United States in the decades after the Civil War, county government was the level of government most people actually dealt with. Local judges, commissioners, and officials ran courts and roads and settled land disputes in a country that was still building its public institutions. People like Edwin Hawes, who combined land, public office, and political influence, were typical of the leadership that ran rural America then.
Hawes's move from the coastal plain to Kerrville and back again also shows how mobile ambitious Texans were in these years. Men and women moved between regions, took public roles wherever they settled, and carried networks of family and politics with them. Texas was still being settled and organised, and people like him shaped its local government.
The house fits a wider pattern of Gilded Age building. Double galleries, meaning porches stacked on two floors, were practical in the humid heat of the Gulf coast, catching breezes and shading the walls. They also showed the owner's status. Homes like this record a period when prosperity in small American towns showed up in wood, paint, and porches.
If you visit
Wharton is an easy stop on a drive across the Texas coastal plain, a flat, green farming region along the Colorado River. The Hawes House is a private home, so view it from the street and respect the owners' privacy.
Look at the double galleries first. The two stacked porches were designed for a hot, humid climate, giving shade and air on both floors. Imagine the house in the late 1890s with a judge and political leader living there, and the town's business being discussed on those porches in the evening.
Walk or drive through the older parts of town to see how the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped Wharton. The county courthouse, where Edwin Hawes did his work as judge, is a good next stop. From there you are within reach of other coastal-plain towns along the river, each with its own layer of Texas history.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Edwin Hawes
- · Rosa F. McCamly
- · George Rust Hawes
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of Wharton
Wharton, TX
Baptist worship in this corner of the Colorado River bottoms may reach back to about 1822, in the home of "Old 300" colonist William Kincheloe, one of Stephen F. Austin's original settlers. A Sunday school followed around 1829-1830, and a formal congregation was organized by 1847, becoming a founding member of the Colorado Baptist association that year. Known since 1913 as the First Baptist Church of Wharton, the fellowship built its first sanctuary in the late 1850s.
Wharton County
Wharton, TX
Wharton County was created in 1846 from Matagorda and Jackson counties and organized the same year, in the first months of Texas statehood. It honors the brothers William H. and John A. Wharton, both prominent figures of the Texas Revolution and the Republic. William served as Texas minister to the United States, while John was an adjutant at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto and a member of the Republic's Congress.
Site of The Home of Robert McAlpin Williamson
Wharton, TX
Born in Georgia in 1806, Robert McAlpin Williamson edited some of Texas's pioneer newspapers, The Texas Gazette and The Mexican Citizen, before throwing himself into the fight for Texas independence. He went on to serve on the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1839 and later in the state legislature. His home once stood on this Wharton site.
The Judge Robert McAlpin Williamson Home
Wharton, TX
This marker commemorates the home of Judge Robert McAlpin Williamson, the famed Republic of Texas jurist and patriot known as 'Three-Legged Willie' for the wooden leg he wore from a childhood illness. A firebrand of the Texas Revolution who became one of the young republic's first district judges, Williamson left a lasting legal legacy in early Texas. The house was moved to this site in 1976.