Lawrence Farmstead
Mesquite, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The son of an original member of the Mercer colony, Stephen Decatur Lawrence (1853-1934) received about 640 acres of farmland on his twenty-first birthday. He began building the first structure, a small home, on this site in 1874. In 1882 contractor Charley Florrer built a T-plan house about six feet east of the original structure. The new house was of clapboard construction with square nails. In 1886, a kitchen room was added, altering the building to a cruciform floor plan. The striking central tower is an example of the Victorian features of the home, which include the steeply pitched overhanging roof and prominent porches. Other structures were added to the farmstead, on which Stephen D. Lawrence and his first wife Louisa E. Porter (1861-1891) reared three surviving children. Charley Florrer built the barn in 1887; other structures erected just north of the main house included a smokehouse, a brick-lined root cellar, and the wash house. The Lawrence Farmstead complex is representative of the evolution of domestic buildings from the 1870s to the late twentieth century on the North Texas plains and blackland prairie. S. D. Lawrence married his second wife, Louisa Hill Walker (1867-1948), and they reared their eight children here. Members of the prominent Lawrence family lived on the land until 1995, when 13.7 acres including the family complex became a city historical park according to the wishes of one of Stephen and Louisa's daughters. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1998
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Stephen Decatur Lawrence, son of an original Mercer colony settler, received about 640 acres on his twenty-first birthday and began building here in 1874, adding a T-plan clapboard house in 1882 that grew into a striking Victorian home with a central tower and steeply pitched roof. Barns, a smokehouse, a root cellar, and a wash house rounded out a working blackland-prairie farmstead where Lawrence raised eleven children across two marriages. The family held the land until 1995, when part of it became a city historical park.
Why it matters
The preserved complex documents the evolution of everyday farm life on the North Texas prairie from the 1870s into the modern era.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Stephen Decatur Lawrence
- · Louisa E. Porter
- · Charley Florrer
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mesquite Cemetery
Mesquite, TX
This ground was already a burial place before the Texas and Pacific Railroad founded the city of Mesquite in 1873, its earliest marked grave dating to 1859. In 1890 local builder and civic leader Louis C. Ebrite laid out the cemetery in the grid of driveways still used today, and it was formally deeded for cemetery use two years later. It continues to honor area veterans and the generations of families who built Mesquite.
Site of Galloway Farmstead
Mesquite, TX
Confederate veteran Benjamin Franklin Galloway brought his family from Tennessee to Texas in 1872 and bought 101 acres near Duck Creek, raising crops, horses, mules, and cattle. He built up a home place and a Blackland Prairie hay business whose Dallas customers included the Ringling Brothers Circus, while his son Bedford Forest later served as mayor of Mesquite for over a decade. Designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1973, the house was eventually moved to rural Sunnyvale to save it from encroaching development.
Potter Cemetery
Mesquite, TX
John and Martha Potter, citizens of the Republic of Texas, bought a farm near the Haught's Store community in 1860, and when their young son died the following year he became the first burial on this ground. John enlisted in the Confederate Army that same month and, after the war, served as justice of the peace over a landholding approaching a thousand acres. Most of the family's nine children lie here, in a cemetery whose last recorded burial came in 1947.
La Prada Drive Church of Christ
Dallas, TX
This Church of Christ congregation began meeting in members' homes at the close of the 19th century and in 1907 bought property near what became Fair Park, worshipping in a white frame building for decades as street names—and its own name—changed around it. It helped found a sister congregation in Oak Cliff in 1949, relocated to Bruton Road in 1954, and followed its members to northeast Dallas, dedicating a new building on La Prada Drive in 1979. It preserves the Restoration Movement traditions of elder-led governance and a cappella singing.