Miller-Spinks-Mayes Property
Crockett, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This corner of the town square was developed as a law office after state legislator and Houston County judge S.A. Miller (1805-1893) purchased it in 1840. In 1891, Rudd Crawford Spinks (1856-1938) bought the site and built a two-story brick building for his jewelry store with living quarters on the second floor. W.E. "Buck" Mayes, a Crockett merchant, banker and landowner, bought the building, now substantially altered from its original appearance, in 1895. The property remains an important site in Crockett's commercial history. (1992)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This corner of the Crockett town square began as a law office after judge and state legislator S.A. Miller bought it in 1840. In 1891 Rudd Crawford Spinks put up a two-story brick building for his jewelry store, living above the shop, and merchant-banker W.E. "Buck" Mayes acquired it in 1895. Though much altered over the years, the property remained a working part of the town's commercial center.
Why it matters
The site preserves the layered commercial life of a small-town courthouse square, the kind of place where law, trade, and banking anchored community for generations.
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Related people
- · S.A. Miller
- · Rudd Crawford Spinks
- · W.E. "Buck" Mayes
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Spinks-Mayes Building
Crockett, TX
Rudd Crawford Spinks raised this handsome brick building in 1891-92 to house his jewelry and music store, living with his family in quarters above the shop. The lot had earlier belonged to attorney S.A. Miller, a state legislator and county judge, before landowner W.E. "Buck" Mayes bought the structure in 1895 and kept it in his family for 45 years. Its Victorian pressed-tin detailing still marks it as a proud example of Gilded Age commercial architecture in Crockett.
W.V. McConnell Building
Crockett, TX
Crockett native William Van McConnell built this Victorian commercial building soon after buying the site in 1891 from a former mayor. Known for his wit and his Irish stories, he opened a mercantile store that grew into a business lasting until 1973. For generations the McConnell Building stood as a familiar landmark on the town square.
Houston County Courthouse
Crockett, TX
When Houston County needed a new courthouse in the late 1930s, its leaders turned to federal Public Works Administration funds to build one in 1939. Designed by a county native and raised by a Dallas contractor, the building wore the sleek Moderne lines and Art Deco detail that were the height of Depression-era fashion. It has remained the seat of county government ever since.
Patton-Buchanan Building
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At the turn of the 20th century, Crockett was a growing East Texas county seat where merchants raised whole blocks of brick storefronts. Around 1903 local businessman William Monroe Patton added this building to a row of six he erected, and it alone still wears its original Mesker Bros. pressed-metal facade—a mail-order architectural flourish popular across small-town America. A generation later mechanic Wade Buchanan bought it and leased its street-level space to a parade of local enterprises for half a century.