Old Dr. Wm. P. Powell Home
Willis, Montgomery County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Remaining portion of 13-room house built in 1872 by carpenter Sid Inglet. Powell-- a pioneer physician, Confederate veteran-- married Miss Mary Eugenia Thompson, 1863, in Waverly; six of their 12 children born here. He traveled by horse and buggy to visit the sick; used home as office and improvised hospital until his death, Nov. 6, 1915. Purchased in 1946 by justice of the peace, R. M. Jordy. Site of 119 wedding ceremonies. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the young timber town of Willis, a carpenter named Sid Inglet raised a thirteen-room house in 1872 for Dr. William P. Powell, a Confederate veteran who had married Mary Eugenia Thompson in Waverly nine years earlier. Powell was the country doctor of the old school, making his rounds by horse and buggy and turning his own home into an office and makeshift hospital until he died in 1915. Six of his twelve children were born beneath its roof, and later owners even hosted more than a hundred weddings there.
Why it matters
The house embodies the era when a single frontier physician's home doubled as a community's clinic, a reminder of how rural medicine was practiced across post-Civil War Texas.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William P. Powell
- · Mary Eugenia Thompson
- · Sid Inglet
- · R. M. Jordy
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Waverly
Evergreen, TX
Settled largely by Alabamans between 1835 and the 1850s, Waverly took its name from Sir Walter Scott's wildly popular novels and became an early center of culture for the region. Its Waverly Institute, founded in 1854 with separate departments for boys and girls, aimed to offer schooling equal to any. A plantation society flourished until the 1860s, and during the Civil War Federal troops camped in the community's heart on Soldier's Hill.
Crane Family Cabin
Conroe, TX
Nickolas Crane came to Texas from Alabama in 1848 and, after Confederate service in the Civil War, built this large cabin in 1867 on his land claim, hand-adzing split pine logs smooth on the interior and topping it with a cypress-board roof. The Tharp family moved and restored the cabin in the 1970s, preserving a rare example of post-war frontier homebuilding.
Montgomery County, C. S. A.
Montgomery, TX
A prosperous farming area in 1861, Montgomery County threw its wealth and men into the Confederate war effort, sending two companies into the famed Hood's Texas Brigade. Young boys, old men, and the partially disabled filled home guard and state units, while the courthouse hosted a sewing room where families clothed their own soldiers. By 1864 the sacrifice was so total that not a single store remained open in the town of Montgomery.
John M. Wade
Montgomery, TX
Born in New York City in 1815, John Marshall Wade came to Texas in 1835 on Sam Houston's advice and joined the Texas army, helping fire the famed "Twin Sisters" cannons at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. A printer by trade, he set type for Gail Borden's Telegraph and Texas Register, served the Republic's Senate, surveyed Montgomery County, joined the 1842 Somervell Expedition, and founded the Montgomery Patriot newspaper in 1845. He later served in the Confederate army and died in Austin in 1879.