Perry Woods Home
Jefferson, Marion County, Texas
Marker Inscription
French town house of 19th century Jefferson-New Orleans trade era. Original plan is intact. Now Perry Woods home. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This French-styled town house dates to the mid-nineteenth century, when the riverport of Jefferson thrived on steamboat trade with New Orleans. Its intact original plan reflects the Creole architectural influence that flowed up the waterways into East Texas during that commercial heyday. Recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965, it survives as the Perry Woods home.
Why it matters
The house is a rare survivor of Jefferson's boom as an inland port, when river commerce briefly made it one of Texas's busiest towns before railroads bypassed it into decline.
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Related people
- · Perry Woods
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Capt. Wm. Perry House
Jefferson, TX
In the mid-19th century Jefferson was one of the busiest inland ports in Texas, its steamboats reaching Caddo Lake and the Red River trade. Capt. William Perry, an officer on one of those riverboats, built this house in the 1850s at the height of that boom. It survives as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark from that river-commerce era.
Captain William Perry
Jefferson, TX
Arriving about 1840, William Perry helped make Jefferson a busy inland port, running a shipping business and dredging a turning basin so vessels could navigate the Big Cypress Bayou. He grew wealthy in land and shipping, joined the California gold rush, served as Jefferson's mayor in 1863–64, and was fatally shot walking home after midnight in 1869.
Old Federal Building
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When this building rose in Jefferson in 1869, the town was a booming inland riverport on Big Cypress Bayou, its wharves linking Texas cotton to the wider world by steamboat. As the first federal court and custom house in the region, it processed the trade and legal business of a frontier port at the height of its prosperity, and it also sheltered the county court and its records.
Old Federal Court and Post Office Building
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From 1890 to 1964 this Jefferson building housed the U.S. court for the Eastern District of Texas and the town's post office, long after the riverport's steamboat heyday had faded. Preserved rather than razed, it now serves as a museum recalling the era when federal justice and the mail passed through its doors.