HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Rigsby Home

Hubbard, Hill County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Built 1896 by Lee Onstott. Example of Victorian style. Has ornamental gables, tile hearths, ornate glass. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

This Hubbard home, raised in 1896 by builder Lee Onstott, is a fine local example of the Victorian style then sweeping small-town Texas. Ornamental gables, tile hearths, and ornate glasswork show the decorative ambitions of a prospering Central Texas community at the close of the 19th century. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1965.

Why it matters

It preserves the everyday domestic architecture of the late-Victorian era as Texas farm towns matured into settled communities.

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Related people

  • · Lee Onstott

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

First Methodist Church of Hubbard

Hubbard, TX

Hubbard's first church congregation organized in 1882 with seventeen charter members, meeting in a frame sanctuary built in 1891. In 1911 they replaced it with this imposing brick building by the Dallas firm Flanders and Flanders, whose strong horizontal lines and geometric detailing show the influence of the Prairie School. Twin towers and more than a hundred stained-glass windows make it a landmark of the Hill County town.

Former Site of Liberty Hill Settlement

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Liberty Hill grew up in the 1840s as an Anglo-American farming community, taking firmer root when Samuel and Prudence Wright arrived from Tennessee in 1849 and drew in pioneer neighbors. By 1860 several founding families had organized a Cumberland Presbyterian church, and Wright later donated land for a cemetery and a public school. When the railroad towns of Dawson and Hubbard rose as Cotton Belt shipping points, they drained away Liberty Hill's population until its school and church closed and the fields returned to grazing.

Cottonwood Cemetery

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This cemetery grew from land granted to Parrott W. McNeese for his service in the Texas Revolution, whose son George deeded acreage for a school and graveyard after an infant son died in 1873. Around it flourished the Cottonwood community—a store, cotton gin, and school peopled partly by German families brought from Brenham in 1882. The burial ground holds veterans from the Texas Revolution to the Korean War, including a husband-and-wife pair who both served in World War II.

Battle Creek Burial Ground

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