Taylor-Carter House
Mason, Mason County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first two sandstone rock rooms of the house probably were built for Thomas Lee, who owned the property from 1870 to 1875. The two-story cut sandstone portion was built in 1875 for Mrs. E. B. (Crosby) Taylor, an Irish immigrant and prominent rancher. From 1895 to 1993, the property was owned by the M. F. and Julia (Gamel) Carter Family, who built a frame addition in 1928 and enclosed the second story porch in the 1930s. The house is built in typical 19th century form, symmetrically arranged around a central hall. Segmentally arched windows and corbelled chimneys suggest Italianate influences. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark -1999
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This sandstone house grew in stages, its first rock rooms built around 1870 and a two-story cut-stone section added in 1875 for Mrs. E. B. Taylor, an Irish immigrant and prominent rancher. The Carter family owned it for nearly a century, adding a frame wing in 1928. Symmetrically arranged around a central hall with arched windows and corbelled chimneys, it carries Italianate touches unusual on the Hill Country ranching frontier.
Why it matters
The home reflects the immigrant enterprise and ranching wealth that built Mason County, and the way rural Texas families adapted stylish 19th-century architecture to a working landscape.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Mrs. E. B. (Crosby) Taylor
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Comanche-German Meeting
Mason, TX
On February 5, 1847, in the Texas Hill Country, a band of Penateka Comanches under Chief Ketumusua approached the camp of German immigrant surveyors led by John O. Meusebach, agent for the Adelsverein colonization society. Rather than fight, the two parties shared gifts and a meal and agreed to talk further. That first encounter opened the way to a formal peace council weeks later—a rare voluntary agreement to share territory that both sides largely honored.
Koocksville
Mason vicinity, TX
Settlers began arriving in this Mason County locality in the 1850s, but the community took its name from William Koock, a German immigrant who built a one-room log store here in 1867. Koock's enterprise grew into a two-story rock building that served as the headquarters for area cattle and sheep ranchers, who bought supplies, took credit, and even deposited their gold for safekeeping there, while dances filled its second floor. Koocksville had one of the county's earliest schools and a grist mill and cotton gin, but after Koock died in a riding accident in 1890 the store closed and the town declined into a scattering of stone ruins.
Kothmann Homesite and Cemetery
Art, TX
Heinrich Conrad Kothmann and his wife Ilse sailed from Germany to the Texas coast in 1845, joining the wave of German immigrants who helped settle the Hill Country around Fredericksburg. Granted 640 acres in Mason County, the cabinetmaker-turned-rancher moved to the Art community in 1856 as one of its first families. All that remains of the original ranch is the small family cemetery, begun with Heinrich's burial in 1881 and still tended by his descendants.
German Settlements
Castell, TX
In 1847 the German Emigration Company, led by Commissioner General John O. Meusebach, founded three settlements on the Fisher-Miller land grant. Castell, settled by Fredericksburg pioneers, became Llano County's first permanent town and the only lasting community the company established on the grant. Its neighbors did not survive: Leiningen vanished entirely, and Bettina — the first communal settlement in Texas — was abandoned within a year when supplies ran out.