Taylor-Cooper House
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded in 1848, interim county commissioners chose Georgetown, Texas, as the seat of Williamson County. Soon after, the Taylor family moved to Georgetown. Josiah Taylor opened one of the earliest businesses in the new city, a store on the courthouse square. Taylor's son, Emzy Taylor (1841-1895), worked at his father's store until he enlisted in the Confederate army around 1861. After the war, Emzy Taylor settled in Georgetown with his wife, Margaret Corinna (Henderson) Taylor (1842-1922). In May 1869, Taylor purchased eight empty lots at this location to construct a new home for his growing family. Built with ashlar limestone, the original construction was a single-story, central-passage house. Common in the National Folk style, this design contained a central hall that divided the rooms in the house. An upstairs addition was added around 1880. Taylor and his son-in-law, R.T. Cooper (1862-1950), enlisted the services of the Belford Lumber Company, which built many of the historic houses in Georgetown. After Taylor's death, Cooper primarily oversaw these updates. Construction began in 1889 and added many elements of the Greek Revival style. The construction company added a portico that wrapped around the south and east sides of the house, columns, a formal dining room and many other elements typical of the Greek Revival style. While different from the limestone of the original construction, the 1900 additions to the house have a white wood exterior, characteristic of Greek Revival. The Taylor-Cooper House not only represents the success of one of the earliest Georgetown families, but also the city's early economic development. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2018
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Georgetown became the seat of Williamson County in 1848, and the Taylor family soon arrived, opening one of the town's earliest stores on the courthouse square. After Emzy Taylor returned from Confederate service in the Civil War, he bought this site in 1869 and built an ashlar-limestone, central-passage house in the National Folk style. Later, he and his son-in-law R.T. Cooper enlarged it around 1889 with Greek Revival elements — a wraparound portico, columns, and a formal dining room — creating the layered home that reflects the family's rising fortunes.
Why it matters
The Taylor-Cooper House charts the success of one of Georgetown's founding families and, through its evolving architecture, the early economic growth of a Central Texas county seat.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the time the Taylor family arrived, Georgetown was a brand-new town with a job to do. In 1848 it had just been chosen as the seat of Williamson County, and a county seat in Central Texas meant a courthouse, a public square, and a magnet for anyone hoping to build a living. Texas was by then a state, still young and still filling in, its rolling blackland prairie giving way to the limestone country of the Balcones Escarpment.
The square was the engine of a place like this. Farmers came to town on court days and market days, and the merchants who set up around the courthouse were among the first to prosper. A store on the square was not just a business; it was a foothold in the life of the whole county.
The decades this house spans — from the 1840s through the turn of the century — carried Georgetown across some of the most turbulent years in the region's history: the Civil War, the long unsettled aftermath of Reconstruction, and then the slow, steady growth of the Gilded Age, when a prosperous family might finally build the kind of home that announced they had arrived.
People & events
Josiah Taylor was among the earliest of Georgetown's merchants, opening a store on the courthouse square soon after the town became the county seat. His son Emzy, born in 1841, grew up in that store, learning the trade at his father's counter.
Then the Civil War intervened. Around 1861 Emzy left the store to enlist in the Confederate army, one of countless young Texans who did the same. He came home to Georgetown after the war and, with his wife Margaret Corinna, set about rebuilding an ordinary life. In May 1869 he bought eight empty lots on this spot and raised a modest but solid home: a single-story house of cut, squared limestone — ashlar — built around a central passage that split the rooms to either side, a plain and practical plan common to the National Folk style. Around 1880 an upstairs was added as the family grew.
The grander transformation came later, and it was largely the work of Emzy's son-in-law, R.T. Cooper. Beginning in 1889 — and continuing into the additions of 1900, after Emzy's death in 1895 left Cooper to oversee the project — the family engaged the Belford Lumber Company, whose hand shaped many of Georgetown's historic houses. They dressed the old limestone core in the fashionable Greek Revival taste: a portico wrapping the south and east sides, columns, a formal dining room, and a white-painted wood exterior that stood in bright contrast to the original stone.
Its place in the American story
The Taylor-Cooper House is a small, honest record of how an American town was made. Across the 19th century, county seats like Georgetown rose on the same pattern — a courthouse square, a ring of merchants, and a founding generation whose fortunes rose or fell with the town's. When you read this house, you are reading that story in one family's stone and timber.
Its architecture tells the arc especially well. The plain limestone core belongs to the frontier, when shelter came first and ornament waited. The later Greek Revival flourishes — columns and porticoes drawn from the classical vocabulary that Americans of the era associated with democratic ideals and settled respectability — mark the moment a striving family could finally afford to show it. That two-stage building, humble beginning to confident expansion, mirrors the growth of the county itself.
It is also a reminder of continuity through upheaval. A son who left for the Civil War came home, married, and put down roots on this very ground, and the house he began was completed by the next generation. That handing-off, from father to son to son-in-law, is how ordinary American places accumulated their history.
If you visit
Come and read the house from the outside, because its whole story is written on its walls. Look first for the seam between two eras: the earlier squared-limestone construction and the later white-painted wood, two materials and two ambitions joined in a single home.
Let your eye trace the wraparound portico and its columns along the south and east sides. This is Greek Revival at work — the classical borrowing that a prospering family added to dress up a plain frontier house. Then imagine the older core beneath it: a simple central passage running through the middle, rooms opening off to either side, the practical bones of the National Folk style.
Georgetown itself sets the scene. The courthouse square where Josiah Taylor first opened his store is the heart of a well-preserved historic downtown, and standing there you can picture the market days and court days that drew a whole county in. Please remember that a home like this is typically a private residence rather than a museum — enjoy it respectfully from the public street, and let it be one stop on a wander through one of Central Texas's most storied old towns.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Josiah Taylor
- · Emzy Taylor
- · Margaret Corinna Henderson Taylor
- · R.T. Cooper
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Williamson County Jail
Georgetown, TX
When Williamson County's grand jury demanded a better lockup, the county replaced its 1848 frame jail with this imposing native-limestone building in 1888, paying for it without a bond issue. Its striking design borrows the look of the French Bastille, and a 1934 remodeling left that appearance intact. It has held prisoners continuously ever since.
Judge Greenleaf Fisk
Georgetown, TX
Greenleaf Fisk left a New York minister's household for the Texas frontier, arriving in Bastrop in 1834 and fighting in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He served in the Republic of Texas Senate and, when Williamson County was organized in 1848, became its first chief justice, reportedly walking a dozen miles to hold court. A surveyor whose name marks countless land records, he later helped found Brownwood.
In Memory of Robert Jones Rivers
Georgetown, TX
Robert Jones Rivers came from Virginia to the young Texas frontier, where he won a reputation as a lawyer and gifted orator before his death at Georgetown in 1854. Remembered as a defender of the helpless whose eloquence charmed all, he was honored by the State of Texas with this marker in 1936. His life fell in the formative decades of the Republic and early statehood.
In Memory of George Washington Glasscock, Sr.
Georgetown, TX
George Washington Glasscock came to Texas in 1834 and fought for its independence from Mexico, having already served in the Black Hawk War alongside frontier volunteers. A surveyor, soldier, and legislator, he helped organize Williamson County and donated land for its seat, which was named Georgetown in his honor. Both a Texas city and a county bear his name.