The Belle Fry Gaines House
Marshall, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This residence was erected for John R. (b. 1849) and Sallie Stinson (b. 1857) soon after their marriage in Sept. 1875. The wood framing around the entryway was carved to resemble cut stone. Stinson was a merchant and served one term as mayor of Marshall. In 1909 Walter D. Minton (D. 1918) bought the structure after Minton's death, his widow Belle (Fry) (d. 1978) married E. P. Gaines. She operated an antique shop in the house for many years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1978
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1875 for the newly married merchant John R. Stinson and his wife Sallie, this Marshall residence is best remembered for a distinctive touch of frontier craft: the wood framing around its entryway was carved to mimic cut stone. Stinson prospered enough to serve a term as the town's mayor. Decades later, the widowed Belle Fry Gaines ran a beloved antique shop from inside the house for many years, lending it the name it carries today.
Why it matters
The home is a small window into the merchant class that built up East Texas towns after the Civil War, and into the way one woman's later business turned a private residence into a local landmark.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John R. Stinson
- · Sallie Stinson
- · Belle Fry Gaines
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Library Movement in Marshall
Marshall, TX
In 1887 twenty-five Marshall women formed the Ingleside Circulating Book Club, each buying a book to trade with the others; when they and four other clubs federated in 1899, their first civic goal was a public library. It opened in 1900 with 174 books and hay bales for chairs, later moving into City Hall, where dollar-a-year reading tickets funded the shelves. For sixty-nine years the clubwomen ran library service with no public tax money, built this Georgian building in 1926, and finally handed the keys to the city in 1971.
Girlhood Home of Southern Beauty Lucy Holcombe Pickens
Marshall, TX
Lucy Holcombe Pickens (1832–1899) grew up at Wyalucing, her family's East Texas plantation home that was a hub of social and cultural life among the surrounding plantations. Celebrated for her beauty and charm, she became the only nineteenth-century Texas woman honored with a portrait on currency—the Confederate $100 bill. Her husband served as the Civil War governor of South Carolina, and from 1863 to 1865 Wyalucing housed the Confederate Post Office Department west of the Mississippi.
Site of Marshall Masonic Female Institute
Marshall, TX
This school began as the Female Department of Marshall University, chartered by the Republic of Texas in 1842, and in 1850 the local Masonic lodge chartered it as the separate Marshall Masonic Female Institute. Five prominent lodge members sat on its board, and by 1853 it enrolled fifty-three students under a faculty of five. Dr. Thomas B. Wilson and Dr. Charles B. Stuart served longest among its five presidents.
Albert & Katie Van Hook House
Marshall, TX
Built around 1880 as a wedding gift for Katie Allen and Albert Van Hook, this Marshall home was designed by Katie's father, N. S. Allen, a prolific architect who shaped many of nearby Shreveport's finest buildings. Its original Italianate flourishes—a widow's walk, double chimneys, and gingerbread trim—marked it as a showpiece of Gilded Age East Texas. The house stayed in the family into the 1950s and was carefully restored in the 1990s.