The Phillips House
Saint Jo, Montague County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1873, James Hoback (J.H.) and Margaret Day Phillips moved from Illinois to Texas by wagon train with their children. J.H. was instrumental in the early social, religious and economic development of Saint Jo. He owned and operated a general store and hotel, and was the town's Baptist preacher. His youngest son, George Washington (G.W.) (1863-1930), grew up in Saint Jo and, at age 20, married Nannie Parker Gooch (1865-1937). During the late 1800s, G.W. bought and sold real estate and owned and operated the local G.W. Phillips Livery Stables. In addition to his business skills, G.W. was also a horse trader, farmer and rancher. On January 6, 1897, G.W. bought 320 acres on the eastern edge of Saint Jo. Three years later, he moved his family to a temporary dwelling on the property. Additional acreage was purchased in 1902 and, in 1911, Barney Lewis was hired to construct the family home. The house took two years to complete and quickly became the center for social activities. When the family was not working, they enjoyed a game of baseball in the open field west of the house. The Phillips House, also known as The Big House, displays characteristics of Colonial Revival and Queen Anne architecture. The two-story wood home has a hipped, wood-shingled roof and large, distinctive upstairs and downstairs porches. Numerous columns, hundreds of spindles and bay windows typify the Queen Anne style. The home boasts twenty-one wood framed single pane windows, heart pine wood floors and some of the original furniture. Generations of the Phillips family have occupied The Big House for over a hundred years and continue to contribute to Saint Jo. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2013
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
J.H. Phillips brought his family from Illinois to Texas by wagon train in 1873 and helped shape early Saint Jo as storekeeper, hotelier, and Baptist preacher. His son G.W. prospered as a livery owner, horse trader, and rancher, buying land on the town's edge and, in 1911, commissioning the grand two-story home that neighbors dubbed "The Big House." A blend of Colonial Revival and Queen Anne styling, the house has stayed in the Phillips family for over a century.
Why it matters
The house embodies the arc of a frontier merchant family that helped build a small Texas town and then rooted itself there for generations.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1873, when the Phillips family loaded a wagon train and set out from Illinois for Texas, they were joining one of the great movements of nineteenth-century America: the steady flow of families leaving the settled Midwest for the promise of land and opportunity on the frontier. The journey itself was an undertaking of weeks, made with children in tow, and the decision to make it reshaped a family's future in a single season.
North Texas in this era was raw, growing country. Small towns were just taking shape, and the people who arrived early did not merely join communities — they built them, supplying the stores, churches, and services that turned a scattering of homesteads into a town. The decades that followed, through the late 1800s and into the new century, were a period of consolidation, when frontier settlements matured into established places with real Main Streets and lasting institutions.
Saint Jo, in Montague County, was one such town, and the Phillips family arrived early enough to help set its course. Their story spans the arc from Reconstruction-era arrival to the more prosperous, settled world of the early twentieth century — a single family living through the transformation of a frontier town into a rooted community.
People & events
It began with James Hoback Phillips — J.H. — and his wife, Margaret Day Phillips, who brought their children west by wagon and threw themselves into the life of the new town. J.H. was that essential frontier figure who wore many hats at once: he owned and operated a general store and a hotel, and he served as the town's Baptist preacher. In a young community, one energetic man could hold together commerce, hospitality, and faith all at once, and he was instrumental in Saint Jo's early social, religious, and economic life.
His youngest son, George Washington Phillips — G.W. — grew up in that town and built a life around it. At twenty he married Nannie Parker Gooch, and he made his way as a man of many trades: buying and selling real estate, running the G.W. Phillips Livery Stables, trading horses, farming, and ranching. In an age when the horse was still the engine of daily life, a livery stable sat near the center of a town's economy, and G.W. prospered.
His ambitions took architectural form. On January 6, 1897, G.W. bought 320 acres on the eastern edge of Saint Jo, added more land in 1902, and in 1911 hired a builder named Barney Lewis to construct the family home. It took two years to finish and quickly became a center of local social life — a place where, when the work was done, the family would gather for a game of baseball in the open field to the west. Neighbors came to call it "The Big House," and generations of the Phillips family have lived in it for more than a century.
Its place in the American story
The Phillips House tells a distinctly American story of arrival and permanence: a family that came west with everything in a wagon and, within two generations, put down roots deep enough to last more than a hundred years. That trajectory — from newcomer to town-builder to established family — was the engine that turned frontier territory into settled America, repeated in thousands of small towns across the country.
The house itself is a document. Blending Colonial Revival and Queen Anne styling — a hipped, wood-shingled roof, generous porches upstairs and down, columns, hundreds of turned spindles, and bay windows — it reflects the moment when a prosperous small-town family could afford to build not just shelter but statement. Its heart pine floors and twenty-one wood-framed windows speak to the craftsmanship and aspiration of the early twentieth century, when architecture was how success announced itself.
And because the family never left, the house preserves an unusual continuity. Many grand homes of this era survive only as museums or ruins; this one has stayed in the hands of the family that built it, with some of its original furniture still in place. That continuity is its own kind of national significance — a living link, unbroken, to the merchant families who built small-town America.
If you visit
Approach this one as an exercise in reading a house. Look for the two architectural languages it speaks at once: the orderly symmetry and columns of Colonial Revival, and the exuberant Queen Anne details — the wraparound porches, the bay windows, the hundreds of spindles that turn a wooden porch rail into something like lace. The blend tells you a great deal about the taste and ambition of the family that commissioned it in 1911.
Let yourself imagine the life around it. This was the center of Saint Jo's social world, and the open field to the west once hosted family baseball games at the end of a working day. A grand house is easy to admire as an object; it is richer when you picture it full of people, on land a family had bought, cleared, and built up over more than a decade.
As a stop on a North Texas drive, the Phillips House anchors the story of how Saint Jo came to be. Set it against the town's other early landmarks and you can trace the whole path — from a wagon train arriving in 1873 to a family so rooted that its "Big House" still stands, still lived in, more than a century on. Please respect that it remains a family home, and take it in from the vantage points available to visitors.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · James Hoback Phillips
- · George Washington Phillips
Themes & tags
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