Thomas and Mattie Brown House
Wylie, Collin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
William Thomas Brown (1848-1907), a native of Illinois, married Martha (Mattie) J. Housewright in 1871. They moved to Wylie shortly after its establishment on a newly constructed railroad line from Paris to Dallas built by the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad company in 1886. Thomas and his business partner John H. Burns purchased over 31 acres, which included this site, from Nancy and James Vaughn Russel in 1887. The Browns secured this home site in 1888 and replaced their original residence with this ornate Queen Anne style structure in 1905. The house, with six rooms downstairs and one large room upstairs, exhibits an unusual variety of material, elaborate roofscape and asymmetrical plan typical of the Victorian era. The gables of the four dormers are covered with original fishscale shingles. Prominent features include a wraparound porch with slender paired doric columns, dentil frieze, palladian windows and polygonal bays with cutaway corners on their side elevations. Although Thomas Brown died just two years after the house was built, Mrs. Mattie Brown continued to live here until her death in 1922. The house was then inherited by the Browns' adopted daughter, Tennie Lee (Rattaree) Creel and remained in her family until 1931.**Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1992***
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Illinois native William Thomas Brown and his wife Mattie moved to Wylie soon after the railroad reached the young town in 1886, and in 1905 they replaced their first home with this elaborate Queen Anne house. Its wraparound porch, fishscale shingles, and polygonal bays typify Victorian taste. Thomas died just two years later, but Mattie lived here until 1922, and the house stayed in the family until 1931.
Why it matters
The home reflects the confidence of a new railroad town whose merchants prospered as rail lines knit rural Texas into the national economy.
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Related people
- · William Thomas Brown
- · Mattie Brown
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Brown Cottage
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Built in 1889, the Folk Victorian Brown Cottage was the first Wylie home of businessman William Thomas Brown and his wife Martha, who moved to the new railroad town in the mid-1880s to help build it up. An early alderman and developer of the Brown & Burns Addition, Brown ran a mercantile store serving the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe railroad and area farmers. In 1903 the "little white house" was moved to make way for a grander family home, and it remains one of Wylie's most intact original residences.
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