Trout, Thomas and Katherine, House

With little doubt, the Trout House is one of the finest, least-altered examples of Queen Anne residential architecture in northeastern Texas. Built for a wealthy farmer, cattleman, and merchant just before the end of the 19th century, the house exhibits exuberant Victorian design and elegance on a scale rarely seen in this part of the state-- particularly in a town of only 1900 people (pop. 4000 in the 1890s).

The Trout House recalls a bygone era of great prosperity and growth for the now-declining Fannin County town of Honey Grove. The town was surveyed in 1848 and grew rapidly as a center for farming, supply, trade, and stone quarrying for eastern Fannin County. By 1890 the town had three banks, two newspapers, four hotels, two cotton gins, and two railroads. Honey Grove was obviously a promising, progressive place for a wealthy farmer and rancher to build a house and settle in.

Thomas Warren Trout was born in 1849 in Georgia. In Texas by wagon, settling on a farm two miles north of here, the boy's mother died and his father became blind. to care for the farm, his father, and three sisters an 1858, he and his parents came to Honey Grove. After three years of Being the only son, Trout had early age.

In 1870, Thomas Trout married Katherine Craddock and shortly thereafter purchased a 50-acre farm adjoining that of his father. Records show that this farm was paid for overtime from the sale of sorghum molasses. Trout later engaged in the cattle business on a large scale, and was apparently very successful, purchasing much land with his pro-fits.

By 1895, Trout's interests were obviously turning from agricultural to mercantile, as he moved into town and engaged in the grocery business with Williamson-Blocker & Company, a wholesale firm. Construction of the house at 705 Poplar Street began in this year, with Trout and his family temporarily living in another house one block north, according to Miss Kathryn Trout, Thomas W.'s granddaughter.

The house was built of some of the finest imported materials, employing the Victorian era's most classic residential design schemes--all befitting a man of rising stature in the community. Trout served as a Honey Grove city, an alderman in the 1890s, and as a director of the First National Bank in the 1900s. According to family tradition, the two staircases were imported from France, as were the beveled glass in the front door and the beveled mirrors in some of the fireplace mantels. Two huge stained-glass windows at the front staircase landing are of the Tiffany variety. The metal dome on the turret reportedly was brought by a mule train from New Orleans.

Mrs. Trout died in 1908, and Mr. Trout moved to Dallas, selling the house to a family named Denison. The Denisons owned the house for only a few years and sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Fielding by 1918. The Fieldings lived in the house for some twenty years--longer than any family before or since. Meyer Smith, a hardware store owner, purchased the house in the 1940s, and the residence has had three subsequent owners since then.

Despite the changes in ownership, the Trout House is the best-preserved Victorian house in this part of Fannin County and remains one of the finest examples of Queen Anne architecture in this region of the state.