Miller, Ezekial and Mary Jane, House

Built in 1905, the Ezekial and Mary Jane Miller House are significant as an intact example of a well-detailed, early 20th-century residence closely associated with the life and family of a prominent merchant and civic leader. The house features a prominent corner tower on its exterior and an unusual floor plan featuring a double staircase design.

Built in 1905, this two-and-a-half-story frame house was erected by Ezekial and Mary Jane Miller. Of Scotch-Irish descent, Mr. Miller was born on May 15, 1844, in Ulster County, Northern Ireland, and was among the waves of Irish people who fled because of the potato famine. Having first moved to Canada, Ezekial Miller waited until after the Civil War to move to Louisiana. There he became a rice farmer and owner of the timberland near Crowley and Easterwood, Louisiana. The lure of East Texas and the Houston area became too great for him, so around 1900 he purchased some bottom land near the San Jacinto River and started rice farming and timber businesses there. As luck would have it, the river bottom proved too salty for a rice farm, but his timber business became a success. In 1901 Ezekial Miller bought the property in the 700 block of Jackson, moved his family there, and started a business in town that involved coal and wood. The mill was located near Leeland and Valasco streets along a railroad track in an area that is now just east of downtown Houston.

During Ezekial Miller's travels, but prior to his moving to Houston, he met and married Mary Jane, a fiery and strong-willed woman, as she is described by one of her surviving children, Sarah Mabel Miller Rulfs. With a prospering business, the Millers also had a prospering and growing family. They had five children: Joseph H. Miller, Sarah Mabel Miller, David Baer Miller, Mary Jane Miller, and Will C. Miller.

In need of a larger house and wanting to move closer to their church, the First Presbyterian, the Millers purchased the Hawthorne Street property from Mr. and Mrs. C.F. Metcalf of Stephensville, Michigan, on November 4, 1905, and proceeded to build their new home. At that time, there were no other houses in the Westmoreland area, and Hawthorne Street, which was only paved with shell and had drainage ditches on each side, extended only as far west as Taft Street, several blocks short of present-day Montrose. The new house represented the fashion for more picturesque designs, with a large corner tower and side porte-cochere, with large dormers at the roof level. The interior features some good-quality millwork, which may have come from Mr. Miller's own lumberyard, although the mantels were probably purchased from a millwork catalog. The Miller House was one of the first in Houston to incorporate a complete bathroom in its original design.

Ezekial and Mary Jane had five children, two of whom lived in the family home after they grew up. Sarah Mabel Miller married Gerald William Rulfs in 1909, at the Hawthorne House and they lived in for more than 10 years. Will C. Miller, the fifth child of Ezekial, lived nearly his whole life in the Hawthorne House. Born in 1890, he remained a bachelor and spent his time going from Houston to the East selling the picket snow fences which their lumber mill manufactured. A very personable and socially active man, Will was an Elder in the First Presbyterian Church and one of the founders of the Houston Kiwanis Club, of which he was President in 1928. In his later years, he traveled a great deal, primarily in the Western United States and Europe. In 1970, Will C. Miller left 304 Hawthorne to reside in the nearby Plaza Hotel leaving the home vacant. The house was left closed and unattended until purchased by the present owners in 1980.