Smoot, Richmond Kelley, House

The Smoot Home is of significance as the residence of a single prominent Austin family whose members included a Presbyterian clergyman of national reputation and founder of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Dr. Richmond Kelley Smoot; Lawrence Smoot, librarian and court reporter for the Texas Supreme Court for over sixty-six years; and his sister-in-law. Dr. Amelia Worthington Williams, a writer and professor of history at the University of Texas. Retaining the bulk of its original nineteenth century furnishings, the house is one of the few Victorian mansions with fine Italianate detailing remaining in Austin situated in its original picturesque setting.

The house was constructed for Dr. and Mrs. Richmond K. Smoot. Dr. Smoot was born in Huntingdon, Tennessee in 1836, a son of Judge John N. Smoot. He was educated at Hanover College in Indiana and at Danville Theological Seminary in Kentucky. After ordination he became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1860, and remained there sixteen years. He married Miss Sarah Jane (Sallie) Graham of Bowling Green in 1866, and had two children, Asher Graham Smoot (later a founder and editor of the Austin American) and Lawrence Kelley Smoot.

Shortly after the Smoots' arrival in Austin in 1876, they acquired a five-acre tract of land one mile west of town on Pecan (now Sixth) Street from James H. Raymond, erstwhile Treasurer of the Republic of Texas. The Smoots subsequently entered into a contract with R. J. Loving and W. W. Maxwell, contractors and builders on September 1, 1877, to build their new home, which was completed by December 15 of that year. Dr. Smoot called the new family home Pecan Place, while his wife preferred Flower Hill; neither name, however, prevailed, and it is known simply as the Smoot Home. In the next decade, library and kitchen wings were added to the original house in a similar architecture vocabulary.

Dr. Smoot became pastor of the Free (later First Southern) Presbyterian Church at the time of his arrival in Austin, and held that post until his death. He was appointed Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1882, the highest position of honor in that denomination in the United States. Dr. Smoot served as Chaplain of the Texas State Senate for ten consecutive years, and was also on the Board of Pardons during the Sayers administration. In 1882, Dr. Smoot and the Rev. Robert L. Dabney (former Chief of Staff to General T.J. "Stonewall" Jackson) founded the Austin School of Theology in the library of the Pecan Street house; the school was a forerunner of the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, which is the major training center for Presbyterians in the Southwest.

Another event of note occurred in the front parlor of the Smoot House in its early days: this was the marriage of the writer 0. Henry (William Sydney Porter) and Miss Athol Estes in 1887. Porter, age 25, and Miss Estes, 17, were both in the choir of Smoot's church, and their marriage was an elopement. It was destined to be a happy but un-enduring union, ending with Athol Estes Porter's death a decade later.

Dr. Smoot died at home in 1905 and his widow in 1916. They were succeeded in the house by their only surviving child, Lawrence, and his wife, the former Julia Williams, a history teacher of long standing from Maysfield, Texas. The younger Smoot was a lawyer, first serving as librarian for the Texas State Supreme Court and then for almost thirty years as the official court reporter for the Texas Supreme Court. He retired at age 86 after 66 years of service to the state, and died at 92 in 1968. These second generation occupants made one substantial but harmonious change to the house: in 1925 Colonial Revival double galleries were added to the structure replacing inadequate Eastlake porches. Since then, no significant modifications have been made to the structure. The interior furnishings and most important part of the grounds have survived substantially intact making the Smoot Home one of the least changed Victorian homes in the City.

Dr. Amelia Worthington Williams, a sister of Julia Williams Smoot and very prominent educator in her own right, lived in the Smoot Home from 1925 until her death in 1958. Dr. Williams was a longtime professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. She was author of The Siege of the Alamo and edited The Writings of Sam Houston in conjunction with Dr. Eugene C. Barker.

In 1973, Miss Jane Smoot, daughter of Lawrence and Julia Smoot and the only surviving descendant of Dr. Richmond K. Smoot, generously presented the house, grounds and furnishing to the Heritage Society of Austin, retaining a life tenancy. Miss Smoot, a teacher for many years following family traditions, has done much over the years toward preservation and enhancement of her family home. The Heritage Society, a non-profit organization chartered by the State of Texas, was founded in 1953 to encourage and promote the preservation of buildings, sites and records of historical or cultural importance to the community, and it has been instrumental in restoring and adapting several key structures in Austin, The Smoot Home received a Texas State Historical Medallion in 1965.