National Register Listing

Gilbert, Samuel and Julia, House

a.k.a. The Gilbert Homestead;The Old Rock House

2540 Farmers Branch Ln., Farmers Branch, TX

The Samuel and Julia Gilbert House is perhaps the oldest recognizable house still on its original site in Dallas County. A remarkable and well-restored Early Texas rock house, it was the home of Dr. Samuel H. Gilbert and his wife Julia Ann. A sympathetic 1939 addition to the rear of the house is considered the major 20th-century component in the architectural evolution of the house. Artifacts and site features dating from ca. 1850 through 1930 are found on the surrounding grounds of the property, which meets the criteria for its architectural and archaeological significance.

Samuel H. Gilbert (1828-1890), a native of Tennessee, is documented in the 1850 census as a resident of Cass County, Texas. In 1852 he married Julia Ann Ritchie (c. 1836-1882), a fellow Tennessean, and three years later purchased 307 acres of John L. Pulliam's 1842 Peters' Colony headright. The Colony was the first major Republic of Texas colonization effort in the region. Because of Colony legal problems, Dr. Gilbert did not receive a clear title to the land until 1868.

The Gilberts constructed their home apparently in 1855 and 1856. The scarcity of surviving mid-19th Century houses in Dallas County makes establishing an architectural context difficult. From what we do know, it appears that typically houses were smaller and of log or frame construction, as befitted a frontier settlement. The plan of the Gilbert House is perhaps representative of more prosperous homes of the period: it features two 3-bay blocks with a central dogtrot and front gallery. The Gilbert Homestead, however, as a rock house was of more durable construction material than most contemporaneous area houses, and it was likely more architecturally pretentious than the typical Dallas County house of the period. The large, hipped gable roof is unusually prominent; such roofs and inset porches are found in Louisiana houses of the period but are less likely in the Texas frontier.

Dr. Gilbert was clearly a person of influence in the area. As a medical doctor, his arrival was doubtless a welcome event. His diary is filled with notes describing trips taken to aid the sick or injured and of patients seeking him at home for treatment. Additionally, he had his own farming and livestock operations; his diary mentions growing wheat, corn, cotton, oats, dewberries, melons, and potatoes, while livestock included cattle (for which he received a registered earmark in 1860) and sheep (his herd numbered 555 by 1862). He apparently hired slave labor to assist in the development of his property in its early days.

Dr. Gilbert remained a civilian but contributed to the war effort during the Civil War years. In 1861, he and one R. M. Cook held a meeting at the Union Schoolhouse to help raise a militia to "defend our country and southern rights," and the two also raised money for the Dallas County Soldiers Aid Society. In May 1863, the Dallas Herald listed Dr. Gilbert as one of the citizens of the county authorized to collect the names of persons who were the dependents of officers and children and thus were entitled to buy cotton cards at the state price. This was part of a campaign to encourage the production of cloth through carding cotton by hand.

In 1866, Dr. Gilbert was elected Justice of the Peace in Precinct 4, and in 1874 he was named a school board trustee within the Precinct. That same year he sold a right of way through his property to the Dallas and Wichita Railroad (later part of the Missouri-Texas system) for one dollar. In 1885 he purchased one of the first lots of Farmers Branch at the corner of Main Street and Pacific Avenue.

The Gilberts had two daughters, Mary (Mrs. B. W.) Langley and Isabell Gilbert Lenthicum Hughes, who with her second husband William acquired the homestead after Dr. Gilbert's death in 1890. "Belle" Hughes died in 1925; the property was sold to Roy McKee and William Dodson in 1929.

McKee and his wife Wynona remodeled and added to the Gilbert Homestead in 1939. The dogtrot was glazed in and a portion of one interior wall was removed. A rear wing was added to the west of the house to provide four bedrooms and baths and a two-car garage. The architect is not known, but the addition was designed in a pleasant, rather a picturesque mode popularized in Dallas by architects Charles Dillbeck, O'Neil Ford and others. While very different from the original design concept, it blends well and has integrity of its own. The McKees sold the property in 1952. It changed hands twice more, and in 1981 was acquired by the City of Farmers Branch as part of its Farmers Branch Historical Park.

Farmers Branch has recently grown from a sleepy, country town with a 1950 population of 915 into a prosperous Dallas suburb with an estimated 29,410 inhabitants in 1986. The northern third of Dallas County, arguably one of the fastest growing areas in the United States in recent decades, has very few 19th Century buildings of any sort, and the antiquity and significance of the Gilbert Homestead fortunately were fully appreciated by both the city administrators and the people of Farmers Branch.

Accordingly, the main block of the Gilbert Homestead was restored as accurately as possible, using primary sources, oral histories and structural evidence. The dogtrot infill was removed and its early configuration was restored. The rear wing added by the McKees was considered compatible and rehabilitated for operational purposes, but its easternmost room was converted into a breezeway as a means of separating it from the main block. The house is now a successful historic house museum and a source of pride to the people of Farmers Branch and Dallas County.

The Gilbert Homestead is also proven to be archaeologically significant. It was visited by historical archaeologist Randall Moir of the Southern Methodist University Institute for the Study of Earth and Man; Moir is also a member of the Texas State Board of Review. Moir observed

The house stands on its original house lot and has a comparatively intact archaeological yardscape containing artifacts, archaeological features, sheet refuse, and localized yard middens based on visible remains observed in September 1987. Artifacts noted during a walkover of the 2.2-acre house lot ranged from the 1850s to the 1930s. The surface remains included a light scatter of artifacts dating from Dr. Gilbert's first two decades of occupation and provide material support for substantial buried sheet refuse and discrete features, should archaeological excavations be conducted. Surface evidence suggested large portions of 19th Century yardscape have remained unaltered and have considerable potential for high integrity. These deposits offer an important historical asset for further developing the site and can provide tangible evidence of some of the Gilberts' household possessions (e.g. ceramic and glass vessels, clothing parts, consumable goods and foodstuffs, personal and leisure items, etc.), foodways (faunal consumption and packaged foods), yardscape layout (outbuildings, fences, pathways, etc.) and certain outdoor activities (work areas, refuse areas, animal pens, wells, etc.) Consequently, the absence of major or broad-scale disturbance of large portions of the yard, coupled with the strong surface evidence of intact yard deposits and localized yard middens, make the archaeological component of the Gilbert site an important historical asset requiring recognition, protection, and eventually professional development. [Moir to Maxson]

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1988.