Estes House

The Estes House meets Criterion B in the area of Social History at the local level of significance, as the home of Ben T. Estes, founding citizen, Civil War veteran, and early merchant of McKinney. It also meets Criterion C in the area of Architecture at the local level of significance as a very fine example of a modified L-plan house, contributing significantly to its late 19th-century and early 20th-century neighborhood and to the Historic and Architectural Properties in McKinney, Collin County, Texas (N.R. 1987).

The Estes House in McKinney, Collin County, Texas, was built in 1897 by early pioneer, merchant, and Civil War veteran Ben T. Estes and his second wife Alice Gumm Estes (see Photo-12). Ben T. Estes established a dry goods business on the square in McKinney in about 1867. By the late 19th century McKinney was riding a wave of rapid growth resulting from local agricultural prosperity. Collin County was consistently one of the top cotton producers in Texas, with McKinney, the county seat, a central distribution point after the arrival of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad in 1872. In this expansive environment, Estes joined other local businessmen in diversifying to serve the agricultural region between Dallas and the Sherman-Denison area. Their profitable endeavors allowed them to build elaborate homes, with Queen Anne as the preferred style.

Born in Taylorsville, Tennessee in 1841, Ben T. Estes moved to Texas in 1856, arriving in Galveston by ship. He settled in McKinney after working several months as an armed advanced guard, protecting U.S. mail between San Antonio and El Paso. At nineteen he enlisted in the Confederate Army, serving under Throckmorton at Forts Cobb and Arbuckle, before enlisting in B. Warren Stone's Sixth Texas Calvary which joined General McCullough at Springfield, Missouri. Estes fought at the Battles of Pea Ridge and Corinth and was working as a scout when captured briefly in 1862 at Hatchie Bridge, Mississippi. He was released from service in 1865 at Canton, Mississippi.

Following the Civil War, Estes eventually returned to McKinney, married Nannie Howell in 1867, and began the merchandising firms Howell & Estes and later Estes & Howell. These businesses were in partnership with his father-in-law, Daniel Howell, a Peter's Colony settler. The Estes Building at 105 E. Virginia (McKinney Commercial Historic District (N.R. 1983), built in 1875, is associated with this time in Estes' life and remained in the family for nearly 100 years. Nannie Howell Estes bore seven children between 1867 and 1879, but by 1884, Nannie and all but one child were deceased.

After a brief period of working in Sherman in the mid-1880s, Ben T. Estes was remarried, to Alice Gumm of Sherman. The Estes' moved to McKinney in 1887, where Ben continued in merchandising with the Mississippi Store. This business changed hands six times over the years of Estes' employment. Murphy, Perry and Company, Cheeves Brothers, and L. V. Graves and Company, among others, were his employers.

In the decade between 1890 and 1900, McKinney saw tremendous growth. It was in this expansive climate, that the Estes produced a family of four additional children, and in 1897, built the house at 801 N. College Street, now 903 N. College Street. This home typified the Queen Anne-influenced residence popular among the more affluent in the community. The Estes House continued to shelter their growing family for over a quarter of a century. At his death in 1920, Ben T. Estes had served as a businessman on McKinney's square for over fifty of its founding years. He had seen the Houston and Texas Central Railroad arrived in 1872, bringing with it a steady population increase. The unincorporated community of approximately 600 he found in the mid-1850s, had become a bustling commercial center of almost 9,000 by the 1920s.

In 1923, Alice Gumm Estes sold the property to Linus Smith, a hardware and furniture dealer, and his wife Louise Hearn Smith. The Smith family which included one son resided at 903 N. College for the next 47 years.