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The Darby-Holcomb Home
Darby, Texasby
Bob Bowman | |
An
East Texas landmark celebrated its
150th birthday this year, and it still looks as good as it did when it was built.
When Augustus Darby, 44, a frontier bookkeeper, decided to move from Alabama
to Texas in 1859, he and his family loaded everything
they owned, including twenty-five slaves, in a caravan of wagons and made their
way across the South to a hilltop near Moscow
in Polk County.
With Darby and his wife Mary Ann and his family was a
valued family friend, Nathan “Uncle Duck” Turk, a former slave given to Mary Ann
by her grandmother Lucena.
Mary Ann, who loved flowers, took cuttings
and seeds from her cape jasmine bush and crepe myrtle trees to plant in Texas.
Augustus took his muzzleloader and double-barreled shotgun to protect the family
from wild animals and to have meat on the dinner table.
In East
Texas, Darby and his slaves cut down virgin pine trees to build a pegged double-log
house.
The job took six months. Darby’s slaves drew square nails from
old lumber to seal the house with hand-sawed rough cypress. They also built a
stone chimney, a gabled roof and a gallery porch. Other buildings were added later.
In Polk County, Darby and his slaves established a large cotton
plantation and the community soon became known as Darby.
Located
near an old Indian trail, the area was settled by Europeans before the Civil War.
Among them was an Irish couple named Criswell, who arrived in 1835. Others came
from Germany and the area became unique among Polk County settlements because
many of its early settlers were Europeans.
The community soon had a Catholic
church and became a leather-tanning center for local hunters. A school was also
established and residents formed the Darby Farmers Alliance.
Today, Darby,
his wife, several of their children and “Uncle Duck” are buried in a small cemetery
near the old house.
Alice Darby, who inherited the old log house after
her mother and father died, married Bob Holcomb in 1875.
The house, now
known as the Darby-Holcomb House, remains a symbol of early settlers and their
efforts to establish new lives in Texas. |
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