Barton House

It was the dream of Joseph James Barton to have his elegant, two-and-a-half-story house located near a railroad depot and train. Although with much effort to make the dream a reality, it didn’t materialize. The Bartons’ home was the first structure in a planned community on a railroad line that never came through.

Joseph and Mary Barton moved with their family in 1891 to take advantage of low land prices in West Texas and advancing railroad lines. Barton and two uncles bought 50 sections of land and started their TL Ranch 19 miles north of Lubbock. In 1897, the family moved to Plainview, so the Barton children could attend school. By 1907 land values on the South Plains skyrocketed, with acreage selling for 10 times what Barton had paid for it. The land boom gave him the idea to develop a town with a post office, lumberyard, mercantile, hotel, church, school and, as the centerpiece, a beautiful home. He started selling land to settlers and business people, and the town of Bartonsite developed. The railroad was adding a line from Amarillo to Lubbock, and Barton was told it would go right through his TL Ranch property.

By 1909, the town had attracted 250 people and was supporting a hotel, lumberyard, church and a school. So Barton turned his efforts to building the elegant home he envisioned for his family. He purchased plans for the home for $45 from Modern Dwellings, a magazine published by the George F. Barber Co. of Knoxville, Tenn. The Queen Anne-style house the Bartons selected had five rooms on the ground floor, five rooms on the second floor, plus space for two bathrooms, a mansard-style roof and a widow’s walk. A large porch, with Tuscan-style columns, wrapped around the front and one side of the house. The house plan featured unequal gables, “gingerbread” wooden ornaments and a leaded glass parlor window. The Bartons chose white paint for the exterior and accents in two shades of green.

Most of the building materials were shipped by train to Amarillo from where they were hauled by wagon to Bartonsite. Other items were purchased at the Bartonsite lumberyard. Doorknobs, locks, mantels and mirrors were acquired from mail order companies. Modern features included running water in the kitchen, sliding doors, built-in closets, acetylene (carbide) lighting, two staircases and a milk and meat cooler at the back of the house. For some time, the tall, spacious attic was used as a schoolroom for the Barton children, who were taught at home. The planned Barton house was unlike most others on the Texas South Plains.

At this same time, many of the ranchers who had survived drought, blizzards and the Panic of 1893 began moving out of the harsh region. They sought good grassland for their cattle and a less severe climate. Then, to make things worse, in 1909, the Santa Fe completed its line from Amarillo to Lubbock, running through Abernathy, about eight miles east of the town of Bartonsite.

Joseph Barton saw the inevitable demise of his planned community, and, no doubt with a very heavy heart, he helped move the town’s businesses to Abernathy. The church went to Cotton Center, and the store and post office remained in what was left of Bartonsite to serve settlers who bought and moved onto Barton land. The big house was the only home left. In 1921, Bartonsite dissolved when the post office shut down. The Bartons, like other ranchers, had to make changes to survive. The herd size was cut, and crops were planted.

In the 1920s, Jack Barton, a son of Joseph and Mary Barton, went into partnership with his father raising sheep and cattle. The arrangement was abandoned in the early 1930s, and Jack and his wife, Josephine Waddell, bought the Barton homestead. Jack cultivated the land, growing cotton, grain and wheat. He leased other land to raise livestock. Joseph Barton died on Oct. 20, 1967. After her husband’s death, Josephine, who appreciated the National Ranching Heritage Center’s dedication to historic preservation, bequeathed the house to the NRHC. She died in February 1974.

Moving the large home was the job of W.K. Bigham and Sons of Snyder and Lubbock, working with Willard Robinson, restoration architect. Tunnels were dug under the footings to place the supporting 48-foot cross beams, and the house was lifted out of the ground and onto a flatbed truck. Steel rails and cables braced brick fireplaces. Only a porch was removed for the 40-mile trip to Lubbock. One hundred and eight power and telephone lines were lowered or lifted, and the Santa Fe Railway took charge of all crossing signals along the route of the house’s three-day journey to the NRHC.

Among the furnishings in the parlor is an 1889 piano, a gift from a father to his daughter. It was brought to Texas by covered wagon for the 15-year-old girl, who played it for her family as they moved West. In the large dining room are the Barton’s oak table and chairs, and the four-poster bed is also original to the family. Scalamandre of New York reproduced some of the house’s wallpaper from original samples taken from the house.

Peter Rippe, former executive director of the Harris County Heritage Society in Houston, a widely recognized authority on restoration and furnishings of historic structures in Texas, was secured to advise the Ranching Heritage Association representatives about appropriate furnishings, appointments and interior elements for the restored home.

“The Barton House, as an elegant West Texas ranch house, can stand its ground as a part of what social historians have called the American dream,” he said. “The Bartons should be, and can be, symbolic of thousands of families whose roots reach back into American history and whose accomplishments stand as monuments to their hopes.”

Joseph Barton’s dream may not have come true in his lifetime, but, ironically, when his house was moved from its original location in Bartonsite to the National Ranching Heritage Center, it was placed near a Santa Fe depot and locomotive. He might have been pleased to know that.