Historical Marker
Atkins House
Sulphur Springs, Hopkins County · Texas
Erected 1991
The Hopkins County Museum's own account differs from the plaque on who built this house. It says Joseph W. Atkins, born in 1815, bought land near the square, named Atkins Street for himself, and about 1875 built the house for his new bride, Sarah Hamilton, from an English design with double-thick, hand-pressed brick walls. Sarah lived from 1827 to 1907 and Joseph died in 1906. The house now stands in Heritage Park, eleven acres of relocated buildings, on the same grounds as the 1910 Wilson house that holds the museum.
What the plaque says
Atkins House Irish native Sarah Hamilton Crouch and her husband, James Crouch, lived in Texas before the Civil War. After their divorce in 1868 she became a prominent businesswoman in Sulphur Springs. She married Joseph Atkins in 1873 and had this house built in the late 1870s. Believed to be the first brick structure in town, it was designed in a unique four-point configuration. The house remained on its original site on Atkins Street in downtown Sulphur Springs for over 100 years. Threatened with demolition in 1986, it was dismantled and moved to Heritage Park. (1991)
Where it stands
33.14219, -95.59524 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Cooper Lake State Park — 15 miTwo units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.