Boesch House

Whitney in the 1880s was rebuilt more than once. The Handbook of Texas says a fire in 1885 destroyed thirty of its frame buildings, and by the end of the decade most had been replaced with brick. The town already had the Whitney Messenger, four churches and a lumber company, spelled Boesche in the entry, so builders could buy timber locally. Population dropped from an estimated 1,200 in 1883 to 400 by 1890, when two gristmills and cotton gins, groceries, millinery shops, saloons and shoemakers served the town. The plaque's tornado of 1885 does not appear in the Handbook.

What the plaque says

Boesch House When Whitney town lots were auctioned in 1879, German native Edouard Boesch (1842-1911), an east Texas lumber wholesaler, shipped the first load of lumber for the new town. Three years later he moved here and bought the lumberyard of William Cameron. Boesch became one of Whitney's leading residents and served as a school trustee for fourteen years. In 1885, he and his wife Emma built this two-story residence. Designed to withstand storms such as the tornado that struck the town that year, it was constructed on a foundation of heavy cypress timbers. (1983)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — 12 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Bosque Museum — 20 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Meridian State Park — 23 mi
  A 505-acre park in Bosque County where World War I veterans of a Civilian Conservation Corps company dammed Bee Creek in 1933-34 for a 72-acre lake and cut stone buildings around it.
• Cleburne State Park — 25 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.

More markers nearby

• Whitney — steps away
• Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church — 0.7 mi
• Whitney Memorial Park — 0.8 mi
• Towash — 3.7 mi