Former Site of Head House

Lucy Head's table opened a year after the second railroad reached Lancaster. The Handbook of Texas says the Dallas and Waco line arrived in 1888 and the Lancaster Tap in 1890, and an electric interurban to Waco followed in 1911. Her boarding house ran from 1891 to 1918, and the plaque says traveling salesmen, called drummers, spread its fame across the country. By 1925 the town had a hotel as well, the White and Company Hotel. The house kept the Head name until it closed, and it was torn down in 1936.

What the plaque says

Former Site of Head House Former Site of the Head House Lucy Frances Jeffries (1840 - 1931) of Virginia married Henry Head, and while bringing up their four children discovered her talent for cooking. From 1891 to 1918, in her large home on this site, Mrs. Head operated a boarding house famous for good food such as fried chicken, popovers, cakes, pies, and ambrosia. Commercial travelers ("drummers") spread the fame of Head House nationally. Crowds thronged here, especially on Sundays and great occasions. The hostelry also attracted many honeymooners. It retained the Head name until it closed and was demolished in 1936. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cedar Ridge Preserve — 12 mi
  A 633-acre Audubon Dallas preserve at the western edge of Dallas County, with about nine miles of trails through prairie, woodland and escarpment hills.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 13 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 13 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• Fair Park — 13 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.

More markers nearby

• Town of Lancaster — steps away
• Site of Confederate Arms Factory — steps away
• First Christian Church of Lancaster — 0.7 mi
• Edgewood Cemetery — 1.0 mi