McClure-McReynolds-Fowler Home

The house began as a center-passage dwelling, like the Howard house on the same Palestine home tour, and about 1890 Z. A. McReynolds reworked it into its present U-shaped plan. The tour notes also say McClure came from Tennessee in 1840, lived at Fort Houston for several years, and co-owned the Trinity Advocate. A 1940 county history says Anderson County was only three years old when it got its first newspaper, first called the Trinity Advocate, whose press Joseph Addison Clark moved here.

What the plaque says

McClure-McReynolds-Fowler Home Built in 1849 by Judge Alexander E. McClure (1815 - 1870), who came from Tennessee to Texas in 1840 and lived for a number of years at Old Fort Houston. Judge McClure was the first district clerk in Anderson County, co-owner of the "Trinity Advocate," and one of the most prominent lawyers in East Texas. The house was purchased from the McClures in 1884 by Zachariah Aycock McReynolds (1846 - 1928), who immigrated to Texas in 1875 from Adairsville, Georgia. He was a Confederate veteran who had fought in the sieges at Vicksburg and Atlanta in the Civil War, 1861-1865. About 1890 the house was remodeled using the old timber, including well preserved hand-hewn sills. From 1880 to 1908, Z. A. McReynolds held the offices of district clerk, county clerk, county judge, tax collector, and postmaster. In 1934 Colonel Godfrey Rees Fowler (1876 - 1958) and his wife Ella Sue (McReynolds) returned to Palestine to retire to her old family home. Colonel Fowler was a grandson of Judge John H. Reagan (first Texas Railroad Commission chairman). Fowler had fought in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine insurrection, the Nicaraguan uprising, and World War I. The McClures and McReynoldses have been the only property owners since 1848. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Railroad Excursion Train — 3.8 mi
  A round trip of about 25 miles of track between the Palestine and Rusk depots through the Piney Woods, on a line built by prison labor and reopened as a tourist railroad in 1976.

More markers nearby

• Col. Homer Garrison, Jr. — 0.2 mi
• Anderson County — 0.2 mi
• Timothy Stephen Smith — 0.3 mi
• Governor Thomas Mitchell Campbell — 0.3 mi