Starr Family Home: Four Generations of Texas History
Texas
The Starr Family Home in Marshall preserves something unusual: the complete domestic record of four generations of one family from the Republic of Texas era through the early twentieth century. Dr. James Harper Starr arrived in Nacogdoches from Georgia in eighteen thirty-seven, eventually moving his land and banking agency to Marshall, where it became the town's first bank.
His son Frank built the main house, Maplecroft, in eighteen seventy-one, shipping shipwrights and building materials from New Orleans by rail to construct a two-story modified Greek Revival structure that still stands. The family donated the property to the state in nineteen seventy-six, and it opened as a historic site in nineteen eighty-six, with several buildings housing original books, clothing, and furniture spanning the arc from the Republic of Texas to the early twentieth century.
