Oldest House In Fort Worth In 1949

I was reading an online copy of a history of Fort Worth written in 1949.

On this page http://texashistory....pth65130/m1/56/ it mentions and shows a photo of a small house that it says was the oldest house in Fort Worth and that it actually contained surviving portions of Fort Worth - as in the actual fort that the city is named after.

Does anybody know what became of the house? Does it still survive?

There is a Gambrell Street on the southwest side off Seminary. My aunt and uncle bought a new house in 1949 on Cherokee Trail and Gambrell so the time line seems right. The houses to the east of that are older that run toward the Baptist Seminary. There is nothing like that to my knowledge today.

I actually don't know where this house is located. The Texas History website stated that Mrs. Gambrell had it moved, so it wouldn't surprise me if it has been moved again. Several of my fellow Board Members at Historic Fort Worth, Inc. have told me that the Van Zandt Cottage, built approximately the same year was the oldest Fort Worth building or house still in its original location. With that said, could the Gambrell House have been moved to Log Cabin Village? One of the problems with the policy that I have set up for this site is that the architectural pages do not include any personal residences, unless the property owners request a listing. In the 15 years I have been running this site, no residential property owner has asked to be included. Therefore, I have not done much research on residential properties.

A guy at work has a girlfriend. (they are both in their 60's and widowed) This Lady states she owns the oldest house in Fort Worth. My friend (a walking encyclopedia) claims she even has an historical marker in her yard. It is up in North Fort worth. (Like 25th street or so) I will as him about it tomorrow. I may need to go on a recon mission.

What I find especially interesting about the house is not so much the age in and of itself as the fact that it supposedly is made from portions of the old fort. If it does survive, I think it deserves much more prominence given that there is very little in way of physical reminders of the fort that have the city its start and its name. It would be Fort Worth's equivalent to Dallas's Bryan's cabin - which has also been moved and rebuilt multiple times and no doubt only a small portion of it, if any, is original.

The book online also mentions a surviving rocking chair that was part of the fort. The description begins at: http://texashistory....pth65130/m1/39/ and concludes with a photo of the chair at http://texashistory....pth65130/m1/40/ (or you can just click the "forward" arrow from the first page to get to the second without having to follow my separate link). The book says that the chair "stands silently in a museum for all to see."

I did some digging around online. Turns out that the chair - along with a corner post from the fort - is on display in the 1895 room in the courthouse. I had not even heard of the 1895 room before. So there is at least some portion of the fort which survives. Perhaps the corner post came from the Gambrell house?

One more surviving remnant of the fort site mentioned in the book - and which still survives - is a cluster of trees.

The 1949 article describes them here: http://texashistory....pth65130/m1/43/

Curious to see if they still survived, I ran across a posting on "Hometown By Handlebar" that I had somehow previously missed which shows the modern setting of those trees and mentions that they also existed and provided shade for those at the fort http://hometownbyhandlebar.com/?p=1357 (scroll down to the second photo for information on those trees in particular).

I was reading an online copy of a history of Fort Worth written in 1949.

On this page http://texashistory....pth65130/m1/56/ it mentions and shows a photo of a small house that it says was the oldest house in Fort Worth and that it actually contained surviving portions of Fort Worth - as in the actual fort that the city is named after.

Does anybody know what became of the house? Does it still survive?

Stumbled on to this thread through a google search of "oldest house in Fort Worth", and it's intrigued me ever since then.

 

There's a pretty big hint as to its location in the background of that picture. That's the old Rock Island Yard water tower, so it would have to be somewhere around Samuels Avenue.

If it's still around, it's either been built on to, or used as a shed behind someone's house. Nothing that small I could find in the area.

 

Some time around 1926 the Star Telegram published pictures of the cabin, but I haven't had any luck tracking them down.