East Texas Quarterly Magazine Summer 2013 | Page 22

Historic Homes
of East Texas
East Texas has a long and varied historyand imbedded in
that history are tales of numerous historic homes. One
of the oldest homes in East Texas is the Gaines-Oliphint
House near Hemphill.
Located in the Pendleton Harbor Subdivision on Hwy. 21
(Highway #6 on the Louisiana side) near the Pendleton
Bridge, the Gaines-Oliphint House has been acknowledged
by the Texas Historical Commission as the oldest standing
hand hewn log structure in the state. The building is a
double pen planked log story and a half building with a
dog trot.
The Oliphint House is one of the earliest Pre-Republic,
Anglo-American structures in Texas. This house is the
only surviving structure of the early settlement of Gaines
Ferry. It was located on James Gaines’ large plantation and
ferry-tavern enterprise on the Sabine River crossing of the El Camino Real.
Many historians say the
two-story, double pen log
structure was built about 1818
by James T. Taylor Gaines; Tree
ring dating done as part of the
master plan in 2007 indicates
the house might have been
constructed as late as 1849.
Identical
to
the
Gaines
Ferry house that he built for
himself around 1815 by slave
labor at the Sabine Crossing,
the Oliphint House was apparently built for his teenage wife’s
parents,
the
Edmund
Norris’, so they might live in the
vicinity. Later his cousin Susan
Jackson lived with her family
in the house. The Gaines Ferry
site was inundated by waters
of the Toledo Bend Reservoir in
the late 1960’s and the Oliphint
House, an exceptionally fine example of early Texas
architecture, is all that remains of this early nineteenth
century settlement.
One of Texas’ first Anglo settlers, Gaines first came to what

20 East Texas Quarterly

is now Texas in 1812, crossing the Sabine River and traveling
to Nacogdoches. This was prior to Stephen F. Austin’s first
300 Angle colonists in 1812. Speculating that other settlers
would choose to colonize west of the Sabine River, Gaines
purchased an existing ferry in 1819 on the river in Sabine
County. From this grew a mercantile establishment and
later the town of Pendleton. Gaines lived in the home at
Pendleton from 1819 to 1843. The property on which the
Gaines-Oliphint House stands was sold to Wilford Oliphint
by James Gaines about 1840; the bargain seems to have
fallen through. The deed validly conveying the house and
61 acres of land was made by James Gaines and his son,
John B. Gaines, to Martha A. Oliphint on February 17, 1843.
James Gaines’ influence on Texas’ development is
significant, for he built a large plantation on the edge of
the frontier and was continually involved in Texas’ growth.

After participating in two Mexican expeditions, he held
office as the first judge (Aildae) of the municipality of
Sabine in 1823 or 1824 and operated a post office at the
ferry for a time in 1863. Like his grandfather, Edmond
Pendleton, who inspired Henry Lee to author a Virginia