Days Left 86
Walker Mansion
Gladewater,Texas
Edgar Lathgro Walker of Tennessee wed Nannie E. Lewis, a native of Kentucky, in 1891. The couple later brought their two young daughters, Lena and Alma, to Gladewater to visit E.L.'s brother, William, and they decided to stay. Their third daughter, Bessie, was born in Gladewater in 1898. E.L., a graduate of the Cincinnati School of Medicine, opened a medical practice and drugstore. He purchased this site from W.S. and Sara Austin on October 23, 1895, and he and Nannie completed their new home sometime before 1910. Their property eventually extended all the way to the Sabine River and included several barns, a cookhouse, oil wells and derricks, and oil storage tanks.
Following the deaths of her parents, Bessie (Walker) and husband Otto Staerker lived in the house, which stayed in the family until 1969. Subsequent owners have ensured the house remains a landmark, a link to the Walker family and early Gladewater.
There's no telling. Gladewater was founded as a railroad stop in 1873. After wildcatters struck oil nearby in 1931, the town's population swelled from 500 residents to about 8,000. Housing was so hard to come by, the Walkers' heirs leased mansion rooms to families of oil workers and rented cots on the second floor for 25 cents a day. "You had all these people moving into what basically became a boarding house," said Memori, who estimates as many as 40 to 50 people could have been living there on any given night at the height of the boom.
Gig Em Ags, God Bless Old Army and Marching in Behind the Band! Whooooopppp
