3945 Houston Street in Greenville, home to three generations of the same family.
Google Maps photo
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a home on Park Street that has been occupied by members of the same family line for three generations.
This week another family contacted me with a similar story. Something tells me there are other stories in Greenville and throughout Hunt County like these.
Former mayor Tom Oliver and his wife, Sharon, live in the home where Tom and brother Norman were raised and their mother was also raised. The large one-story English home sits on the corner of Houston and Walworth Streets. T.M. Bethell and wife Virgie Norman Bethell had the home built after moving back to Greenville around 1926.
A newspaper article of that time featured new homes in town. The Bethell home was described in glorious detail. The English roof was stained soft black with paneled gables below. Dark Range Autumn Blend bricks with white mortar covered the exterior walls. A formal entry bordered with white arched stone was connected to a sitting porch by an open terrace.
The lovely interior included a hand-painted mural in the breakfast room. Architect W.A. Cooke of Dallas designed the house built by general contractor J.T. Gloverof Greenville. Fortunately none of the residents have drastically altered the home.
Tom M. Bethell and his wife, the former Virgie Norman, were both born in Greenville in 1887. Bethell went to work in his father’s hardware store after completing business college in Waco.
A short time later, Tom became interested in cotton and took a job in Longview, but soon returned to Greenville and Miss Norman. The couple wed in December 1909 at the old Kavanaugh Methodist Church on the site of the current church. Their daughter, Mary Elizabeth, was born in 1912.
When the family moved into their new home, the newspaper reported “nothing has been spared to make this one of the loveliest homes in Greenville and a credit to any city.” Tom Bethell planted a garden in the backyard that was the envy of all the neighbors.
Mary Elizabeth was the darling of Kavanaugh Church throughout her life. She married Barney Oliver who became the Greenville postmaster. The couple raised their two sons, Tom and Norman, in that home and at Kavanaugh.
Sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, Tom and Sharon returned to Greenville as Mary and Barney were looking for a smaller place to live. The younger couple renovated the home with little or no changes. They, too, raised their family in the lovely brick English house. This time it was two girls instead of two rowdy boys who came of age at the corner of Houston and Walworth Streets.
Others areas that might have homes occupied by more than one generation are found in the Sayle Addition on West Lee Street. In fact, I think there is a house on West Lee Street whose owner is the nephew of the original owner. What about the homes on Walnut Street, or Johnson and Stonewall streets, or even down Wesley Street, both north and south?
I wouldn’t be surprised to find such homes in the communities throughout the county in small towns and farms. Speak up if you fall in this special group.