The Dorris-Brock House - Grapevine, TX - Victorian Style Architecture on Waymarking.com

The house is a Grapevine Historic Landmark, and a sign here provides not only some detail about the house, but also about the families who have owned it:

Originally constructed about 1875, this farmhouse is a typical L-plan wood frame house containing elements of a common Texas Folk Victorian vernacular. It has intersection gable roofs, narrow clapboard siding and a shed roofed porch. The existing original windows are mortise and tenon constructed and pegged through the tenons with hand-hewn oak pegs. The first owner was Dr. W.E. Dorris, a widower who came with his children to Grapevine from Mississippi in 1871. A son, Thomas Benton Dorris, who was eleven when the family arrived in Grapevine, graduated from medical school at the University of Missouri. He married Ann Eliza Caster in 1884 and they later built a Victorian home on East College Street. He was a successful and caring physician in Grapevine from 1885 until his death in 1918. The second owners were John Word Brock, a grist-mill operator, and Bessie Bushong Brock who were married in 1900 and moved into this home in 1908. An addition by the Brocks about 1920 included a kitchen, bath, intermediate room and back porch. They also built a garage to house the family's Model T, the first in Northeast Tarrant County. Word Brock died in 1947 and Bessie Brock in 1959. The house and 1.62 acre lot was sold by their son, Lewis Clinton Brock to Patti Weatherman in 1990. Don and Penny Bigbie purchased the property from the Weatherman estate. Don restored the interior and exterior and replaced a small front porch with a wide porch as shown in early photos. The barn, razed about 1975, was rebuilt by Don in 2001 in the same location with the new structure based on drawings provided by Clinton and Frieda Brock.

The house is also a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, and a 2010 Texas Historical Marker provides some overlapping but complementary history:

Dr. William E. Dorris (1832-1905) brought his family to Grapevine in January 1871 after a three-month trip from Starkville, Mississippi. Dorris was a captain in J.B. Dunn’s company (Mississippi Rangers) in the Civil War and his first wife, Elizabeth (Harmon), died during the war. Arriving here with his second wife, Miranda (Ferguson) and children, Dorris purchased a 37-acre farm from A.B. Coble, just north of Archibald F. Leonard’s store established in 1849. The farm was ideally located near Morehead Branch and Coble Branch, where good water was abundant.

Dr. Dorris was a member of the local Masonic lodge and the Baptist church, and served two years as a Grapevine School Board trustee. His son Thomas Benton Dorris continued the family medical tradition in Grapevine for more than thirty years, also serving as a local surgeon for the railroad and teaching a Red Cross nursing class during World War I. Dr. William E. Dorris moved to Roanoke (Denton Co.) in 1889, and several prominent Grapevine families owned this farmstead until John Word and Bessie (Bushong) Brock bought the property in 1905. John Word Brock was a farmer and also a mail carrier for ten years by horse and buggy. The Brocks raised twelve children in this house, which stayed in the family for 85 years.

The L-plan farmhouse features a cross gable roof and shed roof porch. Its Folk Victorian styling includes narrow clapboard siding, two-over-two wood windows, turned spindle porch supports, doorways and window surrounds with fluted moldings and medallions, beadboard walls and tall baseboards. The original house was one room deep; the Brocks expanded the house with a rear addition in the 1920s.

Public/Private: Private Tours Available?: Yes Year Built: 1875 Web Address: [Web Link]

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