Should these articles go offline, copies are available from me upon request. The original story, by Harrison Long, was published on February 19, 2017, and it is more comprehensive than the 2018 article. It reads:
One of the last remaining original Quakertown homes, the Woods House, is set to be moved to a new location at the Denton County Historical Park on Mulberry Street. But before the move, residents are invited to join the Denton County Office of History and Culture to excavate the property and learn more about the residents who previously occupied 1015 Hill St. The excavation will take place from 1 to 3 p.m. Friday.
“The home was originally in Quakertown, bought by William Evelyn Woods,” said Kelsey Jistel, curator of educational programs for the Office of History and Culture. “[The event] will mostly be for [citizens] to look around and get to know those who lived there.”
With its future location just a stone’s throw from the Courthouse on the Square, the Woods home will be neighbors with the the Quakertown House, which houses the Denton County African American Museum, and the Bayless-Selby House Museum. The Hill Street location where it resides now is the site of an upcoming Habitat for Humanity project.
“We will be saving and documenting a number of old rocks on the property to ensure that they’re in the correct order when it moves to the Historical Park,” Jistel said.
Born in 1891, William Evelyn Woods was a cotton farmer in Argyle who purchased the house and lot in its original Quakertown location during the First World War for $600, according to an oral history of Quakertown, given by Woods, from the Office of History and Culture.
University ties
For the first few years that he owned the house, Woods rented the home out while maintaining his farm in Argyle. However, when his eldest daughter came of age for school, he and his wife, Alberta, sought to move their family to Denton to make getting an education easier. Knowing he’d have to find work in town to make such a transition, Woods applied to become a janitor at what was then North Texas State Normal College. That was 1921.
In his oral history, Woods recounts how he was hired by William Herschel Bruce, president of the college that became the University of North Texas.
“I said, ‘Dr. Bruce, I saw in an advertisement in the paper where you wanted a janitor,’” Woods said, going on to describe his father’s reputation in the area as a reliable man, and that the two of them would stroll by the university when he was just 4 or 5 years old.
“This college is supposed to be just about a year older [sic], nearly a year older than I am — North Texas College.”
Woods said he was known to be a reliable employee, but his time with the university ended after he grew to feel uncomfortable in the workplace.
A friend named Jim Thomas, who also worked at the university, told Woods jokingly that there was a rumor he was planning on “stealing” a professor’s wife, which Woods said he did not find the least bit humorous.
“I said, ‘Jim! If you know me 50 or a hundred years, don’t ever joke that way again,’” he said. “They would lynch a [black man] about a white woman then.”
Woods’ fears were founded: It was in the 1920s that the Ku Klux Klan reached its peak membership, estimated to be somewhere around 4 million nationwide, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Moving from Quakertown
Woods was contacted about that same time by Denton Mayor H.V. Hennen and other local leaders who were looking to purchase the land his home sat on. The house had sat vacant for some time, with Woods’ family living on Bernard Street, and he was called to First State Bank in hopes that he might be bought off.
In 1921, the city of Denton voted 367 to 240 in favor of purchasing land in Quakertown to make way for Civic Center Park. Residents of Quakertown, which was then a thriving community, were forcefully pushed from their homes in order to build the park. (It was renamed Quakertown Park in 2007.)
Most residents of Quakertown relocated to Southeast Denton, where the Woods home now sits.
Woods said when he set a price, the city attorney, Elmer Hooper, tried to convince him there were back taxes owed against his property that would have to come out of the price he’d set.
“Now when I bought it, I paid [a lawyer] to examine the title and I’ve got a receipt in my house for you. He said I had an A-1 title, no back tax, no judgment, nothing against it,” Woods said in his oral history.
The two eventually came to terms on the price Woods had set, he recalled.
“He said, ‘I guess I’m going to have to write you a check.’ And I said, ‘I guess you will.’”
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The house was finally moved to its new home on February 15, 2018, and again, the Record-Chronicle covered the news with a staff report in a February 6 article:
A former Quakertown home, the Woods House, will be moved to Denton County Historical Park on Feb. 15.
The house currently is at 1015 Hill St. in Southeast Denton. Denton County House Movers will relocate the house to its new foundation in the park, 317 W. Mulberry St. Members of the Woods family are expected to be on hand for the move.
The Woods House is the last known Quakertown house in Southeast Denton. The house's first owner was William Evelyn Woods. The home originally stood in what is now Quakertown Park. In 1921, the city of Denton began forcing Quakertown residents to relocate to make way for the park. The Woods family sold their Quakertown property and bought 8.8 acres on Solomon Hill.
After William Evelyn Woods died, his children divided the property and kept the historic home, which was donated to the county — and the park — after Habitat for Humanity of Denton County bought the property in 2015.