Twigs to Trees #32 September, 2018
Twigs to Trees
September 2018
Mary Helen Haines
If you are in Houston, Texas you can visit a little McFarlane history not too far away. In Richmond, Fort Bend County, just to the west of Houston is the historic McFarlane House, built in 1882 for Isaac McFarlane’s family.
Isaac McFarlane was born in 1840 in either Jamaica, or Edinburgh, Scotland depending on the source. A biography* about his son, Judge William I. McFarlane, states that Isaac came with his physician father from Edinburgh to the West Indies around 1848. After investing in land there, the family moved to Boston for a short time before coming to Richmond, Texas. The father died and Isaac, as well as his brother James, enrolled in Terry’s Texas Rangers, Company H (8th Cavalry, CSA), participating in battles at Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and Lookout Mountain, to name the most well-known. After being paroled on May 22, 1865 in Mobile, Alabama, Isaac made his way back to Fort Bend and married Sarah Jane Higham. They were the parents of six children, and Isaac was a successful merchant and cotton broker before retiring in 1899.
The house stayed in the McFarlane family until 1979, when it was donated to the city of Richmond and given Texas Historic designation in 1985.
* A History of Texas and Texans, Vol. IV, pub. 1914, Francis White Johnson, pp. 1599, 1600