Fort Worth, Texas · Holloway Addition, Block 4

1013 PoindexterA house on the street that used to be Pearl

In 1927 a man named A. C. Maclin paid $4,750 for this house. In 1958 his son — a Fort Worth police officer — sold the back twenty-five feet of the yard to the City for $300, and died a year later. By 1964 the house was on the courthouse steps for $2,350. Here's how it got from there to here. We pulled every bit of it out of county deed books, a surveyor's plat from 1911, and an assessor's card somebody typed in 1938 — and every number on this page came off a document you can open and read yourself.

Built1918

Recorded owners since 1927Seven

Sq ft, 1938 assessor2,034

Sq ft today2,066

Lot, as platted 191150 × 125 ft

Lot today98 × 100 ft

Hand-lettered title block reading A Revised Map of Holloway's Addition to Fort Worth, Texas. Scale 1 inch equals 100 feet. 1911. Surveyed by Brookes Baker, Surveyor, Fort Worth, Texas. — Where the record starts: the title block of the 1911 revised plat, lettered by hand.

The Record

1911 — 2026

19117 March

Mrs. M. A. Holloway re-plats an addition that had been erased

The original Holloway's Addition had been undone. Its dedication was vacated by order of the Commissioners Court of Tarrant County, and for some years the subdivision existed only on paper that no longer meant anything.

On the seventh of March 1911, Mrs. M. A. Holloway — described in her own dedication as a feme sole, a woman holding property in her own right — signed a revised plat putting the streets back. Brookes Baker surveyed it. Block 4 got nineteen lots, fifty feet wide and a hundred and twenty-five deep. Lots 1 through 9 fronted Pearl Street. Pearl is Poindexter now.

Baker drew two things on that plat that were not lots. A well, on Block 4, Lot 1. And a small circle with a line running to it, labeled in his hand: Spring. It sits on Block 5, Lot 2, a short walk north of here, in what is now Traders Oak Park.

Detail of the 1911 revised plat showing Blocks 5, 4 and 3, with Prosser Street, Pearl Street, Samuel's Avenue, the G.C. & S.F. Railroad, a spring on Block 5 and a well on Block 4. — **Blocks 5, 4 and 3, as revised in 1911.** Scale 1 in. = 100 ft. Block 4, Lots 1–9 front Pearl Street; Lots 10–19 front Prosser. Pearl is Poindexter today. Prosser is gone. **This house sits on Lot 5 and the east 48 feet of Lot 4** — the bottom row, fifth and fourth from the left.

Close detail of the plat showing a small circle with a leader line, hand-labeled Spring, on Lot 2 of Block 5. — **“Spring.”** Block 5, Lot 2 — a circle, a leader line, and one word in the surveyor's hand.

Close detail of the plat showing a small circle hand-labeled Well on Lot 1 of Block 4. — **“Well.”** Block 4, Lot 1 — four lots west of this house, on the same row.

Handwritten opening of the 1911 dedication, beginning Know All Men By These Presents That I, Mrs M. A. Holloway, a feme sole. — **The dedication, first lines.** “…That I, Mrs. M. A. Holloway, a feme sole, owner of that tract formerly known as ‘Holloway's Addition to Fort Worth, Texas,’ (the dedication of said addition having been vacated by an order of the Commissioners Court of Tarrant County, Texas, recorded in Vol. 22 Page 123 of the minutes of said Court) do hereby revise the lots…”

Handwritten line reading Witness my signature this 7th day of March 1911, above the signature M. A. Holloway. — **“Witness my signature this 7th day of March 1911.”** M. A. Holloway.

Source: A Revised Map of Holloway's Addition to Fort Worth, Texas, 1911. Surveyed by Brookes Baker, Surveyor, Fort Worth, Texas. Filed for record 2:50 p.m., 10 April 1911; recorded 10:00 a.m., 22 April 1911, A. J. Beavers, County Clerk. Acknowledged before Morgan Bryan, Notary Public. Tarrant County Plat Records. · See the whole sheet ↗

1918

The house goes up

No permit for it survives. What survives is the county's own record: when a Tarrant County assessor sat down twenty years later and filled out a property card for this address, he wrote Built Year 1918.

The house next door carries the same year on its own card. Two neighboring houses, both recorded by the county as built in 1918 — which establishes a common build period, and nothing more than that.

Fort Worth's current tax roll says 1924. The 1938 card, written by a man who was standing in the yard, says 1918. We have gone with the man in the yard.

Source: Tarrant County property assessment card, stamped DEC 15 1938. Abstract 1045, Map 7042.

1927October

A. C. Maclin buys the house for $4,750 — half of it in cash

The seller was Mobley & Delaney, Inc., a Texas corporation doing business in Fort Worth. C. L. Mobley signed as president; E. E. Aldridge attested as secretary.

The terms are on the face of the deed and they are not what a modern buyer would recognize. Four thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars, of which $2,485 was cash in hand — better than half. The balance, $2,265, rode on a vendor's lien note at eight per cent, due ninety days after its date.

Not a thirty-year mortgage. A three-month note.

And the description he bought is the description that sells today, word for word: Lot Five (5) and the east forty-eight (48) feet of Lot Four (4), in Block Four (4) of Holloway's Addition to the City of Fort Worth. That odd forty-eight feet has been attached to this house since at least 1927.

The Maclins would hold it for the next thirty-three years.

Typed deed record page reading Mobley and Delaney Inc. to A. C. Maclin, conveying Lot Five and the east forty-eight feet of Lot Four in Block Four of Holloway's Addition for $4,750. — **Mobley & Delaney, Inc. to A. C. Maclin.** Deed Record Volume 1001, Page 80.

Source: Tarrant County Deed Records, Vol. 1001, Pgs. 80–82. Acknowledged before Corydon A. Black, Notary Public, 25 October 1927. Filed for record 1 November 1927 at 11:49 a.m.; recorded 3 November 1927 at 11:35 a.m. Chester Hollis, County Clerk. The 1938 assessment card records the instrument as 10-17-27, $4,750.

1935& 1936

Twenty-one dollars and six cents

The assessor's card carries a line for delinquent taxes. For 1935 it reads $21.06.

The following year the family pulled a permit for $500 in repairs. In the middle of the Depression, on a house they had owned for nine years, they found five hundred dollars for it.

Source: 1938 assessment card, delinquent tax line and permit line.

193815 December

An assessor walks the property and writes down what he sees

This is the closest thing to a photograph of the house in 1938, and in some ways it is better than one. It is a stranger's plain description, made for tax purposes, with no reason to flatter anybody.

From the building card Built Year . . . . . 1918
Rooms . . . . . . . 7 · 1 story
Main dwelling . . . 2,034 sq ft
Foundation . . . . . Piers
Roof . . . . . . . . Hip
Walls . . . . . . . Box / Frame / Weather Board
Heat . . . . . . . . Stove
Lighting . . . . . . Electric
Plumbing . . . . . . 5 fixtures — one bath
Floors . . . . . . . Hardwood
Construction . . . . Cheap
Condition . . . . . Fair

Seven rooms and one bathroom. Heated by stove. Graded Cheap and Fair by a man being paid to be unsentimental about it.

Orange Tarrant County building description card with printed checklists for class, roof, walls, heating, lighting, plumbing and condition, hand-marked, with a plat sketch of the house footprint at right and a December 15 1938 date stamp. — **Building description card.** Every line is a printed checklist the assessor ticked. At right, his sketch of the footprint fronting Poindexter, with two outbuildings. Date-stamped down the edge: **DEC 15 1938**.

Orange Tarrant County assessor's abstract of city property card showing the ownership record from Maclin A C in 1927 through O. W. Dixon in 1978, lienholders, and a delinquent tax record for 1935. — **The ownership record.** One card, six owners, fifty-one years — 1927 to 1978, each with its deed book and page. The delinquent tax line at the bottom reads **1935 · 21 06**.

Typed line at the top of the assessment card reading N 25 feet 4-5 to City 3247 100. — Typed across the top of the card, and the reason we went looking: **N 25' 4-5 to City 3247 100**. A book and a page. See 1958, below.

195413 April

The house passes to Carlton Maclin — Fort Worth police, badge 49

A. C. Maclin's son took title in the spring of 1954. He had been on the force since the mid-1930s. He raised his family in this house and was still living in it when he died in 1959; the obituary identifies him as of 1013 Poindexter.

Source: Tarrant County Deed Records, Vol. 2698, Pg. 429.

19588 September

The policeman who lived here signs the back of his yard over to the City

The 1911 plat drew these lots one hundred and twenty-five feet deep. The survey in hand today measures one hundred. For a long time the only trace of what happened to the difference was a single line typed across the top of a 1938 index card — a volume and a page.

That volume is Deed Record 3247. The page is 100. Here is what is on it.

Printed Texas standard warranty deed form, filled in by typewriter, conveying from C. M. Maclin and wife Geraldine Maclin to the City of Fort Worth for three hundred dollars. — **Warranty Deed, Vol. 3247, Pg. 100.** A Texas standard form, sold by Stafford-Lowdon Co. of Fort Worth, filled in on a typewriter.

The granting clause THAT We, C. M. Maclin and wife, Geraldine Maclin, of the County of Tarrant and State of Texas, in consideration of the sum of Three Hundred and no/100 ($300.00) DOLLARS to us in hand paid by the City of Fort Worth, a municipal corporation of Tarrant County, Texas, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, have Granted, Sold and Conveyed… all that certain lot, tract and parcel of land… described as follows:

Typed legal description reading: The north 25 feet of Lots 4 and 5, Block 4, Holloway's Addition to the City of Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas. — Twenty-eight words. That is the whole of it.

Three hundred dollars. Not a taking, not a condemnation — a deed, signed by both of them at Fort Worth on the eighth day of September, 1958.

Handwritten date line reading 8th day of September A.D. 1958, above the cursive signatures C. M. Maclin and Geraldine Maclin. — **C. M. Maclin. Geraldine Maclin.** Both signatures, on the line, in ink.

He was a Fort Worth police officer. He had been living in this house since his father bought it when he was a boy, and he had owned it outright for four years. He died on the sixth of September, 1959 — one year and two days after he signed.

You can walk out the back door of this house and stand on the ground he sold. It has been part of Traders Oak Park ever since.

Aerial view looking southwest: the house with its back deck at lower left, the open ground and large oaks of Traders Oak Park filling the frame, townhomes and streets beyond, and the downtown Fort Worth skyline on the horizon. — **The house is at lower left, deck and all.** Everything past that back fence is Traders Oak Park — and the first twenty-five feet of it came off this lot on the eighth of September, 1958. Downtown Fort Worth on the horizon.

The rear deck of the house looking out over open lawn with mature trees beyond the back fence. — Standing on it.

Source: Warranty Deed, Tarrant County Deed Records, Vol. 3247, Pg. 100. Instrument No. 58670. Acknowledged before Joe S. Wooten, Notary Public in and for Tarrant County, 8 September 1958. Filed for record 23 September 1958 at 3:00 p.m.; recorded 30 September 1958 at 11:26 a.m. Melvin “Mel” Faulk, County Clerk, Tarrant County, Texas.

196016 November

The Maclins sell. Thirty-three years end.

Fourteen months after Carlton's death, Geraldine conveys the house to Elmer and Nellie Wheeler. It is the first time since 1927 that 1013 Poindexter is owned by someone not named Maclin.

She carried back the note herself — the assessment card records a deed of trust in favor of Mrs. Geraldine Maclin, dated 14 November 1960, for $5,100.

Source: Tarrant County Deed Records, Vol. 3503, Pg. 546.

19643 November

Foreclosure. A trustee's deed. Fort Worth Savings & Loan takes the house for —

$2,350

Thirty-seven years after A. C. Maclin bought it for four thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars, the house went back to a lender for less than half that. Not adjusted for inflation — in plain dollars, less than half.

Four years from the deed he signed. Five from his death. This is the deepest point in the story — though not, as it turns out, the only one. It happens again in 2008.

Purchase, Oct. 1927$4,750

Trustee's sale, Nov. 1964$2,350

Elapsed37 years

Source: Trustee's Deed, Tarrant County Deed Records, Vol. 3996, Pg. 27.

1967& 1978

Two more hands

Dora Wright takes it from the savings and loan in July 1967. O. W. Dixon buys it in June 1978. After that the county's paper trail thins out and the house goes quiet for a long time.

Source: Vol. 4432, Pg. 497 · Vol. 7201, Pg. 249.

1978— 2008

The Dixons. Thirty years.

O. W. Dixon buys in June 1978, and the house settles in for its second long family tenure. The deeds that follow are family ones — the name passing sideways within the Dixons in 1987, and again in 2006.

Thirty years. Only the Maclins held it longer.

Source: Tarrant County deed records — Vol. 7201, Pg. 249 (1978); Instrument 9020-534 (29 July 1987); Instrument 206021030 (23 January 2006).

20084 January

It happens again

A deed in lieu of foreclosure is recorded. Rather than let it go to the courthouse steps a second time, whoever was holding the note took the keys instead.

Ten weeks later the house is conveyed to an investor.

Forty-four years after the trustee's sale, the same thing happened to the same house. That is the part of this story nobody puts in a brochure, and it is the reason the 2021 renovation is worth taking seriously — somebody spent real money on a house that had already failed twice.

Source: Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure, Instrument 208003766, recorded 4 January 2008 · Special Warranty Deed, Instrument 208098827, recorded 19 March 2008.

2021March — May

Three deeds in nine weeks

On 18 March 2021 the house sells. On the 19th it changes hands again. On 5 May the current owners buy it.

Six weeks after that, they pull a permit and start on the bones.

Source: Instruments 221073111 (18 Mar 2021), 221073846 (19 Mar 2021), 221127135 (5 May 2021).

20211 July

The house is brought back

A building permit is issued to a Fort Worth contractor at a stated valuation of $90,000. The scope on file is not cosmetic. It is the bones.

What it did not do is worth saying plainly: no bedrooms were added and no square footage was added. The rooms were rearranged inside a footprint that had barely moved since 1918.

Kitchen with a blue island, butcher block counter, stainless range and hex tile backsplash. — Permit line 1: **“Existing family room being converted to a kitchen.”**

Mud room with bench seating, open shelving and a door to the rear deck. — Permit line 3: **“…converted to mud room with egress door to the backyard deck.”**

Source: City of Fort Worth building permit PB21-09242, issued 07/01/2021.

2026

It comes to market

Two thousand and sixty-six square feet. Thirty-two more than the assessor measured in 1938.

In eighty-eight years the house has been added to by the width of a closet. Everything else that changed, changed inside the walls it already had.

The front elevation of 1013 Poindexter: a blue one-story bungalow with a full-width covered porch, brick piers and a brick walk. — 1013 Poindexter Street, 2026. Same footprint the assessor sketched on an orange card in 1938.

The House Today

What is documented · what is reported

Most listings blur two very different things: what the City actually has on file, and what a seller remembers doing. We're not going to do that to you. Here are both columns, labeled.

On record with the City

New HVAC unit with ductwork
New electrical service and wiring throughout
New plumbing — gas water heater, HVAC, stove
Twenty-one windows replaced
Interior and exterior doors replaced
Sheetrock and trim repair; paint inside and out
Family room converted to kitchen
Former kitchen converted to a bathroom
Spare room converted to mud room with egress to the rear deck
Laundry relocated to the pantry

Scope as written on City of Fort Worth permit PB21-09242.

Reported by the sellers

Roof
Wood lap siding
Exterior insulation
Foundation leveling
Porch and deck decking
Hardwood flooring, 2¼" oak
Butcher block countertops
Stone tile

Not covered by the permit on file. Stated by the owners; documentation was lost in a computer failure and is not available for inspection.

We'd rather you know which column something sits in now than find out during the option period. Ask us anything on this list and you'll get a straight answer.

The Ground It Sits On

Before the house

Twenty seconds, straight up. Starts on the park lawn under the oaks and climbs until downtown comes over the treeline. The house is the gray hip roof at lower left, right at the end.

The tree out the back gate

Behind this house is Traders Oak Park, and in it stands a live oak that the Texas A&M Forest Service lists among the Famous Trees of Texas.

In 1849 two traders — Henry Clay Daggett and Archibald Franklin Leonard — opened a mercantile store in a log cabin behind that tree, a mile out from the fort. The following year Tarrant County held its first election for county officers at that store, and the county's first district court convened there, with Judge Oran M. Roberts on the bench. Daggett and Leonard moved the business when the Army abandoned Fort Worth in September 1853.

What the Forest Service does not say — and what you will hear said anyway — is how old the tree is. No figure we can find holds up to checking. It is a very old live oak standing on the ground where this county held its first election, and that seems like plenty.

Source: Famous Trees of Texas — Traders Oak, Texas A&M Forest Service.

Before the houses

Samuels Avenue is one of the oldest streets in Fort Worth, and the ground north of downtown was being used long before anyone platted a lot on it.

When Brookes Baker surveyed this addition in 1911 he ran the east boundary to two things that no longer exist: the west line of the Fair Grounds tract, and the west line of the right of way of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad. The fairgrounds line is the interesting one. In the 1880s the ground just east and north of here held the Fort Worth Driving Park — a fenced harness-racing oval on Cold Springs Road, opened in November 1883, with a grandstand and a board fence and sulkies on the track.

The streetcar company built a dance pavilion to go with it: sixty feet by a hundred and ten, two cupolas with a railed walk between them, seats around an oval floor, and a saloon doing business in the basement. Mule cars ran north on Samuels to bring people to it. It opened in 1885 and it was gone by about 1907 — four houses on Pavillion Street were built from its salvaged lumber and they are still standing.

You can find it in the drawing. Just west of the track there is a long low building with two cupolas on the roof, exactly where the photographs put it.

All of which is neighborhood history, not house history. The pavilion was down and the racetrack long closed before anyone drove a nail here. But the east line of this lot was drawn to the fairgrounds boundary, and that call is on the plat in Baker's own hand.

Engraved 1886 bird's-eye vignette titled North End and Driving Park, showing Samuels Avenue, Evans Street, Woods, a cemetery, scattered houses, a fenced harness-racing oval with a grandstand, and Cold Spring Road. — **“North End and Driving Park.”** Border vignette from *Fort Worth, Tex., “The Queen of the Prairies,” county seat of Tarrant County 1886* — drawn by H. Wellge, lithographed by Beck & Pauli, published by Norris, Wellge & Co., Milwaukee. Library of Congress, G4034.F7A3 1886 .W4. Public domain. · See the whole sheet ↗

Readable in it: **SAMUELS AVE** and **EVANS ST** at left, **WOODS** through the middle, and **COLD SPRING ROAD** running along the fence on the right.

Detail of the 1886 vignette: a board-fenced oval track with a double rail, horses and sulkies, spectators, and a long grandstand flying a flag, with Cold Spring Road along the bottom. — **The Driving Park.** Board fence around the whole tract, a double-railed oval, sulkies on the track and a long grandstand flying a flag. Carriages on Cold Spring Road along the bottom.

Detail of the 1886 vignette showing a long low building west of the racetrack carrying two cupolas on its roof. — **Two cupolas, west of the oval.** Long, low, and open-sided — the pavilion. The same two-cupola roofline shows up in photographs taken twenty years later.

We went down this rabbit hole properly

Four blocks south, on the same street, four nineteenth-century houses are documented — and two of them are gone. We spent a week in that 1886 drawing working out which is which, got it wrong four times, and wrote down the corrections.

It's the best argument we know for why an old house that somebody takes on survives and one nobody wants doesn't.

Read: Samuels Avenue, 1886

How We Know

Sources & method

Every date and dollar figure up there came off a piece of paper. Where we're guessing, we say we're guessing. Where we've asked for something and haven't read it yet, we leave the space empty instead of filling it with something that sounds good. That's the whole method.

PlatRevised plat of Holloway Addition, 7 March 1911. Surveyed by Brookes Baker. Tarrant County Plat Records.
AssessmentTarrant County property assessment card, stamped 15 December 1938. Abstract 1045, Map 7042.
1927 purchaseDeed, Mobley & Delaney, Inc. to A. C. Maclin. Tarrant County Deed Records, Vol. 1001, Pgs. 80–82. Recorded 3 November 1927.
1958 conveyanceWarranty Deed, C. M. Maclin and wife Geraldine Maclin to the City of Fort Worth. Vol. 3247, Pg. 100. Instrument No. 58670. Recorded 30 September 1958.
Deed chainTarrant County Deed Records — Vols. 2698/429, 3503/546, 3996/27 (trustee's deed), 4432/497, 7201/249; Instruments 9020-534, 206021030, 208003766 (deed in lieu of foreclosure), 208098827, 221073111, 221073846, 221127135.
SurveyBurns Surveying, Barry S. Rhodes, R.P.L.S. No. 3691, 18 November 2020.
PermitCity of Fort Worth building permit PB21-09242, issued 1 July 2021.
1886 mapLibrary of Congress — Fort Worth, Tex., 1886, H. Wellge. Public domain.
Traders OakFamous Trees of Texas — Traders Oak, Texas A&M Forest Service.
NeighborhoodHometown by Handlebar (Richard Selcer) — Samuels Avenue, Parts 1–3; The Need for Speed.
PhotographsFort Worth Star-Telegram Collection, UTA Libraries Special Collections — linked, not reproduced.

The Listing

1013 Poindexter St, Fort Worth, TX 76102

It's for sale. Price, status and photos come straight off the MLS below — we don't type them into this page, so what you're looking at is what's true right now.

Come see it. We can walk the lot line and show you where the twenty-five feet went.

See the listing & photos 817-360-5555

What else we're working on

Every house gets the same treatment. Some of them have better stories than this one.

Do you live on one of these streets?

If your house is on Samuels, Poindexter, Prosser or Pavillion, it is probably on the 1911 plat too — and it has a record like this one sitting in the same books.

I'll tell you what yours is worth. And if you want, I'll go dig up its story too — same books, same clerk's handwriting, no charge.