Goodman House, Tyler, Tx

We decided to take the tour of this lovely historic home in Tyler, Tx. The amount of original artifacts in the home was amazing.

The Goodman home was originally built in 1859 as a one-story, four-room house, and it was established on a 9-acre wooded parcel of land. It was known as Bonnie Castle by its first owner and occupant, Samuel Gallatin Smith. The young well-to-do bachelor and attorney sold the house in 1861 when the Civil War broke out. Mr. Smith became a Captain in the Confederacy and was later killed in battle in Louisiana. The next owner who bought the home in 1861 was Franklin N. Gary, a local school teacher. In 1866, a year after the Civil War ended, Dr. Samuel Adams Goodman, a retired country doctor from South Carolina, purchased the house from Mr. Gary. The following year in 1867, his son, Dr. William Jeffries Goodman, a local doctor and Civil War Major and Chief Surgeon, bought the house from his father and moved in with his new bride, Mary Priscilla Gaston. Her brother was William Henry Gaston, a founder of the city of Dallas, and one of Dallas' first millionaires. For 73 years and four generations, this prominent family made the house their family home.