Kosse, Limestone County
What is known as Bassett Farms encompasses nearly 2,500 acres of land in Limestone and Falls Counties. The 1875 Bassett House and surrounding Bassett Home Place tract represent the core of the property, retained in family hands for over one hundred years. Henry Caleb Bassett (1817-1888) was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and worked in a cotton factory, as a carpenter’s apprentice and in the building and contracting trades before starting a career in banking. In 1869, Bassett moved to Texas, settling in Grimes County. In February 1871, he purchased land near the Little Brazos River northwest of Kosse, the future site of the Bassett House, along with land closer to the Kosse townsite where he built a small wood-frame house. In 1874, Bassett married Hattie Ford Pope (1851-1936). In preparation for their first child who was born in 1875, the couple constructed a two-story red-brown brick house, one of Limestone County’s first. Symmetrical and rectangular in plan, the house’s brick masonry exterior walls are unusual for Texas farmhouses of the mid-1870s and were likely built with local bricks from the Kosse area. A one-story gable-roof addition to the main house and numerous outbuildings are also on the property. A variety of agricultural functions took place on the farm and ranch, including livestock, corn, cotton, and peach trees, and the family continued to acquire additional acreage that was used for grazing or rented to farm tenants. The Bassett House and Home Place tract provide an enduring example of rural large-scale Texas farming and ranching in the 19th and 20th centuries.