Courthouse Number 1: The Old Stone Fort

 

The Old Stone Fort is the modern name of a historic building, called La Casa Piedra by the Spanish.  It was the first mercantile house and a frequent seat of civil government in early Nacogdoches. In 1779 Antonio Gil Ibarvo laid out the town near the intersection of the Old San Antonio Road and La Calle del Norte and built a stone house to use in the trading business. It was constructed of the native iron ore that occurs in the area abundantly. The interior walls were made of ten-by-fourteen-inch sun-dried adobe blocks. Hand-hewn black walnut was used for sills and casements. The structure measured seventy feet along the Old San Antonio Road and twenty-three feet along Fredonia Street, as this lateral street was later called.  

With the second story, the building was twenty feet tall; it remained the tallest structure in Nacogdoches for nearly a century.  In 1805 Ibarvo sold his interest to Jose Luis de la Baga. Baga in turn sold it to William Barr within a year.  During these years the government used the structure as if it were government property. After Barr’s death, his business partner, John G. Davenport succeeded to ownership. John M. Durst purchased the Stone House from John Davenport, heir of Samuel Davenport, in 1829, and sold it to Juan Mora and Vuicente Cordova, district judge and district attorney of Nacogdoches in 1834.