Built in 1875 for William Branch Sayers and Adele Lockhart Sayers, this Victorian era residence stands at 221 St. Francis Street and anchors the north side of the 200 block with its neighbor, the Judge T. H. Spooner House. Local tour guides date its completion to the year after the couple’s 1874 marriage and identify it as the home of a prominent attorney turned banker.
People and public life
W. B. Sayers was born February 22, 1843, in Canton, Mississippi, moved to Bastrop in 1851, and attended the Bastrop Military Institute. He enlisted in Terry’s Texas Rangers in 1861, served as sergeant major and later adjutant, and near war’s end received a staff promotion to major. After the war he read law, partnered with James F. Miller, and on October 2, 1868 co-founded the Miller & Sayers banking firm in Gonzales. He represented District 27 in the Texas House of Representatives during the 13th and 14th Legislatures, 1873–1876. Sayers died in 1898 and is buried in the Gonzales Masonic Cemetery.
Architecture and setting
City materials describe the house as a Victorian or Queen Anne residence dating to 1875, consistent with the street’s period fabric of wood siding, broad porches, and brick pier foundations. Its setting beside the T. H. Spooner House places it within one of Gonzales’s best preserved historic blocks.
Research notes
Historic Sanborn fire insurance maps exist for Gonzales in 1885, 1891, 1902, 1907, and 1912 and can be used to confirm the footprint, porch configuration, and chimney count for this parcel. If you want those exact details added, I can pull the sheets next and extract them.