Reprinted with Permission
By CASSIE SMITH
cassie.smith@theeagle.com
CALVERT -- Ghost-hunting groups have never picked up a single reading at The Hammond House, but that hasn't kept them from coming back in search of spirits from the dead.
Bill Norton, the owner of the historic building that is now a bed and breakfast, said he has a group coming at the end of the year to look for paranormal activity.
But the building isn't haunted, Norton said. The ghost-hunters are interested because of the building's age and the fact that it used to be a jail, he said.
A monument from the Robertson County Historical Society says the building at 604 Elm St. not far from Texas 6 used to be the county's courthouse.
But Norton says his research on the building's history indicates that's not the case.
"It's amazing how much inaccuracy I've come to find in history," he said.
History
Norton acquired the 4,000-square-foot house in 1995 after the Calvert Chamber of Commerce and the Robertson County Historical Society proposed he take it because it had been in his family.
"I figured if anyone was going to do anything with it, it was me," he said.
In 1870, Norton said, by an act of the state Legislature, the Robertson County seat was moved to Calvert, and county commissioners began to build a jail with plans for a courthouse nearby. But in 1879, the county seat was moved to Franklin after a local election, and the courthouse in Calvert was never built.
The cells were removed from the Calvert building and sent to the new jail in Franklin, and the building was sold to a local man who turned it into a hotel. The two-story building changed hands again in 1885, when it was sold to become a residence. And then, Norton said, it made it to his great-grandmother, Fannie Lee Hammond, in 1909.
Norton said his grandfather died in the house in 1963 and it sat vacant for three decades.
Norton said through restoring the building, he's become fascinated in its history, which has led to several findings about his family members and even the discovery of several relatives that he didn't know he had.
"For the longest time, when I was restoring this, I was under the assumption that this was a courthouse," he said.
But slowly as he made his way through the house, Norton said, there were signs that the historical marker in front of the house was wrong.
"I've always been a little bit more drawn to eccentricities of things and just the odder stuff. Somehow a jail was a little more intriguing," he said as he pointed to the holes left in window ledges where bars once prevented exit and the remains of square pegs in the floors often used in jails during that time period.
Accommodations
Proprietor Teresa O'Brien said the bed and breakfast attracts a lot of groups that rent the building for retreats and workshops. The kitchen staff can provide a continental breakfast or plan a special menu, she said.
On the first floor is the Tan Room, the Lavender Room and a parlor. Norton said he thinks one of the rooms used to be where the sheriff lived, and the other room was divided into two cells: one for the insane and the other for women. The rooms have high ceilings, clawfoot tubs and tall windows.
The second-story wooden floors lead toward the Green Room with full bath, the Blue Room, which has a parlor and full bath, and the Pink Room, which has a smaller sitting area and full bath.
The second story was built about the time the building became a hotel, he said.
Guests of the bed and breakfast can enjoy a continental-style breakfast that includes fruit kolaches and klobasneks. Weekend rates are $100, with weekday rates of $90. Special rates are available for packages, weddings, reunions, scrapbooking and other special events.
Visitors can view history books and old photos of what the bed and breakfast looked like when it housed prisoners.
IF YOU GO
The Hammond House
604 Elm St., Calvert
364-2201
On the web:
Hammond House website
Hammond House Twitter page
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Halloween at The Hammond House Bed and Breakfast in Calvert, Texas
Explore The Hammond House Bed and Breakfast - Is it Haunted? A paranormal crew is coming to stay the entire evening in October, but what about that posh party?
Friday, August 6, 2010
Chocolatier To The Royals Sets Up Shop In Small Central Texas Town
Reprinted with permission from KWTX.COM - The Hammond House in Calvert, TX LOVES COCOAMODA's chocolate Truffles and outstanding restaurant.
CALVERT (May 19, 2010)—Ken Wilkinson, a classically trained chef who learned his craft some of the finest kitchens in Europe, says he wants to put the small Central Texas town of Calvert on the map as the chocolate capital of the world.
Wilkinson started his career as an apprentice at a hotel restaurant in England and later at a Michelin-rated kitchen in Switzerland.
But eventually, he decided to apply his talent to chocolate, and his creations were in demand at lavish events hosted by members of Britain’s royal family.
But, he says, he got to Texas as soon as he could, moving in the 1980s to Houston where he hosted a cable TV show dedicated to classical French cuisine.
And now he commutes daily to Calvert where he operates COCOAMODA, a chocolate factory in a 19th century building that once housed a dry good store and a French bistro and chocolate boutique directly across the street.
"Paris in Texas, why not?” he asks.
But Wilkinson says his ultimate goal is to poke the French in the eye, much as California’s wine industry has, by making the sleepy Robertson County town the chocolate capital of the world with his truffles, candied fruits and gelees.
"Calvert is great, because it's untouched Victorian style,” he says.
“If you can have something historic rather than new, it says a lot about lineage of a place…and so I felt like tying that in with high end chocolates,” he said.
"I really want to put Texas on the worldwide map as being the place for chocolate,” he says.
“Why not?"
COCOAMODA Website
CALVERT (May 19, 2010)—Ken Wilkinson, a classically trained chef who learned his craft some of the finest kitchens in Europe, says he wants to put the small Central Texas town of Calvert on the map as the chocolate capital of the world.
Wilkinson started his career as an apprentice at a hotel restaurant in England and later at a Michelin-rated kitchen in Switzerland.
But eventually, he decided to apply his talent to chocolate, and his creations were in demand at lavish events hosted by members of Britain’s royal family.
But, he says, he got to Texas as soon as he could, moving in the 1980s to Houston where he hosted a cable TV show dedicated to classical French cuisine.
And now he commutes daily to Calvert where he operates COCOAMODA, a chocolate factory in a 19th century building that once housed a dry good store and a French bistro and chocolate boutique directly across the street.
"Paris in Texas, why not?” he asks.
But Wilkinson says his ultimate goal is to poke the French in the eye, much as California’s wine industry has, by making the sleepy Robertson County town the chocolate capital of the world with his truffles, candied fruits and gelees.
"Calvert is great, because it's untouched Victorian style,” he says.
“If you can have something historic rather than new, it says a lot about lineage of a place…and so I felt like tying that in with high end chocolates,” he said.
"I really want to put Texas on the worldwide map as being the place for chocolate,” he says.
“Why not?"
COCOAMODA Website
Monday, July 5, 2010
More Reasons to Relax The Hammond House
- Location:
- In the heart of Calvert's residential district (very quite)
- 34 miles from the metropolitan center of Bryan/College Station (Walmart, Home Depot, etc.)
- Walking distance to local restaurants
- Rooms:
- 6 large bedrooms, four with private baths and two with a shared bath
- Free TV and cable connection
- Free Internet connection
- Weekly maid service with fresh towels and linens
- Microwave ovens, mini-fridges and coffee makers available
- Full kitchen privileges including washer/dryer, oven, stove, and full sized refrigerator
- Large deck to kick back on between shifts
- Grounds include a historic gazebo and historic carriage house
- Backs up to a beautiful historic cemetery
Bill H. Norton
Owner, The Hammond House
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Interesting Links Related to The Hammond House in Calvert, TX
The following links are to sites with more information about the surrounding areas and the history of the Hammond house.
Braggin' on the Brazos: A two minute radio show featuring the history of Central Texas. A segment on the Hammond House is upcoming.
Celebrity Links:
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Frequently Asked Questions
Wait a minute; I thought it was a courthouse, not a jail. Even the Texas Historical Commission sign in the front says it was a courthouse. Well, all my life I thought it was a courthouse also, and so have at least the last four generations of those who lived there despite the fact that two well-researched books on the history of Robertson County stated unequivocally that it was a jail.
When my great-grandmother bought the buildings in 1909 it was assumed that the main building had been the old Robertson County Courthouse building, and the smaller building immediately behind it had been the jail. That made a lot of sense actually. First of all it's hard to imagine a small county of limited resources and people building such a grand building to house criminals. Then there was the fact that two of the windows in the smaller building had bars on them. That pretty obviously makes that building a jail, doesn't it? Finally, if this was supposed to be the old jail, then where was the old courthouse? Don't you need a courthouse before you can start putting people in jail?
Well, apparently folks back then took their jails seriously. When Calvert became the county seat the first thing the County Commissioners did was to set about building a jail - the courthouse could wait. In fact for the entire time that Calvert was the county seat the courthouse was simply the upstairs of a building in downtown Calvert that they rented from Jacques Adoue. The jail house was the priority. The way jails worked back then was to have the sheriff and his family live in the front of the building while the prisoners stayed in cells inside a large back room. This way there would almost always be someone there to watch after the prisoners, and the sheriff's wife could prepare their meals.
When the county seat was moved to Franklin a few years later the Commissioners followed the same process - jail first, courthouse later. In fact the old jail in Franklin is laid out exactly as the Hammond House was originally.
Hmmm… well, that still doesn't explain the barred windows on the smaller building. That one had me stumped for a while. One of the first things that we did when we started restoring the house was to scrape off most of the plaster that had been applied to the inside walls. This uncovered the ghosts of a couple of small windows in the cell room. One of the ghosts was quite distinct and perfectly matched the frame of the barred windows in the smaller building.
Here's what I think happened. After the building ceased to be needed as a jail it was converted into a hotel. The hotel owner, Andy Faulkner, had no need for the large one and a half story room that the prisoners had been kept in, so he set about making the room a full two stories and added large, impressive windows in place of the little jail windows. Faulkner was too frugal to throw the jail windows away so he reused them in the new building he was erecting in back. The downstairs of that building would serve as the kitchen and the upstairs as the manager's apartment.
What about the carriage house? Well, I don't know too much about it yet. I assume it was built by Andy Faulkner for his hotel guests, but since I haven't started any real work on it I can't be sure.
What's the deal with the big trench you dug around the inside of the first floor? In the 1970's and 80's an effort was made to turn the building into a house museum. One of the things they did was to tear out the pine flooring and pour a concrete slab. With the crawl space now gone there was no place for the moisture in the round to go, so over time it was absorbed by the relatively soft bricks in a process called rising damp. This caused serious damage to the bricks and especially to the mortar. We considered removing the entire slab but decided that we could solve the problem by digging the trench to provide a cavity for the moisture to evaporate into before it reached the brick footings.
Bill H. Norton
Owner, The Hammond House
When my great-grandmother bought the buildings in 1909 it was assumed that the main building had been the old Robertson County Courthouse building, and the smaller building immediately behind it had been the jail. That made a lot of sense actually. First of all it's hard to imagine a small county of limited resources and people building such a grand building to house criminals. Then there was the fact that two of the windows in the smaller building had bars on them. That pretty obviously makes that building a jail, doesn't it? Finally, if this was supposed to be the old jail, then where was the old courthouse? Don't you need a courthouse before you can start putting people in jail?
Well, apparently folks back then took their jails seriously. When Calvert became the county seat the first thing the County Commissioners did was to set about building a jail - the courthouse could wait. In fact for the entire time that Calvert was the county seat the courthouse was simply the upstairs of a building in downtown Calvert that they rented from Jacques Adoue. The jail house was the priority. The way jails worked back then was to have the sheriff and his family live in the front of the building while the prisoners stayed in cells inside a large back room. This way there would almost always be someone there to watch after the prisoners, and the sheriff's wife could prepare their meals.
When the county seat was moved to Franklin a few years later the Commissioners followed the same process - jail first, courthouse later. In fact the old jail in Franklin is laid out exactly as the Hammond House was originally.
Hmmm… well, that still doesn't explain the barred windows on the smaller building. That one had me stumped for a while. One of the first things that we did when we started restoring the house was to scrape off most of the plaster that had been applied to the inside walls. This uncovered the ghosts of a couple of small windows in the cell room. One of the ghosts was quite distinct and perfectly matched the frame of the barred windows in the smaller building.
Here's what I think happened. After the building ceased to be needed as a jail it was converted into a hotel. The hotel owner, Andy Faulkner, had no need for the large one and a half story room that the prisoners had been kept in, so he set about making the room a full two stories and added large, impressive windows in place of the little jail windows. Faulkner was too frugal to throw the jail windows away so he reused them in the new building he was erecting in back. The downstairs of that building would serve as the kitchen and the upstairs as the manager's apartment.
What about the carriage house? Well, I don't know too much about it yet. I assume it was built by Andy Faulkner for his hotel guests, but since I haven't started any real work on it I can't be sure.
What's the deal with the big trench you dug around the inside of the first floor? In the 1970's and 80's an effort was made to turn the building into a house museum. One of the things they did was to tear out the pine flooring and pour a concrete slab. With the crawl space now gone there was no place for the moisture in the round to go, so over time it was absorbed by the relatively soft bricks in a process called rising damp. This caused serious damage to the bricks and especially to the mortar. We considered removing the entire slab but decided that we could solve the problem by digging the trench to provide a cavity for the moisture to evaporate into before it reached the brick footings.
Bill H. Norton
Owner, The Hammond House
Thursday, February 11, 2010
History of The Hammond House
In August of 1995 I acquired the Hammond House from the Calvert Chamber of Commerce and the Robertson County Historical Society. The processes that brought the house to me were about as strange as the history of the house itself, and, indeed those two stories are intertwined. It all begins during the days of Reconstruction. In 1870, by an act of the State Legislature, the county seat of Robertson County was moved to Calvert, Texas. This was the fourth county seat, and, perhaps in hopes of making Calvert the last, the Commissioners began to build a beautiful and impressive jail and had plans for a courthouse nearby. Alas, in 1879 the county seat was again moved to Franklin, this time as the result of a vote in a local election. The courthouse in Calvert was never built, but the jail, now known as the Hammond House, stands today.
After the cells were removed and sent off to the new jail in Franklin, the building was sold to a local man named Andy Faulkner who then turned it into a hotel. We believe it was Faulkner who made the major changes to the part of the building that was originally used as the cell room. In 1885 Faulkner sold the house to Robert Brown who used it as his residence, and eventually sold it to my great grandmother, Fannie Lee Hammond, in 1909. Fannie Lee, or Nannie as she was better known, raised her family in the downstairs and rented the upstairs to boarders. My father and his brothers and sisters were all raised in the house. My grand father died in the house in 1963, and his heirs sold it to the Calvert Chamber of Commerce, which in turn deeded it to the Robertson County Historical Society. The RCHS valiantly tried to turn the building into a house museum, but eventually felt it best to deed it back to the family, and the only one interested in taking it was me (or "I" for you grammarians).
Bill H. Norton
Owner, The Hammond House
After the cells were removed and sent off to the new jail in Franklin, the building was sold to a local man named Andy Faulkner who then turned it into a hotel. We believe it was Faulkner who made the major changes to the part of the building that was originally used as the cell room. In 1885 Faulkner sold the house to Robert Brown who used it as his residence, and eventually sold it to my great grandmother, Fannie Lee Hammond, in 1909. Fannie Lee, or Nannie as she was better known, raised her family in the downstairs and rented the upstairs to boarders. My father and his brothers and sisters were all raised in the house. My grand father died in the house in 1963, and his heirs sold it to the Calvert Chamber of Commerce, which in turn deeded it to the Robertson County Historical Society. The RCHS valiantly tried to turn the building into a house museum, but eventually felt it best to deed it back to the family, and the only one interested in taking it was me (or "I" for you grammarians).
Bill H. Norton
Owner, The Hammond House
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