W.T. Colmesneil House The town of Colmesneil began as two separate communities--Ogden in the north and Colmesneil in the south. The town of Ogden was the business center, and Comesneil grew up around the Texas and New Orleans Railroad tracks. The area boomed during the late nineteenth century, because the arrival of the railroads made it economical to build lumber mills in the area. The Yellow Pine Lumber Company was one of the most well-known mills. The towns of Ogden and Colmesneil consolidated under the name Colmesneil in early 1888. William Taylor Colmesneil, the man for whom the town was named, built this house in 1883. He was one of the first conductors on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, a passenger train that ran from Beaumont to Rockland. According to legend, Colmesneil had the house built facing the railroad tracks so that he could sit on the front porch and warch the trains go by. Colmesneil sold the house to Frank Patterson in 1885 and moved on with the railroad. He married Fannie Taylor in 1886, and one child, Charles, was born to the marriage. Colmesneil worked as a railroad conductor throughout his life and died in Evansville, Indiana in 1907. Cowners of the home after Patterson included J.E. Votaw, Dr. William Martin Van Buren Stewart, Robert L. Mann and Katherine Magouyrk. The original section of the shiplap siding house is a center-passage floor plan with a large room on either side of a hallway and tapered brick chimneys on the ends. Paired double-hung windows are aligned on either side of the chimneys and the entry door. An early addition of rooms and a new porch entry created a modified L-plan layout. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-2008 #15459