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More About the
1838 Michel B. Menard House
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Longtime Galveston Historical Foundation Supporters Fred and Pat Burns restored Galveston's oldest surviving residence from near demise in the early 1990s. In 1996 it was recognized by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the most important residential preservation success stories in the country.
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The house was built by Michel Branamour Menard, a founder of Galveston. The property passed between Menard and the Allen brothers (founders of Houston) in many complicated dealings in the early years of the house. Menard was born near Montreal in 1805 and entered the fur trading company of John Jacob Astor at the age of 14. About 1823 he joined his well-to-do uncle Pierre Menard, a merchant and territorial Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. Here at Kaskaskia, he learned polite manners and some English. He became a trader to a band of Shawnee for his uncle's trading house, Menard and Valle, and moved with the tribe to northeastern Arkansas and then to the Red River above Natchitoches. By 1829 Menard visited Nacogodoches and met Thomas McKinney, the partner of Samuel May Williams. He began speculating in Texas land in 1833. Land in Texas could only be granted to Mexican-born citizens. He did this with the help of an acquaintance by the name of Juan Seguin, a Mexican who would fight under Sam Houston at the battle of San Jacinto. Seguin applied for a headright of one league and labor (4,605 acres) on behalf of Menard in 1833. Menard specified that the land be at the eastern end of Galveston Island. This claim was confirmed on December 9, 1836 and the Galveston City Company was created. The city was mapped out and lots were sold.
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The Menard House was an abandoned, crumbling haven for drug dealers for many years before philanthropists Fred and Pat Burns restored the property to its 1850s grandeur.
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In his personal life, Menard lived a series of tragedies. His bride, Dianne LeClere of St. Louis, died of cholera en route to Texas in 1833. In 1837 he married a cousin, Catherine Maxwell of Kaskaskia, and began building a house on the island. Catherine died of childbed fever the following summer. The bereaved man seems to have sold parts of his property to A.C. and J.K. Allen, perhaps to clear a debt.
Menard married for a third time in 1843, having regained his house through purchases made by his cousin Peter, who deeded the tract to the new Mrs. Menard. This was done to protect the property from creditors during hard times. During this time, the wings were probably added to the house. Menard's third wife, Mary Jane Clemens Riddle Menard, formerly of St. Louis, lived in the house only four years before her death at age 33 in December 1847. Within two years, Menard took a fourth wife, a widow, Rebecca Mary Bass. She was a native of Georgia who had two daughters, Helen and Clara, whom Menard adopted. In 1850, Rebecca bore him his only son, Doswell, who was named for Menard's Galveston Business associate, J. Temple Doswell.
At the time of the house's construction, the building was well outside of town. Lots outside the dirt and smell of the city were thought to be much healthier. Surrounding the Menard property were estates of some of the most powerful men in Galveston and Texas: Samuel May Williams, Gale Borden, Thomas Borden, and Thomas McKinney. Menard's property consisted of ten sandy acres with little vegetation.
Michel Menard died in 1856 at the age of 51, from a cancer on his back, and his descendants occupied the house until 1879. In 1880, the house was bought by Edwin N. Ketchum. Mr. Ketchum was police chief during the 1900 storm and operated a livery stable in the back of the house.
When the Menard family lived here, they called their property "The Oaks." Ketchum renamed it "Old Chaparral" because he found it overgrown with weeds and brush.
The current owners have spent years researching, repairing, and reconstructing the house. It has been furnished with furniture that was popular on the East Coast at the time of the house's construction and first occupancy. Bear in mind that this is probably not the type of interior that one would have seen when visiting the Menards in the mid-nineteenth century. The house would have been furnished more like the Samuel May Williams Home. However, the furniture the owners have collected here gives visitors a good introduction in the Neoclassicism that was popular at the time and to which many people aspired.
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