Stiles-Pigg Farmstead, 1.7 miles northeast of the intersection of Bakers Branch and Old Maypearl Roads, Waxahachie, Ellis County, TX

Significance: The farmstead dates to the late nineteenth century when Ellis County farms were among the most productive sources of cotton in the nation. Although tenant farmers grew much of the cotton in the county, owner-occupied farms such as the Stiles-Pigg Farmstead also played key roles in the local cotton trade. Several families have owned this property, but it is associated most strongly with the Stiles family, which built the house about 1895, and George E. Pigg, who owned and worked the farmstead from 1920 to 1972. The property, which presently includes about 13 acres of land, originally encompassed 108.25 acres in the Alanson Ferguson Survey, near the Boz community in western Ellis County, Texas. William Stiles acquired the land in 1891 and later conveyed it to his son, Benjamin, about 1896. The Stileses, like most area farmers, grew cotton. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were prosperous times for local cotton growers, and profits from the sale of cotton enabled many farmers to build new homes, such as the one on this property. The house, with its steeply pitched hipped roof and side gables, is a locally common vernacular domestic form of the 1890s and 1900s. It displays noteworthy Queen Anne ornamentation. In 1906 Stiles sold the property, which George E. Pigg later purchased in 1920. Pigg, who erected many of the existing outbuildings, was also a cotton farmer. He owned the property until 1974. The Stiles-Pigg Farmstead, with its large and relatively well-preserved main residence, illustrated the prosperity cotton brought to the area during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is one of the best surviving examples of a historic owner-occupied farm in western Ellis County.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N1876
Survey number: HABS TX-3382
Building/structure dates: ca. 1895 Initial Construction