Antonio Gil Y’Barbo built his stone home around 1790, and it served the community of the Y’Barbo colony performing various functions for over a century. It stood against armed revolts–acquiring the nickname “The Old Stone Fort”–but it was not revolutions that brought the old house down. Rather, the “wheels of progress” razed the structure in 1902, but the Texas Centennial Commission raised it up again in 1936.

Now the replica of the Old Stone Fort on Stephen F. Austin State University campus in Nacogdoches houses a museum and the East Texas Research Center, which boasts some excellent primary source documents.