Axe ’Em, Jacks!
The fort on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University started its life as a magnificent Spanish colonial house. Built by Antonio Gil Y’Barbo sometime between 1788 and 1791 on the Camino Real, the house weathered four revolutionary actions, acquiring its nickname the "Old Stone Fort" along the way.
The house changed hands many times and was used for, well, whatever the owners needed and some things they didn’t. The Mexican government billeted soldiers in the house and a succession of filibusterers took temporary possession of the building before it settled into its final incarnation as a saloon. But the house Y’Barbo built could not withstand the march of progress. Demolished in 1902 against a backdrop of statewide protest, Y’Barbo’s house was the focal point of one of the first preservation efforts in Texas.
A replica structure built in 1936 by the Texas Centennial Commission, the Stone Fort Museum was shepherded into existence by the Cum Concilio Club, a women’s literary group organized in 1894.