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Surrounding Area

Zoned to the highly acclaimed Montgomery ISD.
Close to shopping, parks, restaurants and all that downtown Montgomery has to offer.

History

One of the homes in #HistoricMontgomeryTX that does not get very much attention is the Waters-Wood home on the corner of Houston and Stewart Streets.

As recounted in a Conroe Courier article from April 17, 1991: "The Victorian gingerbread cottage began as a two-room home for newlyweds Dr. Henry and Margaret Cherry Dean Waters in 1899. They immediately began expanding, using the original rooms as a base. It was their home until they left it to their daughter, Mrs. Lockett Waters Wood.... Born in the home in 1908, she vividly recalls the days before indoor plumbing, city water, electricity, and automobiles. 'My father had a big garden in the back yard. He grafted trees and crossed plants, ' she said, pointing to still-fertile, nearly 100-year old pecan tree that bears three types of pecans. 'There used to be a large barn in the back of the house. We had pigeons, cows, and horses. We had an orchard and a pond.'

Henry W. Waters, Jr. entered the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, in 1891 when the school began its first session. He was sponsored at medical school by his father, Dr. H.W. Waters, Sr., who was a lawyer in Houston and then a surgeon during the Civil War. Waters Jr. was one of seven men who graduated from UTMB in 1894.

He married Miss Dean in her parents' home near Mink (now Magnolia) at 3pm on Feb. 21, 1899. The Waters had three daughters, including Miss Lockett, and one son, who was killed in action in World War II while serving as a navigator with the Flying Tigers. Dr. Waters practiced medicine in Montgomery until 1921.

'He made calls in his horse and buggy or just on his horse named Dan. I have a friend who said that when she was born, my dad had to jump his horse and swim the creek,' Miss Lockett recalled. 'In 1914, he went to Houston and bought his first Ford. Often Dr. Waters would take young Lockett on house calls. 'I went as his gate opener,' she said. 'Everywhere we stopped, I would get out and open the gates. Once he ran over a cow and just picked the car up. He lifted the car off the cow and the cow walked away.'

Miss Lockett said her family was one of the few in town with a bathtub. Dr. Walters sometimes hauled the tub to patients' homes to immerse them to reduce fevers. 'There were no hospitals close by. My dad would spend nights with the critical patients. He would even take them in his own car to the hospital in Galveston,' she said. Local reports also state that Dr. Waters worked tirelessly during the influenza epidemic of 1917 as he looked after critically ill patients in town and in rural areas around Montgomery.

Miss Lockett's fond memories of her father include his nicknames for her: Alligator Bait and Tinkums. 'My daddy loved to hunt and fish. He liked to plant all types of plants. He planted asparagus and we had it coming up to the house and growing all the way to the cemetery,' she said.

Though there were no city limits per se, Miss Lockett said Montgomery was much larger then than now. 'We walked to church and walked to school. I'd walked home for lunch, too,' she said. 'Minnie (Hunter, the children's nanny) would teach me my spelling and I would trot back to school and we'd have a spelling bee every day.'

Miss Hunter's quarters were separate from the family's and are still standing on the home site. She lived there until 1922. 'I loved Minnie. I wanted to live with her in her house,' Miss Lockett recalled. 'There was no electricity here then. We had lamps. We finally got a fancy one that you had to pump up. It would flame up when my daddy would light it and I would run outside.' Electricity was installed in the home at some time after the family bought their Model A. The original chicken coop is still behind the house, as is the family's "deluxe, four-hole" outhouse."

Dr Waters died in 1921. Miss Lockett lived in the home until 1926 when she left to teach school near Tomball. She also taught school in Galveston County from 1931 to 1937. Miss Lockett graduated from Sam Houston State Teachers College (now Sam Houston State University) in 1949 and obtained her Masters degree from the University of Houston. She taught fifth grade at Montgomery for 22 years. Miss Lockett and her husband, W.B. Wood, bought the home upon her mother's death in 1951."

Note: W.B. Wood was the brother of Valda Wood who lived in Homewood until her death in 1999. Homewood is also listed as a historic home on this website.