berclair
A Texas
B
MANSION
ehind the elaborate black iron gates lies the
Berclair Mansion. Five sisters resided in this
10,000 square foot residence, with 22 rooms and
filled with rare and exquisite antiques some of
which had previously been owned by European nobility.
Upon the death of the last of the sisters in 1975, the mansion
was boarded up and unoccupied for almost 30 years. What
would cause the niece who inherited it to leave instructions
in her will that the home should be demolished?
The story begins in 1936. Laurette Elizabeth Wilkinson (“Miss Etta”), the second of 8
children, was born in 1861 on Matagorda Island. In 1892, at the age of 31, Etta married
James Crogan Ludlow Terrell, a Victoria cattleman who was just 3 years younger than
her father. Starting over after the Civil War with only $1300 in Confederate money and
one steer, Terrell would come to amass a fortune in over 25,000 acres of South Texas
ranchland. The couple would have two children, a daughter who died at 8 days old and
a son, Ripley, who would sadly pass in 1928. At the death of her husband in 1919, Miss
Etta would return to the community of Berclair to live with her family.
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