Memorial Object

Plaque/Marker

Enslaver

Jim Crow

House, Edward M.

Stone memorializing Edward M. House

Holt, Hamilton

The “Walk of Fame” was created in 1929 by then-president Hamilton Holt to honor significant historical figures. The memorial is located in the center of campus around Mills Lawn.

Edward M. House (1858-1938) was born into a wealthy family in Houston, Texas. His family held cotton and sugar plantations, worked by slaves, that made him financially independent throughout his life. His father, Thomas House, ran a fleet of blockade runners during the Civil War that managed to export cotton to Europe and bring weapons back to the Confederacy. After the war, House's diaries record him and his friends verbally and physically assaulting freedmen.

In the late nineteenth century, House became involved in Texas politics, advising a number of governors. His political philosophy, as described by one biographer, "was steeped in the racist notions of Anglo-Saxonism and Social Darwinism."

Edward M. House transitioned his focus from local Texas politics to national politics and gained the attention of former New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson. When Wilson was running in the 1912 Democratic Presidential Nomination, House devoted his efforts to helping Woodrow Wilson win the 1912 Presidential election. Once Woodrow Wilson won the presidency, House became a close advisor. With the outbreak of World War I, House was involved in American-European relations to secure allied partnerships and establish peace after the war. Edward House worked with Woodrow Wilson and helped influence Wilson’s Fourteen Points, as well as helped draft ideas of the League of Nations.

The stone block used for his memorial in the Walk of Fame was sent to Hamilton Holt of Rollins College by family and friends of Edward M. House from his former home in Austin, Texas after his death in 1938.

Holt, Hamilton

18.5x10.5 inches. Engraved stone. Light Brown. Rough.

COL. EDWARD M.
HOUSE
AUSTIN TEXAS

Holt, Hamilton

1939

1890-1945: Era of the Lost Cause, Jim Crow legal segregation and discrimination, and organized anti-Black racism

Holt, Hamilton

Walk of Fame

Rollins College; Winter Park, Florida

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q704368

House and Wilson

House Biography

Edward House

Scott D. Bruce, "Woodrow Wilson's Colonial Emissary"