George Washington West invited Chauncy Canfield to build a business in his new town of George West in 1914, and Canfield arrived ahead of his family to establish a store. His wife, Minnie Elizabeth (Hale), her sister Callie, and the couple’s three children came on the first passenger train. Designed in Prairie and English cottage style, their house became the first family home in George West. Later, their son Hale married Mabel Frances Lamm and moved nearby. In 1947, the original house was moved one block west and north to 508 Crockett Street to make way for commercial construction on Houston Street. Minnie and her daughters, Josephine and Lou Emma, added a southern colonial exterior and lived there until Lou Emma’s death in 1988.