Marker #2726 - 1982. This two-story limestone house is believed to have been built about 1880 by Ives Brown for Ichabod and Alice Kingsbury. In 1925 it was purchased by Maria (Williams) James (1859-1940), the pioneer surveyor and early community leader who platted the town of Boerne in 1852. Named `Puccoon` by Maria for her ancestral home in Hanover County, Virginia, the residence remained in her family following her death.
Records show that John Small originally owned the land where the house is now located. In 1853 his heir, Martha A. Solomon and her husband Alexander, sold 1,280 acres to Dr. W.G Kingsbury for $300. Dr. Kingsbury, in turn, sold a part of the land to William Kernaghan. William Dietert acquired the Dietert Addition acreage in 1874 and town lots No. 3 and 6 were sold to Ichabod and Alice V. Kingsbury in 1879.
In 1891, the property was purchased by Bertha Biessner who later married H. H. McFarland. The McFarland heirs sold the house to Mrs. John H. James in 1925. She bought it to replace a summer home in Comfort that she and her late husband previously owned. (Judge John James was the son of John James, a well known land dealer who with Gus Theissen, platted and surveyed the city of Boerne in 1852 and later gave the Main Plaza and courthouse land to Boerne and Kendall County)
The beautiful old house which was built around 1880 has been known variously as the Kingsbury-Biessner home, the Kingsbury Place, the McFarland Home and now the James House, is presently owned by Maria M. Sykes, a great-grand- daughter of John James, the great frontier surveyor and businessman who contributed so much to the early development of Boerne.
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