HGB Ep. 626 - Thistle Hill House

The Moment in Oddity - Security Geese (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

Home security is important. Many of us utilize home alarm services to give us peace of mind that we will be alerted to an intruder. There are various brands at varying price points available on the market. Some people have large dogs for the sole purpose of protecting their property. But what about a flock of geese for your home protection? If you have ever visited a local pond to feed the ducks, you would have been made quite aware if there were geese in the vicinity. Geese are highly territorial animals who will fiercely protect their domain, squawking and chasing any person they perceive as an intruder. Many animal lovers, like myself, have experienced the wrath of a goose that doesn't want you near them. They often will chase, hiss and bite at you. They are alert at night. Although they are diurnal, geese have excellent hearing and vision, and they will often sound alarms at night. The earliest recorded use of geese as a security measure dates back to 390 B.C. in Ancient Rome. Historical accounts state that sacred geese were kept at the Temple of Juno on the Capitoline Hill. They famously honked and flapped their wings, alerting Roman soldiers to a surprise, nighttime attack on the Temple by the Gauls, thus saving the city. Geese have been used to patrol the Ballantine's Scotch whiskey warehouses since 1959. They are also currently used in prisons in Brazil as a supplementary 'goose patrol' to detect intruders or escape attempts. Although using a flock of geese for home security is unconventional, it sounds like a very efficient option, and it certainly is odd.

Thistle Hill House 

Thistle Hill House is also known as the Wharton-Scott House and was built back in the early 1900s in Fort Worth, Texas. This historic mansion goes back to the cattle baron era of the city and indeed, it was home to a cattle baron's daughter. This is a gorgeous and unique home, so its not surprising that previous owners would stick around even after passing away. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Thistle Hill House. 

Fort Worth would attract many cattle barons as it came to be known as "Cowtown."  Four million head of cattle would come through the town and its stockyards in the late 1800s. These barons and the other rich and influential in the city would make Quality Hill their home. Quality Hill was on the west side and sat on a bluff that overlooked Fort Worth and the Trinity River. Some of the greatest architects of the time designed homes for this neighborhood with the latest amenities and manicured landscapes. The neighborhood defined fine living throughout the Gilded Age in Fort Worth. Many of those Victorian mansions that were built no longer remain, but the Thistle Hill House is still here. The mansion looks almost out of place as it is situated in the middle of the city's Medical District at 1509 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Fort Worth Telegram reported on December 31, 1902, "Plans are being prepared by Architect M.R. Sanguinet for the erection of a magnificent residence on the old Zane Certi estate, fronting on Pennsylvania Avenue, which was recently purchased by E.B. Wharton. The house will be built in the old colonial style, which has grown in popularity of late, and is to cost between $25,000 and $30,000. Work has begun on the specifications today and they will be completed before the end of January. Mr. Wharton recently came to Texas from the east. He has extensive live stock interests near Decatur, in this state, and is reckoned a millionaire. He paid $30,000 for the land, which comprises six and one-half acres in one of the choicest residence districts of the city." 

Sanguinet - and we just love that name - had worked in Fort Worth as an architect since 1883 and in 1903, he formed the architectural firm Sanguinet & Staats with draftsman Carl Staats. The firm specialized in steel-frame construction and would go on to build several skyscrapers in Texas, but they also built several mansions. The Wharton-Scott House was commissioned by William Thomas Waggoner for his daughter Electra and her husband Albert Buck Wharton as a wedding present. 

Waggoner had been born in Texas in 1852 and he learned ranching from his father. When he was 18-years-old, his father gave him $12 to drive 5000 steer to Abilene, Kansas and he not only successfully got the herd to their destination, but he sold the herd for a profit of $55,000. He married Ella Halsell in 1877 and the couple had five children, two of whom died as children. When his father died in 1902, he inherited property in several Texas counties. Waggoner was a big proponent for open range and he tried to convince President Theodore Roosevelt to support that by bringing him out to some land he leased from the Comanche in Oklahoma. The men went wolf hunting and while the President had a great time, he didn't support keeping the range open. And like the Beverly Hillbillies, Waggoner was drilling for water on his main ranch and struck oil. He founded Waggoner Refinery in 1911. Cattle weren't the only animals that he specialized in, he also raised thoroughbreds. With his two sons, he founded what would become the colossal Three D's Stock Farm that grew to a million acres. He also built Arlington Downs racetrack that is between Fort Worth and Dallas. They had several horses race in the Kentucky Derby, but no good finishes. Waggoner died in 1934. 

Electra was born in 1882 and she grew up on both the Waggoner Ranch and at the Waggoner Mansion. She was named for her grandfather Electius and Electra, Texas is named after her. The Waggoner Ranch was one of the largest ranches in the United States. She had met her first husband, blueblood Albert Wharton, when she was traveling in the Himalayas and they married in 1902. 

That marriage only lasted 19 years, but it did produce two sons, who seemed to have real marriage issues. Albert Jr. married four times, but his brother lived a very crazy and short life. Tom was married eight times and died of syphilis when he was 25-years-old. Electra loved to spend money and once ran up a $20,000 tab at Neiman Marcus in Dallas in one day. She never wore any outfit more than once and she had one closet filled with fur coats, another with 350 pairs of shoes and another held all her gowns.But she was also kind and when she heard that a favorite salesgirl had gotten sick, she went to her house and cleaned it and prepared her a good meal. Electra married two more times before dying at the age of 43 in 1925. She loved the home her father had built her in Fort Worth. Thistle Hill was built in the Colonial architectural style in 1903 and stood two and a half stories with a sloped gambrel roof made of green tiles and six chimneys. The sides of the house have semi-circular elements above the porticos that have six limestones columns holding them up. The house was built from brick and has cast stone along the corners and above the windows as trim. The interior had a grand staircase, elaborate woodwork and 18 rooms. There was a library, parlor, music room, dining room, sunroom, six bedrooms, attic ballroom and three restrooms. Floors were made from maple, oak and longleaf pine.

Thistle Hill was purchased in 1911 by one of the richest men in Texas, Winfield Scott. Scott was a self-made millionaire from extremely humble beginnings. He was born in 1849 in Kentucky and grew up never learning to read or write. When he arrived in Texas, he worked as a wood chopper along the Trinity River. He worked hard and saved his money and approached some friends to loan him some money to start a cattle business on 160 acres. 

He married Adelia Ann Colley in 1876 and she unfortunately died 2 years later. They had one daughter together named Georgia. In 1884, he married Elizabeth Simmons and they had one son, Winfield Jr. After a very successful cattle drive from Texas to Oklahoma, Scott was able to start buying property in Fort Worth and he got involved in banking opening the Fort Worth State Bank and becoming director of the Fort Worth National Bank. He also was also a major investor in the Mutual Cotton Oil Company of Fort Worth and he was director of the Protestant Sanitarium. All of this made him very well known  in Fort Worth and he was good friends with the Waggoners, which is why he bought their former home. He decided to make some changes - well, a lot of changes - at a cost of $5 million in today's dollars. The Colonial Revival style was changed to Georgian revival by the Sanguinet firm. Ornate features were removed and the landscaping was upgraded with ornamental fencing and brick walls. The interior was renovated too. Scott had been ill for several years and he eventually needed surgery and he wouldn't survive long after that. he never had the chance to move into Thistle Hill. His wife Elizabeth moved into the house with their son Winfield Jr. and she remained in it for the next 26 years. She added a tea house and pergola to the grounds and loved to throw parties. Georgia, Scott's daughter from his first marriage, got into an inheritance battle with Elizabeth after her father's death. The papers made it into a Cinderella against the evil step-mother fight. Georgia eventually won in court and got a fourth of her father's estate. Elizabeth passed in 1938 and her son Winfield Jr., who had managed to squander all of the family's money with a costly divorce with a settlement in the millions of dollars and he also had issues with alcohol and drugs, sold the mansion to the Girls Service League for cheap and they used it until 1968 and then they basically abandoned it and it fell into disrepair. A group of concerned citizens watched as many of the historic mansion in Quality Hill were demolished and they believed that Thistle Hill would eventually meet the same fate, so they formed a committee called "Save the Scott Home." They raised enough money to purchase Thistle Hill in 1976 for $240,000 and opened it as a museum and event space.
 
In 2005, Historic Fort Worth was gifted the property and they worked on restoring the property. They made the house accessible to disabled people, but here was still work that needed to be done with the carriage house and a perimeter wall. With the mansion sitting in the middle of the Medical District, it only makes sense that it would eventually be absorbed into that in some way. In March of 2023, Cook Children’s moved into the mansion and the hospital system has taken over the stewardship of the home after receiving it as a gift from historic preservation non-profit Historic Fort Worth. They turned the former carriage house into a discovery zone for kids.  

And through all of these years, people have reported strange occurrences. Electra insisted on having fresh flowers delivered to her mansion daily and staff at the museum had claimed for decades that they would catch the unexplained whiff of fresh flowers. Her full bodied apparition has been seen wearing one of her many elegant gowns. Guests and staff have reported the sounds of a party coming from the third floor ballroom. Much of this seems to be residual as Electra didn't die at the mansion and she only lived there for a few years. Those parties really must have been something! A different female spirit has been seen wearing a flowing white lace gown and she likes to appear on the landing of the mansion's main grand staircase. She has also been seen sitting by the window in the upstairs changing room. A photographer taking pictures during a wedding, captured a female ghost in a photo. The picture was shared on Facebook and reveals that there is a wedding dress on display in the room and it is to the right of a mirror and in the reflection of the mirror, there appears to be the silhouette of a woman sitting on a pink bench and she is wearing a long period dress. 

Elizabeth suffered from multiple burglary attempts so she brought in a roommate for security. This was someone who worked in Fort Worth as a bank clerk and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram interviewed this person and he claimed that strange stuff happened in the house. After Elizabeth died, he had lived in the mansion alone until 1941 and many times, this big oriental gong on the lower floor would vibrate and make noise all on its own. 

Other people have claimed to see the full-bodied apparition of Winfield Scott Jr. wearing 1940s attire. Many times this was seen by workers who were renovating the mansion. They claimed to see the apparition on the staircase and he was always wearing a grey sweater and white wing-tipped shoes. Staff would report that objects would move on their own. Large cardboard boxes that were really heavy just seemed to move to other spots on their own and one day, workers found all the contents of one of the boxes emptied out onto the floor. In 1997, a group of ghost hunters stayed overnight at Thistle Hill and they focused on the third-floor ballroom. They found an antique rocking chair in the middle of the ballroom with a sheet crumpled up next to it. More than likely a sheet that had once covered the chair. They left it and explored some other rooms and when they returned, they found the chair covered by the sheet. Belongings that they had brought were moved around to different rooms. A bridesmaid was helping to get things ready in the mansion and on her way to the bridal room upstairs, she passed a woman dressed in a long lace gown. This woman nodded at her. A little later, the bridesmaid was talking to the event manager and she mentioned that she thought it was a nice touch to have the actress in the wedding gown hanging out in the house. The manager gave her a funny look and replied that no employees dress in period clothing or any other kind of costume for events. 

Just two-and-a-half miles away is the Log Cabin Village, which is a collection of log cabin homes from actual Texan homesteads dating back to the 1800s. There is also a blacksmith shop and a schoolhouse. Some of the furnishings are original to the homes and perhaps that is why several of them are rumored to be haunted, particularly the Foster Cabin. 

The Foster family had been cotton farmers and enslaved people had built this two-story cabin for them. Logs were fashioned from oak and cedar trees. The cabin was moved from its original spot in 1974. The main ghost here is thought to be Martha Foster who died in the cabin in 1870. People have felt cold spots, smelled the scent of lilac perfume and seen her full-bodied apparition, particularly on the second floor which is the most active part of the house. Managers closed down the upper floor because people were tearing down the stairs in fear and they were worried someone would get hurt. A guide in the house said, "It was very strange. The fire alarm started going off, and it smelled like smoke. We called the fire department, but there was no fire." A Director at the village said she had experiences in the Foster Cabin, but she wouldn't share them because she wants people to focus on the history.   

Thistle Hill House has managed to outlast all the other mansions that had once surrounded it. The mansion stands as a reminder that this spot had once been a place for the rich and influential of Fort Worth. Perhaps that is why the spirits have held onto this location. Some of the ghosts may have come here from other locations that are now lost. Are the Thistle Hill House and the Foster Cabin haunted? That is for you to decide!