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The History of Miss Belle's House (a.k.a. Miss Belle's Place)

You can learn all about the historic structure by reading the following paragraphs, which have been adapted and expanded from A Sesquicentennial History of Richardson, Texas, Vol. One (Richardson, Texas: Poor Scholar Publications, 2022), which is available for sale on Amazon.com.

In 2021, the Hill-Robberson House, which stood for decades on the Owens Spring Creek Farm, was moved to a temporary location adjacent to the Richardson Fire Department Training Center on Lookout Drive. On August 10, 2025, after several delays, it was finally transported safely on a beautiful summer Sunday morning to Huffhines Park, its new permanent home.

What's noteworthy about Miss Belle's House, in addition to its Victorian-era architectural style, is that it was inhabited, at different times, by two early-day Richardson educators, Professor Albert Henry Hill, Principal of Richardson's Wheeler School, and Virginia Belle Robberson, owner and operator of Richardson's earliest kindergarten.

Colorized photo of Miss Belle's House on its original site; northwest corner of Kaufman and S. Sherman Street. Courtesy Richardson Public Library.

The house's original location was 206 Sherman Street (corner of Sherman and Kaufman), where it was constructed probably sometime between late 1886 and early 1887, after its first occupant, Professor Albert Henry Hill, principal of the Wheeler School, purchased lot number 1, block 36, from the Houston & Texas Central Railroad on October 16, 1886. The price: $40 ($25 cash and a $15 promissory note)

A native of Allen County, Kentucky (born October 8, 1857), Hill was twenty-nine-years-old and a newly-wed when he and his wife, Lottie, arrived in Texas, where they initially settled in Collin County. They moved to Richardson in 1886, after local school board trustee Henry Hatcher offered Hill the job of principal of the Wheeler School. In addition to tending to the education of the students at the Wheeler School, Professor Hill is noteworthy in Richardson history as the publisher of the town's first newspaper, The Richardson News, started in 1886.

According to all accounts, Professor Hill was popular with both students and parents. Unfortunately, in December 1889, after Hill came down with what local doctors believed to be some sort of fatal illness, he returned to Kentucky, to die at home. As it happened, the doctors were wrong: Professor Hill recovered and though he did eventually die at home in Kentucky, it was not for another fifty years, when he passed away on August 7, 1940. Earlier that year he wrote a letter to The Richardson Echo, in which he recalled the names of the students--Will Armstrong, Newt Harris, Bob McFarland and Jake Harris--who were present when he was literally carried out of the Wheeler schoolhouse on a stretcher, so that he could travel by train "from Richardson to Franklin, Ky. 'to die so the doctors told him.'"

Although Hill apparently liked Richardson, after recovering from his illness, he sold his house and lot to William Strait, who owned the two adjacent lots (numbers 2 and 3) in Block 36. (DMN, Dec. 20, 1889) and stayed in Kentucky, where he went on to have a long and illustrious career in education. In his retirement, the professor wrote several letters to The Richardson Echo, in which he fondly recalled his four years as principal of the Wheeler school and all the students he had taught, most of whose names he still remembered.

In 1937, following an absence of nearly fifty years, Hill returned to Richardson, where he was warmly received by his old friends, former students, and acquaintances. While inspecting the red-brick schoolhouse which had been built long after his hasty departure from Texas, the principal invited him to address the students. Although The Echo described the old professor as "hale and hearty," he never visited Richardson again. Three years later, on August 7, 1940, Hill died in Bowling Green, Kentucky at the age of eighty-two.

In 1902, Margaret A. Robberson reportedly purchased the house, from the Strait family, for her unmarried daughter, Belle, who was born in Dallas County on July 21, 1870, although it's possible that Miss Belle did not occupy the property until after her mother died in January 1903. According to an obituary published in the Richardson Echo in 1940, the year that "Miss Belle" died, she was educated in Dallas, and then taught school at Corsicana before becoming a public-school teacher in Richardson. The obituary failed to mention that she had also lived in Dallas, with her parents, at 488 Swiss Avenue, where in 1892-'93, she operated a kindergarten. In addition to teaching, she was very active in both civic and church affairs and belonged to several clubs. (Note: The obituary in The Echo also mistakenly gave Miss Belle's birth year as 1879.)

Sometime after moving into the house in Richardson, Belle Robberson opened a private kindergarten, which she operated until about 1939, when she became ill and went to live with a sister in Dallas, where she died on April 11, 1940. From all accounts, she was very popular with her students and a much beloved member of the community.

You can read Miss Belle's obituary here. That's a photograph of her to the left (Courtesy Richardson Public Library).

After Miss Belle died, her sister, Fannie Keller, sold the house to Lester F. and Billye Meyer. Between that time and the late 1970s, the house had a few more owners. For awhile, an antique shop operated on the premises.

Colorized photo of Miss Belle's House at Owens' Spring Creek Farm. Courtesy Scott Dorn, Photographer.

After Jean and Albert Lowe donated the house to the City of Richardson in 1979, in memory of Sterling and Bernice Couch, it was moved to Spring Creek Farm, where wit as designated a Texas Historic Landmark in 1982, the first such designated place in Richardson. The house remained there until May 2021, when it was moved to a temporary location beside the Fire Department training center, pending a decision by the city council as to where to place it. The move was necessitated due to the sale of the Spring Creek Farm, which is now occupied by three big warehouses.

Courtesy Richardson Public Library.

Miss Belle's House near RFD Training Center on Lookout Drive. Host photo.

In May 2021, after the site of the former Owens' Spring Creek Farm and Factory was sold (to a company that has since built three big, ugly warehouses on the property), the historic old residence known as Miss Belle's House, which had had a pride of place on the farm since 1979, was moved to a vacant lot next to the Richardson Fire Department Training Center on Lookout Drive, and there it has sat, more or less neglected, for four long years.

When the City of Richardson finally got around to deciding what to do with Miss Belle's House, it was announced that it would be moved in 2023 to Huffhines Park, but it wasn't. Later, it was announced that the move would take place in 2024. It didn't. Earlier this year (2025), the city newspaper, RICHARDSON TODAY, carried an article saying that the house would finally be moved on Saturday, May 11. It wasn't.

After the May 11 move date was cancelled, The move was rescheduled for June 14, but that was also cancelled. Then finally, on the morning of Sunday, August 10, 2025, it actually happened!

This is the spot in Huffhines Park to where Miss Belle's House was moved on Sunday morning, August 10, 2025.

In early July 2026, work commenced on a permanent foundation for Miss Belle's House. It is expected to be complete by the end of the summer.

Workers began construction of the foundation for Miss Belle's House in early July 2026.

If you want to know even more, the City of Richardson has a webpage all about Miss Belle's House.