The History of The Bright-Lamkin-Easterling Home

The land that the above home would be built on, was once part of Henry Bry’s Mulberry Grove plantation. The Bry family sold the land to William A. Bright, a railroad baron, to build his home on.

The Louisiana Review (New Orleans) April 18, 1890, page 1

Major W.A. Bright, of the H., C. A. and N. railroad, is having a handsome $7000 residence erected in Monroe.

This little paragraph marks the beginning of what would become the Bright-Lamkin-Easterling home. By June 15th, the Shreveport Times was reporting it was almost complete. The February 15, 1891 Times-Picayune (New Orleans) reported it was complete.

While researching for this post, I looked again at the only unlabeled residential drawing in the 1893 Worlds Fair Edition of the Monroe Evening News.

1893 Monroe Evening News Drawing

I realized this unidentified residence was the Bright-Lamkin-Easterling, three years after it was built! That little label at the bottom also gives us a brand new fact. It was built by Daniel Reuben Norris (1857-1933)! Norris also has a profile and picture in the newspaper.

Around 1898, Bright moved to Little Rock and the house was rented to a local lawyer named Ebb Tyler Lamkin. He was local author Speed Lamkin’s grandfather. Lamkin eventually bought the home from Bright, but in a roundabout way. He was afraid Bright wouldn’t sell it to him, so Lamkin had a local priest go and buy it for him! Lamkin and his wife raised a family together in the home. When Ebb passed away, his daughter Marguerite Lamkin Easterling and her family inherited the house. In 1979 Bucky Hargis bought the home from the Lamkin/Easterling family and set about restoring the home. The upper floor was his family home and the bottom floor his law office. It was Mr. Hargis who placed the home on the National Register of Historic Places.

Mr. Hargis lived in the home up until his unfortunate passing in 1997. The building languished and began to deteriorate. Last week, filmmaker Selina Lewis purchased the home. Her great great Aunt Fannie Ford worked in the home for decades, living in the servant’s cottage behind the main house. Selina wants to turn the old mansion into “The Pink House”, a heritage and cultural center. She wants to honor the memory of her aunt and others who were the forgotten caretakers of the home. To read what she has planned, go here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LLaqV67PnKR4vA26TUpX3Cm8qLfAPyWx/view?usp=sharing .

There is also a section of her movie, “Acts of Reparation” about the Bright-Lamkin-Easterling Home you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3g-64TbHlY

The website for the film can be found here: https://www.actsofreparation.com/