Capt. Thomas C. Harris House

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The Captain Thomas C. Harris House, also known as the Parrish Place, is a two-story Italianate home at 101 East Burton Street in Kirksville, Missouri. Built in 1875 as a modified T-plan Victorian brick house, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Captain Thomas C. Harris was a Union Army officer after the Civil War who settled in Kirksville and worked in woolen mills. He began building the large house in 1875 on what was then the northern edge of town. It’s unclear whether Harris ever lived there, as he sold it in 1879 to Doctor John Burton, a Civil War veteran who later ran a medical practice in Kirksville.

The house became known as Parrish Place in 1895 after Doctor A. Washington Parrish bought it. Parrish had practiced medicine in Queen City before moving to Kirksville. After Parrish’s death in 1928, the home passed to his son, Dr. Bert Parrish, who died in 1951 and left the house to his longtime housekeeper, Everrella Murdock, who had lived on the first floor since 1939.

A fire in 1958 damaged the summer kitchen and outbuildings, and a new family room was added. In 1965 the distinctive cupola was removed for fears the roof was weakening, but it was later restored. After Murdock’s death, the house went to her daughter Mary Childers Sloan, who lived there until moving to Nebraska in the 1980s. The home was largely vacant from the early 1980s until Sloan’s death in 2003, when she left it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The current owner, Daryl Shafer, bought it in 2006.

After major renovations, the house again looks much as it did when first built, with modern plumbing, heating, and electrical systems. A key change was returning the exterior to its original red brick, removing later two-tone paint. The garage and west wing added after the 1958 fire were removed and replaced with a porch and landscaping. The Harris-Parrish House is a private residence that has also hosted weddings, open houses, and community events, including a 2012 ceremony marking the Battle of Kirksville’s 150th anniversary.