The house is the centerpiece of a three-acre tract that was home to generations of the Starr family from 1870 to 1976, when it was deeded to the State of Texas as a historic site. Starr was the son and partner of banker James Harper Starr, a treasurer for the Republic of Texas. Following the Civil War, Starr and his father formed a land and banking business in Marshall in 1868, one of the first in the state. James Harper Starr began building on this family site in 1870 with his house, “Rosemont.” In 1871, James F. Starr completed a Greek Revival house that he named “Maplecroft,” after a group of maple trees planted nearby by his father. The two-story house features a five-bay front porch topped by a short decorative balustrade, a bracketed cornice characteristic of late Greek Revival, and a centered gabled dormer with a pair of round-arched windows. Later rear additions include a water tower, originally a cistern, adjacent to the kitchen. Remaining on the property is a one-room schoolhouse and a single-room remnant of the later demolished “Rosemont.”