Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 06/02/95

ELABORATION

The Baxter-Dixon House was built around 1883 by Dr. E. A. Baxter and Mrs. Maggie Powell Baxter. Dr. Baxter, son of Governor Elisha D. Baxter, had been a resident of Melbourne since shortly after his graduation from Louisville University in 1879, and served the medical needs of the community as a general practitioner until his death in 1941. Maggie Powell Baxter was the niece of Judge Richard Powell of Melbourne, and the great-aunt of Harry Powell Dixon, Jr., who purchased the house in 1950.

Melbourne was a new town when Dr. Baxter arrived following his graduation, having been laid out only 4 years prior, and incorporated on May 4, 1878. Included as part of Mill Creek Township in the 1880 census, there was a population of 149.

Although the house is no longer eligible for inclusion to the National Register of Historic Places due to the extensive alterations to the original plan of the house, the Baxter-Dixon House is being nominated to the Arkansas Register of Historic Places under Criterion C as a good example of a Plain Traditional cottage embellished with an exuberant Folk Victorian porch.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Herndon, Dallas T., Centennial History of Arkansas. The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company: Little Rock, 1922.

Information submitted by Velma Dixon.

The Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas. 1891. Easely, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1978.