San Benito was a "paper" town with no Anglo-American residents when Albanus Clemens Purvis (1850-1919) came here from Ohio to seek health. He became first Justice of the Peace, sold real estate, and farmed. His daughter Kate (later Mrs. J. Scott Brown) taught first school in 1907; daughter Emma (later Mrs. Asa Agar) was an early Postmaster, in 1911. A former mill owner and a skilled craftsman, Purvis in 1911 built this house for himself, his wife Margaret Ann (householder), and the two youngest of their nine children. The property still remains in the ownership of a descendant. (1974)