Thomas William House Sr. (March 4, 1814 – January 17, 1880) was a merchant, cotton factor, investor, banker, and politician in Houston, Texas.

These businesses included a bakery and confectionary, a general dry goods store, cotton factorage, and bank.

The next year he formed a new partnership with Charles Shearn, later the chief justice of Harris County.

The new firm sold candy and dry goods, while buying and selling wholesale with people from the Texas hinterlands.

The store took orders for staples, such as flour and sugar, but also iron castings and percussion caps.

House imported goods from Boston, New Orleans, and New York, but made direct cotton shipments to Liverpool, England.

[2] In 1850, House was one of the founders of the Houston Plank Road Company, an early attempt to improve wagon transportation to and from the interior.

The company raised $150,000 in capital, but it scuttled plans for building oaken-plank roads as the feasibility of railroads emerged.

Later, in 1853, House bought the cotton jobbing business of James H. Stevens and Company, a dealer in dry goods and groceries.

House prospered selling commodities ranging from hides to syrup and from guns to blacksmithing tools.

Relocating to Galveston during the war, House surveyed the blockading Union fleet movements.

In this way House was able to direct his trading ships to evade the blockage, while also arranging overland transportation to and from Mexico.