Built around 1830 by Adolphus Sterne, a German-Jewish immigrant merchant and one of early Nacogdoches's most prominent citizens, the house originally functioned as a private family residence that also served as an informal center of civic and social life in the young town. Sterne used his home to host and support figures central to the Texas independence movement: Davy Crockett reportedly stayed there for about two weeks in 1835 on his way to the Alamo, and Sam Houston is said to have been baptized into the Catholic faith in the parlor to satisfy Mexican citizenship requirements. Sterne himself was active in commerce, land dealings, and local politics, so the house also functioned as a base for his business and civic affairs. In 1866 the property passed to the Hoya family, whose descendants, including county surveyor Charles Hoya, occupied it for decades and preserved many of its furnishings and artifacts. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1977. Today the Sterne-Hoya House functions as a house museum and public library annex, operated in cooperation with the City of Nacogdoches and local heritage organizations such as the Nacogdoches Garden Club. It offers free public tours of period rooms and artifacts and provides genealogy and local-history research resources, serving the community as both a preserved historic residence and a functioning small research library.