A history of Texas and Texans, Part 101

Author: Johnson, Francis White, 1799-1884; Barker, Eugene Campbell, 1874-1956, ed; Winkler, Ernest William, 1875-1960
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Chicago, American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 906

USA > Texas > A history of Texas and Texans > Part 101

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M.M. morrison mal

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after the close of which he continued to reside in his native state, Alabama, until his death.

MURPHY M. MORRISON, M. D. Both in the broad field of citizenship as well as in the more specific interests of his profession, Dr. Morrison has a notable career as a physician and surgeon at Denison.

Born March 17, 1872, at Dandridge, Tennessee, he is a son of John M. and Nancy ( Kilpatrick) Morrison, both of whom were born in North Carolina, and located 01 Tennessee in 1865. The family is of Scotch-Irish an- cestry. The father was a mechanic and during the Civil war built the wagons for the Confederate government. He continued to follow his regular trade up to the time of his death, in January, 1913. The mother passed away in 1912. There was a large family of children, the doctor being one of the younger, and he has one sister and one brother in Texas. The latter is Dr. T. A. Morrison, a physician, in Grosvenor, Texas.

Dr. Morrison managed to secured the equivalent of a liberal education in his youth. He attended the district schools of Tennessee, studied medicine at Chattanooga, and was graduated M. D. in 1893. He began practice in Cocke county, of his native state, and in 1895 moved to Van Alstyne, in Grayson county, and in 1905 located in Denison, Texas, where he has enjoyed the rewards and the finer distinctions of professional life. In 1900 Dr. Morrison took post-graduate work in New Orleans. He has membership in the county and state medical so- ciety, and the District Medical Association. His fra- ternal affiliations are the Knights of Pythias, the Wood- men of the World, and the Improved Order of Red Men. A Democrat in politics, he has at different times entered into the active work of campaigns, but less for partisan purposes than for the advancement of good government and the education of the people along the higher planes of political thought.

Dr. Morrison was married in Cocke county, Tennessee, in August, 1892, to Miss Emma Thompson, a daughter of Ransom P. Thompson, for many years a school teacher and now living retired in Tennessee. The doctor and wife have eight children: Ralston, Anna May, Murphy M., Winnie Bell, Elliott H., Mattie, Thomas and Eugene Morrison, the ages of these children ranging from four years to twenty.

Dr. Morrison owns a comfortable residence. in the suburbs of Denison and finds rest and recreation from his professional work in the cultivation of small fruits and vegetables. He is in the citizenship of Denison what might be called an all-around man, able to give practical assistance in many ways, and in the promotion of movements which concern the more wholesome and better life of the community. He has often become a civic leader, and is skillful on the stump, in presentation of advanced political thought. In 1912 he entered the political field as a candidate for Congress in his district, more for the purpose of getting certain principles before the people and to educate them, than with an expecta- tion of election to office. A few extracts from one of his speeches during this campaign will illustrate his general views, and also the earnestness with which he expresses his convictions as to political theory and practice : "My fellow Democrats, beware of the seduc- tive strain of the siren's song. The principles of just government are eternal as God himself. The same in- terests that engrafted on this government the policy of protection-the policy that enriches a few and enslaves a multitude-are the identical interests that are today advising us against all propositions looking to the good and betterment of humanity, the establishment of equal opportunities and the promotion of human happiness. The trust masters and their satellites oppose all remedies of legislation. They oppose the abandonment of the tariff ; they oppose a revision of the tariff. They oppose the creation of a department of public health and hy- giene. They oppose the enforcement of the pure food

and drug act. They oppose campaign fund publicity legislation. They oppose the enactment of laws pro- hibiting bribery and official corruption. They oppose the initiative. They oppose the recall. They oppose the referendum." These sentences are but a few taken at random from one of his addresses, and show the aggressive and outspoken character of Dr. Morrison, who has for years ohserved the trend of public affairs and has been an nplifting factor in his own community. Personally he is a man of much charm of manner, and his thorough intellectuality makes him a pleasing com- panion to all who enjoy the privilege of his acquaint- ance.

TIMOTHY R. STUMP. The editor and publisher of the Nocona News, in Montague county, is in the third gener- ation of the Stump family residents in Montague county, with which section of North Texas the name has been identified from the earliest pioneer days. Mr. Stump is an unusually aggressive and successful newspaper man, conducts an influential and up-to-date journal, and though still a young man has prospered far above the average of men of his age and of his profession.

Timothy R. Stump was born in Montague county, Texas, October 4, 1880, and with the exception of four years, three of which were spent in Oklahoma in farming, and one year in New Mexico on a cattle ranch, has lived all his life in Texas. The founder of the Stump family in Montague county was Reece B. Stump, grandfather of the Nocona editor. Reece B. Stump settled in that part of Texas in 1856, at a time when the entire north boundary of Texas was exposed to the constant hostile raids of Indians and outlaws. For many years he lived on the frontier and bore a prominent part in the early history of that section. His death occurred in Decem- ber, 1913, and he was buried at Davin, Oklahoma. The father of Timothy R. Stump was Francis B. Stump, born in the state of Iowa, and moving to Texas with the family in 1856. During his early career he followed school teaching and was also a farmer. He was active in politics, held several important offices, and was a de- vout worker in the Baptist church. His death occurred in December, 1910, at the age of about fifty-seven years, and he is buried in Montague county. The maiden name of his wife was Alice V. Warren, who was born in Texas, and was married in Montague county. She is an active member of the Cumberland Presbyterian church, and has her home in Montague county. There were nine children in the family, of whom Timothy R. was the eldest.

During his boyhood he attended the public schools, also the high school at Nocona, and afterwards took a com- mercial course at Ardmore, Oklahoma. Leaving school at the age of eighteen he started out to battle his own way through life. He worked on a cattle ranch in New Mexico for one year, after which he returned to Nocona. and found work as a bookkeeper in a mercantile house. After about four years he bought out the Nocona News and has since been its owner and editor. This is a well- equipped printing establishment and he does much job work in connection with the printing of his paper. The News has a large circulation and a very wholesome in- fluence over a large territory not only in Montague county, but across the river in Oklahoma. The circula- tion has increased thirty-five per cent during the last year. Mr. Stump through his paper advocates every cause for the advancement and development of his lo- cality, and one of the principal objects of his editorial policy has been for good rural schools. He is now boost- ing of the work of the Texas Industrial Congress, and other movements which come into close relations with the practical welfare of the citizens.

At Mamou, in Saint Landry parish of Louisiana, on June 12, 1910, Mr. Stump married Mary Gaty, a daugh- ter of Hon. and Mrs. W. H. Gaty. Her father is presi- dent of the police jury of his parish (now Evangeline

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parish) in Louisiana. To Mr. and Mrs. Stump have been born one child, Mary Josephine. The religious affilia- tion of Mr. and Mrs. Stump is with the Methodist church, He is affiliated with the Indepedent Order of Odd Fel- lows, and the Woodmen of the World, and has held office in the Odd Fellows Lodge. In politics he is a Prohibi- tion Democrat and is a student and close observer of po- litical and civic affairs.

ROBERT MARION COLE has been identified more or less with the town of Franklin since its infancy, for he came here as a young man of twenty-one just following the Civil war, in which he had rendered faithful service to the Southern cause. His first interests in Robertson county were in the stock business, and his first home was established at Bald Prairie. His experience here- about has been a varied one, and he has arisen in the scale of business and social prominence from a mediocre place to one that is notable, and well worthy of him and his accomplishments.

Mr. Cole is a native son of Leake county, Mississippi, where he was born on March 8, 1848, and he is a son of Thomas Andrew Cole, born in South Carolina and married in Mississippi to Miss Martha Boone, of the well known Georgia family of that name. Thomas Andrew Cole died in 1864, ten years after the passing of his wife. Their children were four in number and are here mentioned briefly as follows: William T., a soldier in the Confederate army, spent his later life in farming in Mississippi and came to Texas a few years before his death, which occurred in Robertson county ; he left a family at his passing. The next born was Robert Marion of this review; Charles died as a boy of eighteen years; and Martha Ella married James Freeney and died in Mississippi, leaving a large family of sons.

The paternal grandsire of Mr. Cole of this review was Mason Cole. He was a man of North Carolina birth, and he died in Mississippi. Michael Cole, who died in Bastrop county, Texas, was one of his sons; one of his daughters was Mrs. Nancy Townsend of Austin, and another was Mrs. Watson, who lived in Louisiana. Besides Thomas Andrew he had another son, Oliver Cole, who was long a resident of Hays county, Texas.

Robert Marion Cole had his upbringing on a Mis- sissippi plantation. His school advantages were negligi- ble, and he was yet a mere lad when he volunteered for service in the Southern army. He enlisted in May, 1862, for three months' service for the relief of Vicks- burg, and he was a member of General Adams' Cavalry, that body being active on the outside of the city, and having a little skirmish at Jackson before they were disbanded. Later young Cole enlisted in Company A, Fifth Mississippi, with Colonel Perrin in command, in General Jo Wheeler's corps. He went through Mis- sissippi, Alabama and Georgia, and was in the Atlanta campaign, participating in all the cavalry activity of the Confederates to Atlanta, and following Sherman's army through to Savannah, where their brigade was dismounted and placed in the ditches for three days, then marching on foot to Puresburg, South Carolina, where their regiment was again mounted and started toward Virginia. They were in the vicinity of Raleigh, North Carolina, when General Lee surrendered, and his command was disbanded as a part of General Johnston 's army. He was singularly fortunate in his military service, being neither wounded, captured nor the victim of illness of any sort throughout his service, and when the war ended and he resumed the garb of citizenship, he was still a youth, only seventeen years old. He had to run away from home to proffer his services, and when his first enlistment period was ended, he had an embarrassing prospect before him in the event of his return to his home, so he promptly re-enlisted and saw the affair through to the end.

At the close of the war he returned to the home of his grandfather, William Boon, where he had been reared for the most part, and he stayed at home until the fall, when he joined a party bent upon a bear hunt- ing expedition in Sunflower county, Mississippi. When the frolic was over he decided to remain there and fol- lowed rafting on the Yazoo river for a time, making one trip down the big river to New Orleans. He drifted back to Mississippi again, and in 1868 he made a crop in Madison county, that state, as a farm hand on a plantation. The next year he went to his old home in Leake county, Mississippi, and there spent a year on the plantation, and in the fall of that year he came out to Texas with several Mississippi families of his home vicinity, the group including the Weir family, S. B. Blackman and Dave Wilson, all of whom have posterity in the state today.

Mr. Cole was twenty-one years old then, and he came to Texas in the garb of a workman, and without a penny in his pockets, for he had "gathered no moss" in his four years of rolling about from point to point after the war. He took a "job" at wood cutting, at a daily wage of one dollar and a half, and his next work was that of well digger. He then turned his hand to cotton-picking, and he finally went into the ranching field with a cowman, and he worked in that capacity during 1870 and 1871. The next year he spent in farm- ing, and in December of 1872, he married, and engaged regularly in farming, for he decided that matrimony carried with it the added duty of settling down to a regular business. In 1908 Mr. Cole left off his farming activities, and moved to Franklin, after years of suc- cessful contact with the soil, and he has here heen active and prominent in the operation of the city tele- phone system.

The Franklin Telephone Exchange may be said to have come into the Cole family soon after its establish- ment, and for the past seven years Mr. Cole has had the active management of it himself. The company comprises R. M. and R. W. Cole, F. S. Estes, Thos. Rushing and J. L. Goodman. The exchange covers the country for miles around Franklin and connects the county seat practically to every community in the county.

In 1912 Mr. Cole was elected to the office of mayor of the city, and he is distinguished as being the first man to hold that office. He was associated in the administration of the affairs of the city with R. M. Duffery and W. T. Maris, the other members of the com- mission, and is now a member of the commission, with R. M. Duffery and Mr. H. Porter. He acquitted him- self creditably as the head of the commission, and proved himself a wise and efficient official of the city, his service measuring well up to the highest standards of citizenship recognized and demanded in the county.

In 1872 Mr. Cole married Miss Margaret Graham, a daughter of John Graham, who came to Texas as early as 1836, settling finally in Robertson county and engag- ing in business as a land dealer. His wife was Mar- garet Roach, a Virginia girl, and Mrs. Cole was one of their five children. To Mr. and Mrs. Cole were born four children, three sons and a daughter, but only one son is living, Robert W., of Franklin. He married Lizzie Taylor, and is the father of Taylor, Thomas, Estes and Fred.

JOHN M. MELSON. One of the ablest lawyers, and one of the best known men in politics in northeast Texas is John M. Melson, of Sulphur Springs, who has been identified with the Texas bar for twenty-four years, and has had many important relations with his profession and with public affairs in the state.

He belongs to an old family, originally located in Georgia, and for nearly sixty years resident in Texas. His father was Aladdin T. Melson, of Picton, Texas, who was born in Coweta county, Georgia, in 1826, came to Texas in 1854, and settled in the community where

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he now lives. His education was one of the country school order, and as a Confederate soldier, he was in Captain R. F. Askew's company. His regiment served in the Trans-Mississippi Department, and among his bat- tles were those of Mansfield, Pleasant Hill and Yellow Bayou. He passed through the service without wounds or capture. He was a slave holder before the war and a modest farmer since. He has always been actively interested in politics as a Democrat, though no office seeker. He is a Baptist, but has no fraternal affilia- tions.

The paternal grandfather was Appleton Melson, who was one of the extensive old-time planters and big slave holders in Coweta county, Georgia. His first wife was a Miss Sims, and he was again married. His children were Aladdin T., Mary Penelope, wife of Lee Houston of Georgia; William, who died in Georgia; and two daughters, now deceased.

Aladdin T. Melson, the father, married Martha M. Ransome, whose father Samuel Ransome was also a planter and holder of a large force of bondmen of the south. Samuel Ransome was twice married, both his wives being Askew sisters. Mrs. A. T. Melson died in 1909, the mother of William C., of Picton, Texas; James A., of Oklahoma City; John M., of Sulphur Springs, and Mrs. Mary Ticer of Picton.

John M. Melson spent his youth on the farm, and obtained his higher education in the schools of Sulphur Springs and in academic work in the University of Texas. He also took the law course at the University, graduating in the law department in 1888. His first practical work was a country school teacher of Hop- kins county, but this work yielded to the law. He was admitted to the bar in 1889, by Judge Terhune, and among his examining committee were Judge Templeton, J. S. Whittle and John W. Cranford. He formed a partnership with the last named, under the title of Melson & Cranford, after he had begun and conducted his practice alone for a short while. His first case as an attorney was defending Dr. Chapman, who was charged with disturbing a religious meeting. The trial resulted in clearing the doctor. His practice since that time has included some of the hig land suits of the county, and a mass of other litigations. In the suit of Hendricks versus Mrs. Jeffries, for an heir's part of an estate, covering the town site of Como, Texas, he was the attorney for the defense, which won the case after two years and after it had been carried to the supreme court.

In politics Mr. Melson is a Democrat. He was elected to the twenty-first legislature in 1888, and suc- ceeded Col. B. M. Camp. He was returned in the twenty-second and twenty-third sessions, and had the chairmanship of the committees on education, engrossed hills, and of judiciary committee No. 2. He was a member of the special committee to investigate the penal institutions, and had other committee assignments. In . the senatorial election, during his term, he voted for Culberson, and for Chilton instead of for R. Q. Mills, the latter having been elected. He put Joe Bailey in the field for senator by casting a complimentary vote for him.

In 1898 Mr. Melson was elected county attorney, and held that office for one term. He served on the state executive committee of his party, and has been chair- man of his county committee. In 1908 he campaigned in support of Senator Bailey, for delegate at large to the Democratic National Convention at Denver. Aside from his large practice and other interests. Mr. Melson is one of the directors of the First State Bank of Sul- phur Springs, has the place of assistant cashier in the bank, and also represents it as attorney.

January 18. 1900, Mr. Melson married Miss Fru Lanier, daughter of W. A. Lanier, a farmer and stock- man, who married Miss Lou Potter, a sister of Judge Potter of Gainesville, Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Melson have

one daughter Margarite, who was born in 1903. Mr. Melson is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, and is clerk of the Baptist church at Sulphur Springs.

BENJAMIN F. LOONEY. No citizen of the Lone Star state has manifested greater civic loyalty and apprecia- tion or more enthusiastically put forth efforts in fur- therance of its civic and industrial progress than the present attorney general of the commonwealth, Hon. Benjamin F. Looney, who was elected to this important post in November, 1912, and who has held other offices of distinctive public trust. He is one of the representa- tive members of the Texas bar and has maintained his home in this state since his childhood days.

Benjamin Franklin Looney was born in Bossier par- ish, Louisiana, on the 19th of September, 1859, and is a son of B. F. and Josephine (Frith) Looney, both rep- resentative of stanch old southern families. Within a short period after his father's death he accompanied his widowed mother to Texas, where the family home was established in Marion county. There he was reared to the sturdy discipline of farm and country life and after availing himself of the local schools he continued his studies in the high school at Daingerfield, Morris county, the principal of the school at that time having been Professor Matthews, who was for many years a distinguished figure in educational circles in this state. Thereafter Mr. Looney passed two years in the literary or academic department of the University of Missis- sippi, at Oxford, and in preparation for his profession he then entered the law department of Cumberland University, at Lebanon, Tennessee, in which institution he was graduated as a member of the class of 1882 and from which he received his degree of Bachelor of Laws.

Admitted to the Texas bar immediately after his graduation, General Looney established an office at Greenville, the judicial center of Hunt county, where his practice developed into one of most representative order, giving him precedence as one of the leading members of the bar of northeastern Texas. He has maintained his home in the city of Greenville during the intervening years.

Mr. Looney is a recognized leader in the councils and activities of the Democratic party in Texas and has been a most zealous and effective advocate of its prin- ciples and policies. His eligibility for offices of high public trust has not lacked for popular recognition, and he has served in both branches of the state legislature, having represented the Fifth Senatorial District, inelnd- ing Hunt connty, in the state senate in the twenty-ninth and thirtieth general assemblies of the legislature, 1905-7, and having filled an unexpired term in the house in the thirty-first assembly, in 1910. In the legislature he proved a most active working member and soon rose to prominence in the senate, in which he served as a member of a number of the most important committees, including the judiciary committee, of which he was chairman. His record was marked by earnest devotion to the state and its people. It should be specially noted that he was the author of the first employers' liability bill introduced into the Texas legislature and that he has at all times actively supported measures projected for the benefit of organized labor. A summary of Mr. Looney's effective service in the legislature was given in a recent number of the Greenville Herald, and the estimate, well worthy of reproduction in this connection, is here given with but minor paraphrase:

"No man in the state is held in higher esteem by his friends and neighbors who know him best than Benjamin F. Looney. He has been for many years a student of public affairs in this state and is as well versed in mat- ters of statecraft as our ablest public men. In the practice of law, his chosen profession, he has achieved a splendid reputation. As a public speaker and debater he has few if any superiors in the state. He served this

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district in the state senate in the twenty-ninth and thir- tieth legislatures and during this brief period rendered distinguished service in behalf of the entire state. At the time of his election, though not forbidden by law, he refused to accept or use free passes on railroads or franks from telegraph and telephone companies. He was the author of the original free-pass law. He was the author of the anti-nepotism law, which prevents a public officer from appointing his relatives to public office. He was the author of the present law which prohibits all corporations from using their funds or means to influence elections in this state. He was also the author of the law which requires corporations to have the full amount of their capital stock in good faith subscribed and fifty per cent annually paid in, thus preventing the formation of wildeat companies which are organized only for the purpose of fleecing the public in the sale of worthless stock. He was the author of the first insolvent-corporation law ever put on the stat- ute books of the state, and this law gives to the attorney general the power to forfeit the charters of all such corporations.

"During the pendeney of the case of the state of Texas versus the Waters-Pierce Oil Company be aseer- tained that important testimony without the state could be obtained if the attorney general were given the power by law to take testimony by the appointment of a com- missioner without the state. He at once prepared and introduced such a statute, and the same was passed. Immediately thereafter this law bore valuable fruit, for under its provisions the attorney general secured the appointment of a commissioner in the state of New York to take testimony in this case, to oust the Waters- Pierce Oil Company. It was mainly testimony procured under this law that enabled the state to secure judg- ment for over one and one-half million dollars and to oust this company from doing business in Texas. No more important piece of legislation or one productive of better results than this law has been enacted in recent years, and in considering the splendid victory won by the attorney general in that case due credit should be given Mr. Looney for his admirable work in placing upon the statute books the law by virtue of which the principal evidence in this case was secured. One of the most splendid victories secured by him was in effecting the passage of the one-board medical hill. Prior to the passage of this law each session of the legislature was characterized more or less by bickerings and jealousies of the different schools of medicine. This act places the entire medical profession, including all the schools, under one board, which may be composed of members of the different schools, and thus a very troublesome question was settled. The practical working of the law has been to elevate the standard of the medical profes- sion in the state.

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A history of Texas and Texans, Part 101

Author: Johnson, Francis White, 1799-1884; Barker, Eugene Campbell, 1874-1956, ed; Winkler, Ernest William, 1875-1960 Publication date: 1914 Publisher: Chicago, American Historical Society Number of Pages: 906

Author: Johnson, Francis White, 1799-1884; Barker, Eugene Campbell, 1874-1956, ed; Winkler, Ernest William, 1875-1960
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Chicago, American Historical Society
Number of Pages: 906