A history of Texas and Texans, Part 107

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

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Mr. Walshe is a charter member of the Postmaster 's Association of Texas, the same being the mother or- ganization of this body for the world, and he was vice president of it and active in the work of furthering its efficiency and purpose. As an alderman of Grand Saline he has rendered a worthy service to the city, and was at one time a member of the board of education, on which he has served variously as president, secretary aud treasurer, and in all of which capacities he proved well the interest he has ever felt in matters of an educa- tional import in his home community.

Matters of fraternalism have won and held the in- terest of Mr. Walshe for years, and especially in Masonry is he well advanced and prominent. He is the pioneer Master of the Blue Lodge of Grand Saline, and has served as its secretary also, as well as serving as High Priest of the Chapter. He was a member of the By-laws committee of the Texas Grand Lodge for several years.

He is a member of Hilla Temple, Dallas, and there took his Scottish Rite degree in 1905. He was a member of the degree team of 1907 and helped to confer the 28th degree in Masonry with the Grand Saline team, upon Senator Morris, Shepherd, Bishop Garrett and Dr. Buck- ner. Other fraternal associations of Mr. Walshe are his connection with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias and the woodmen of the World. In the Knights of Pythias he is a Past Chancellor, and is also a Past Grand in Oddfellowship. With his fam- ily, he has membership in the Episcopal church of this city.

On August 25, 1897, Mr. Walshe was married in Grand Saline to Miss Matilda Wilderspin, of English birth, having been born in Cambridgeshire in 1875. She is a daughter of Alfred Wilderspin, an inn-keeper in Ells- worth, England, and his wife, Mary Ann (Clark) Wilder- spin, and is one of their nine children. Four of that number are residents of Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Walshe have three children: Blount Ernest Anderson Walshe, Lindley Mortimer and Mary Winifred Walshe.

DAVID F. STUART, M. D. A noble position, a splendid servant of the public to his profession, a capable business man and esteemed wherever known for his professional and private character, David Finney Stuart was for forty years a resident of the city of Houston, with which community the best portion of his life was identi- fied. He died at his home in that city on September 8, 1909, being seventy-six years of age. He had lived in Texas for more than half a century, and during the war was a surgeon in the Confederate army. Houston and Texas had no more loyal citizen than the late Dr. Stuart. He was in the best sense of the word a philanthropist, the every day work of his life having been of a charac- ter which spread its benefits among hundreds of men and women, and like the best of the representatives of his profession, his charity was entirely unostentatious, and was performed as a matter of duty and very often with- out expectation of any reward.

David Finney Stuart was born in Brook county, West Virginia, in 1833, and was descended from sturdy Scotch ancestors. The founder of the family in Pennsylvania, about 1800, was Galbraith Stuart, who married Miss Mary Cummings, daughter of a prominent Virginian. Dr. Stuart had one brother and four sisters, including Mrs. George C. Red, who founded Stuart Seminary, one of the successful educational institutions of the state.

Dr. Stuart grew up in the Pan Handle of West Vir- ginia, and finished his early education in Bethany Col- lege, an institution founded by Alexander Campbell of the Christian church. In 1850, when seventeen years of age he came to Texas, and located at Gay Hill in Wash- ington county, where his brother-in-law, Dr. George C. Red had already settled. He first studied medicine under Dr. Red, and beginning with 1859 attended Jef- ferson Medical College at Philadelphia, for two courses, followed by further study in the medical college of Louisiana at New Orleans. Returning to Texas, he soon built up a splendid practice, and his services as a phy- sician and surgeon were widely in demand in his part of the state. He was not permitted to remain long in the quiet rounds of his professional duties. With the outbreak of the war in 1861, he was appointed as- sistant surgeon in the Tenth Texas Regiment, and from that was promoted to regimental surgeon. His professional skill, executive ability, and valor in the performance of his duties attracted the attention of the officers of the Tennessee army, and he was next made senior surgeon of Granbarry's Texas brigade, with which he served with distinction until the close of the war. During his services Dr. Stuart was several times wounded, and once was captured and kept in prison at Camp Douglas in Chicago for six months. The high esteem in which he was held by the army officers often brought upon him greater responsibilities than his offi-

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cial position called for, but he was always equal to the demand. It is said that among fighting soldiers no more popular officer was to be found in the army than Dr. Stuart.

With the close of the four years' struggle, he re- turned home to Washington county, and in 1867 located in Houston. He had an excellent practice in a short time, and was the first physician in the city to recognize the needs for a private hospital aud act upon his recogni- tion of that requirement. He established a private in- firmary, in association with the late Dr. J. Larendou, under the firm name of Stuart & Larendon. The firm subsequently became Stuart, Larendon & Boyles, the third member being the late T. J. Boyles. With the re- tirement of Dr. Larendon, the firm continued as Stuart & Boyles, until 1901 when Dr. Boyles died, after which the title became Stuart, Red & Stuart, the latter being the son of Dr. Stuart.

However, it was in fields other than as a private practitioner, or in connection with the infirmary that Dr. Stuart made his most conspicuous mark in the medical history of this state. In 1872 he was ap- pointed chief surgeon of the Houston & Texas Central Railroad, a position which he held until the time of his death. He was also chief surgeon of the Houston, East & West Texas Railway when it was completed to Houston, and when that city became a point on the lines of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway and the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway, he was likewise appointed their local medical representative. In 1871 Dr. Stuart was honored by election to the office of vice president of the State Medical Society, and in 1873 was made president of that body. In 1876 he served as a delegate to the meeting of the International Medical Associa- tion, held at Philadelphia, during the Centennial Cele- bration. From 1878 to 1895 he was president of the old Galveston Medical College, which in the latter year became the medical department of the State University.

In Houston and South Texas, Dr. Stuart's work as a physician is best remembered for the important serv- ice he rendered to the cause of public health while chairman of the city board of health in Houston. In 1867, he fell a victim to a scourge of yellow fever, passed through it safely, and his experiences and studies sub- sequently made him one of the recognized authorities on this disease in all Texas. At every subsequent recurrence of yellow fever in Houston and other Texas communities, he was frequently consulted, and the con- fidence of the profession and the people in Dr. Stuart often enabled a community to withstand the plague and prevent a complete depopulation of the locality. In 1897 it was reported that a case of yellow fever had developed in Houston. An expert delegated by the United States government visited the city and pronounced the case yellow fever. Railroad towns along all lines entering Houston required a rigid quarantine, and it was en- forced with such severity that it meant a terrific loss to the commerce and prestige of the community. Dr. Stuart through his superior skill and ability not only proved the case was not yellow fever, but in less than four days had convinced the health physicians of the surrounding town of the proof of his efficiency, so that all quarantines against Houston were raised. Dr. Stuart was perhaps best known for his accomplishments in the general field of medicine, but he was a rare surgeon and performed many of the most difficult surgical operations. For a number of years in Houston he represented as medical examiner a number of the life insurance com- panies. It is not usual for a successful professional man to win a reputation in practical business affairs, but Dr. Stuart had a keen business judgment and was often entrusted with the management of large affairs. In 1886 he was appointed receiver of the Houston Sav- ings Bank, and at the end of a receivership of two years, paid the creditors seventy cents on the dollar. He was

for several years a director of the Commercial National Bank of Houston, and interested in various other busi- ness undertakings. Dr. Stuait was one of the leading men in the support of the Presbyterian Church of Houston, and was a member of the building committee that erected the magnificent stone church at Main street and MeKinney avenue, his individual contributions hav- ing been among the largest in the construction of that edifice.

Dr. Stuart was first married September 17, 1867, to Miss Ellen Dart. The children of that union were the late Dr. J. R. Stuart of Houston, and Daisy, wife of Dawes E. Sturgis. The mother of these two died in 1880, and in 1883 Dr. Stuart married Miss Bettie H. Bocock. Mrs. Stuart is still living and resides at the attractive family home, 517 McGowan Avenue. She is the mother of two children: Susan Walker and Mary Cummins, the latter the wife of Dr. F. R. Ross.

DR. V. BASCOM COZBY is one of the younger medical men of these parts, located here since 1908. Success has not heen a stranger to him, and his efforts have brought him a degree of prosperity of which he is well worthy. He is a native Texan, born at Garden Valley, Smith county, on September 29, 1875, and is the son of Colum- bus C. Cozby and the grandson of Isaac Cozby, who migrated to the state of Texas when a young man and during the pioneer period, and died at Garden Valley before the Civil war, when he was about forty-five years of age.

Isaac Cozby was a merchant and he married Jane Tunnell. They had two children, Columbus C. and Bell, who married T. J. Thompson. After the death of the husband and father Mrs. Cozby married J. W. Childress and continued to reside in the Garden Valley locality. Columbus C. Cozby grew up in Garden Valley in the quiet of that little village, married and ultimately en- gaged in railroad contracting. He disappeared from the ken of his family and friends in the pursuit of that vocation and no later knowledge was ever gained of him. He married Sallie Mayne, a daughter of Samuel P. Mayne, an Alabama settler and a farmer, and Mrs. Cozby is now a resident of the country near Ben Wheeler. Her children are as follows: Miss Willie, who married A. C. Knight, of Van Zandt county; V. Bascom of this review; and Claud C., a farmer of Van Zandt county.

Dr. Cozby was reared as a boy near Colfax, in Van Zandt county, and was educated in the Alexander Col- legiate Institute in Jacksonville, Texas. He engaged in teaching when he was twenty years of age, in which field of activity many a young professional man has made his start in life, and he gave six years of his young life to country and graded school work. When the Span- ish-American war broke out he enlisted in Company K, Fourth Texas Volunteer Infantry, with Captain Hamp- son Gary and Colonel Edmundson in command. The regiment camped about Houston, also San Antonio, and was mustered out in the spring of 1899 without having seen the enemy. Dr. Cozby then resumed teaching as principal of the village schools of Colfax and he closed his pedagogie career with two years of service there.

Having chosen medicine for his life work, the young man began its study in the Southwestern University Medical College at Dallas, in 1904, and he entered in practice on the certificate of the medical board of the state in 1906, practicing for two years thereafter at Colfax. He then returned to College and was graduated in 1908, when he located in Grand Saline. In 1910 he took post-graduate courses in the Polvelinie in New Orleans. He has served the Van Zandt County Medical Society as secretary, and he is now president of the so- ciety. He is City Health officer and does his political work in a quiet way but nevertheless, an effective one, as a Democrat. He has served as a member of the school board in Grand Saline, also, and in that office performed excellent service for his town. He has since

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coming to this community manifested a genuine and wholesome interest in the civic life of the place, and assumed his full share in the burdens of civic responsibil- ity, as a good citizen should.

On December 24, 1901, Dr. Cozby was married to Miss Linnie Kirkpatrick in Van Zandt county. Her father, J. W. Kirkpatrick, as well as her mother, who was in her maiden days known as May Slaughter, are both natives of the county, and are highly esteemed among its citizenship. The children of the Kirkpatricks are Mrs. Cozby, Janie, who married A. F. Pitts, of Grand Saline; Andrew, also of this place; May, who mar- ried James Crosby of this city; and Virgil. Dr. and Mrs. Cozby have children as follows: Harold, Ray- mond and Ruby.

Dr. Cozby is a Mason of the Royal Arch degree. He is Past Master of the Blue Lodge and has been a delegate to the Grand Lodge of the state. His church member- ship is with the Methodist Episcopal, in which he is a member of the board of stewards, and in which his wife also is a member.

YANCEY MCKELLAR has spent the years of his majority as a resident of Forney, where he has been identified with the more important agricultural activities of the county, and where he has added very materially to the estate left him by his father. Today Mr. Mckellar is regarded as one of the wealthiest men in these parts, and one of the most active along lines of industrial en- terprises of varied natures.

Born in Henderson county, Texas, on September 13, 1859, Yancey MeKellar is a son of John A. MeKellar, who came to Texas in the days when it was yet a repub- lie and settled in what came to be called Henderson county. He was a native of one of the Carolinas, born there in 1810, and moved to Alabama with his mother. The move to Henderson county came still later, and there he grew to manhood as one of a family of several children. His brother, Edward MeKellar, finally be- came a resident of Shreveport, Louisiana, where some of his family still reside.

John McKellar, it would seem from all accounts, was educated chiefly through experience. He was, however, wonderfully endowed with business tact and judgment, and his foresight in those matters appeared little short of miraculous. He lived in Henderson county until after the Civil war, when he went to Marshall, Texas, and there engaged in the merchandise business. While there engaged in business the Texas & Pacific railroad began its extension westward, and he planned to keep pace with its onward march, and wherever their line should stop, there would he keep store. He went to Hallville from Marshall, and afterward located in Long- view, when the road reached that place. In this manner did he manage to keep abreast of the building activity of the road, and he profited some by his commercial venture. He made money and invested it in cheap lands, chiefly in the black land belt of the state. In 1873 he reached Forney and during the two years he continued to live he devoted himself to the sale of lands and to the management of the immense volume of financial transac- tions that accrued as a result of his real estate deals. He owned lands by the thousands of acres that he had bought for two and three dollars an acre, and he sold this at six dollars, on credit, with notes bearing ten per cent interest. There was little farming being done in those days in the black land prairies, but there was an occasional spot to be found under plow, and Mr. MeKellar was a pioneer in the movement that resulted in bringing practically every available acre of land into a productive state. He found the virgin soils ex- cellently adapted to wheat and corn, and it was many years before the grain crops yielded place to cotton.

John A. MeKellar married Miss Elizabeth Moore in Alabama, and she died in Forney aged seventy years. She accompanied her husband on his long journey through

the west into Arkansas, where they abode for a time, thence on to Texas by wagon, reaching the Lone Star state about 1841. Their home was a Baptist one, and they reared their children in its simple faith and doc- trines. Their children were six in number, and brief men- tion is made concerning them as follows: Marl L. mar- ried Col. Wm. L. Herndon, of Tyler, and spent her life there; Nora died young; Susan married B. M. Boren, also of Tyler; John C. died in Forney; Duncan Graham is deceased; Calvin also died here, unmarried; Yancey, the subject of this review; and Terry, who died in Texas, before reaching years of maturity.

Yancey Mckellar was born in Henderson county, this state, as has been stated, and his early years were spent in a more or less migratory existence until he came to his youth. He was a lad of fourteen years when the family finally reached Forney, and when he had finished his schooling he joined his older brother in looking after the affairs of their father's estate, he having died some years previous, and not long after they located at Forney.

Today Yancey Mckellar is one of the largest cot- ton growers of this section. He has been directly re- sponsible for the breaking up of hundreds of acres of land known as the "hog wallow" variety, and placing it under cultivation, has erected homes for numerous fam- ilies who aid in the cultivation of his domain. As the climate and soil proved its adaptability, Mr. MeKellar substituted cotton for wheat, and he has built gins on his place from time to time, as well as having a hand in practically every enterprise in Forney that required a combination of capital to inaugurate. He is a heavy stockholder in the Forney Cotton Oil and Gin Company and is a director of the plant. He is a stockholder of the Farmers National Bank of Forney, and is identified with numerous other financial and industrial enterprises of the city and county.

His home, a mansion with wide galleries and corridors and countless rooms, is built upon the site of the parental residence and it stands surrounded by extensive and at- tractive grounds, its stately white columns standing forth as fitting markers of the original abiding place of this important family of Kaufman county.

Yancy MeKellar has proven himself the true son of his father in his business skill. He inherited sufficient land to keep a score of farmers busy, but he has gone steadily forward adding one responsibility after another, with true MeKellar foresight, so that he stands today as one of the most successful men of his county, strong in his position from every viewpoint.

An Odd Fellow, Mr. Mckellar has no other fraternal affiliations, and he is not a member of any church, despite the fact that he was reared in its precepts. On May 20, 1892, he married Miss Emily Guyton, in Cass county, Missouri, and they have two children, Guyton and Elizabeth MeKellar.

MICHAEL SPELLMAN is a well-to-do retired farmer of Forney and president of the First National Bank of Crandall, a lively and promising agricultural town in Kaufman county. His residence in this section of Texas began in childhood and he has lived within the confines of the commonwealth since 1872. His career is one of especial interest to those who view with concern the rise of those whose success is accomplished through their own unaided effort, and in this respect Mr. Spellman's life work thus far is especially praiseworthy.

Born in Springfield, Wisconsin, in October, 1858, Michael Spellman is the son of Thomas Spellman, who came to the United States from County Galway, Ireland, in the early forties, having been born in that country in ISIS. After settling in Wisconsin, he continued there as a resident for some years before and after the Civil war, identifying himself with various kinds of work, but chiefly of common labor. Though he possessed a fair education, he chose to compete in the labor markets for his subsistence for some years after settling on this

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side of the big pond. From Philadelphia he made his way westward by short stages, working on the Erie canal in New York, and gradually feeling his way to- ward the Mississippi Valley, stopping for a time at Zanesville, Ohio, aud reaching Wisconsin before the out- break of the war.

During his pioneer days in Wisconsin he chanced to engage in railroad work and eventually he became a foreman for his employers. In 1869 he moved to Iowa and at Moulton he spent three years in that state from which point he came to Texas. In Iowa he was in the employ of Martin Flynn, a prominent railroad builder, and he worked on the Des Moines and Mississippi Valley and the Rock Island Railroads, both of theu building lines that extended through the state.

Mr. Spellman brought a few teams to Texas with him aud put them to work on the Texas & Pacific, which was then crossing rapidly toward the west. Later on he took his outfit to San Antonio and helped to grade a line of road from Houston to that city made sacred by the Alamo, and when the panic of 1873 came on and railroad construction in Texas was suspended, he aban- doned the work, and spent the remainder of his life in farming. In 1876 he established his family six miles southwest of Forney on a place he rented, and he con- tinued in that status as a farmer during the remainder of his days. Thomas Spellman was reared under Roman Catholic influence, but his children were permitted to choose for themselves in that matter. In politics he con- tented himself with voting the Democratic ticket, car- ing little for polities in all their ramifications. He mar- ried Miss Mary Nolan in 1852, in Zanesville, Ohio, she being a daughter of William Nolan, a farmer, and also from County Galway. Mrs. Spellman died in Dallas, Texas, in 1883, and Mr. Spellman passed away at Forney in 1890. Their children were Sarah, who married Rich- ard Paden and lives in Dallas; William, also of Dallas; Martin, who died in Kaufman, Texas, leaving a child; Thomas, of Forney, and Michael, the subject of this brief review.

Michael Spellman, one might almost say, was reared in the family of a nomad. Certain it is that he moved about with his family more than is usually the misfor- tune of a small boy, and the result was that in the mat- ter of his education he was very much neglected. He was ever in an atmosphere of industry, and he early learned that a career of labor was for him. He was am- bitious and energetic, however, counting it no hard- ship to work, though he sometimes endured and suf- fered experiences that he recognizes today as having been genuine hardships, in order that he might help in the maintenance of the family. One incident alone will serve to illustrate something of the manner of the boy's life. When he was about twenty years of age he and his brothers went into the bottoms of the East Fork of the Trinity in Kaufman county to make fence rails. It was in the dead of winter and they provided themselves with a wagon to sleep in and to house their commissary while they were at work with ax, maul and wedge. During their stay the river began to rise and it crept upon them so silently that their passage to safety was cut off before they saw their danger, and they were marooned on an island, helpless. On Friday their provisions could be stretched no further. They subsisted on hackberry balls from then on, meantime attempting to solve a way out of their predicament. Hunger was fast making inroads upon their strength, and their case began to appear little short of desperate. Before they had hit upon any practicable mode of escape, help from outside came to them, making their deliverance possible. One Mr. Crandall, for whom Crandall, Texas was named, knew that the boys were in the bottoms, and he set about to make a craft that might be used in taking them off. To his dismay, when he launched the unsightly craft, it sank, and he found he must re- sort to another method. This proved to be a mule,

upon which he mounted his son-in-law, Dr. Hubbard, and this was the vehicle of transportation that made the rescue of the marooned Spellman boys. By that time, Sunday afternoon, the lads were well nigh disheartened, and inexpressibly hungry as well. Arrived at the home of Mr. Crandall, the family ministered to their bodily comfort with warm clothing and a hearty meal, and Mr. Spellman recalls today the anxiety with which he looked forward to that repast. The delay occasioned in its serving by the offering up of thanks of the kindly old gentleman for the safety of the boys was scarce bearable, but when they sat down to a bountiful repast and must again refrain from indulgence while their host returned thanks, his anguish, mental and physical, was most acute. He remembers today with some pride that he restrained himself until the conventions had been complied with, and he also remembers vividly the joys of that wonderful supper that terminated his four days fast.

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A history of Texas and Texans, Part 107

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