A history of Texas and Texans, Part 36

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 36

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JOHN L. LOVEJOY. From humble clerkships have risen some of the leading men in the financial and business world of Texas. In fact, the majority of the financiers who have left their impress upon this section have had their training in the counting-room or behind the counter, and in this class stands John L. Lovejoy, president of the First National Bank of Mckinney. He has been a resi- dent of Collin county for sixty-four years, and has been an eye witness to the wonderful development which has brought this section from a wide, open range to a center of industrial and commercial activity and through his own operations has contributed in no small way to this growth and progress. Mr. Lovejoy was born August 22, 1848, at Paris, Lamar county, Texas, and is a son of George W. and Polly (Highfield) Lovejoy.

The Lovejoy family is of Scotch-Irish extraction and was founded in Texas by the grandfather of Mr. Love- joy, the Rev. John L. Lovejoy, who was a prominent Methodist divine of this state and chaplain of the state legislature during the administration of Governor Throck- morton. An unele, James H. Lovejoy, living now at Houston, was a resident of Collin county for a number of years and was the first deputy sheriff under the first sheriff of the county, subsequently becoming himself the second sheriff. At present he is living a retired life. George W. Lovejoy was born in Georgia, and was a youth when he accompanied his parents to Texas, in 1836, the family settling at Pin Hook. In 1849, after his mar- riage, he moved to Collin county and purchased land, on which he continued to be engaged in successful farming and stock raising, the old homestead being located two miles west of MeKinney. There he passed away in 1859. By her first marriage she had four children, and by her second union two children. Mrs. Lovejoy, who survives the father, is living at Gatesville, Coryell county, and, in spite of her ninety-three years, is still alert in body and active in mind and is capable of doing her own house- work

John L. Lovejoy received but meager educational ad- vantages in his youth, his training being limited to about three months of each winter in the primitive log-cabin district school. He was ambitious aud industrious, how- ever, and his receptive mind and retentive memory per- mitted him to become better schooled than many of his fellows. Since that time, wide reading, much travel, and keen observation of men and affairs have given him a broad fund of knowledge on a number of subjects, and one cannot be with him long without realizing that he is a very well-educated man. Mr. Lovejoy's first business experience was as a clerk in a drug store at Mckinney, following which he accepted a position as a traveling salesman for Meyer Brothers, wholesale druggists of St. Louis. His career as a banker began when he opened a national bank at Greenville, Hunt county, of which he continued as president until September, 1907, since which time he has acted in the capacity of vice president. Dur- ing this time he had been a stockholder and director in

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the First National Bank of Mckinney, at Mckinney, and in September, 1907, was chosen president of that institu- tion, recognized as one of the strongest in this part of the state. His able direction of its policies has popu- larized its coffers, and its standing in banking circles and in the confidence of the public is equally high. Mr. Lovejoy is the owner of his father's old home and farm west of Mckinney, where there are 1241 acres of land, rented to nine families. A Democrat of the Jeffersonian persuasion, Mr. Lovejoy has always been an active and ardent supporter of his party's policies and candidates. In Masonry he has achieved a high place, having attained to the Scottish Rite degree, and he is at this time treas- urer of the Commandery at Mckinney. He holds mem- bership also in the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and is a charter member of the local lodge of the Knights of Pythias. A lifelong member of the Southern Presbyterian church, he has acted in the capacity of dea- con thereof for a number of years.

In 1882 Mr. Lovejoy was married at Mckinney to Miss Carrie Emerson, a daughter of Francis Emerson, who came to America as a boy from Ireland and located in Texas about 1855 as an early settler. In 1869 he organ- ized the present First National Bank of Mckinney, and continued as its president up to the time of his death, in 1901. Mr. and Mrs. Lovejoy are the parents of one daughter, Margie, who is the wife of Dr. C. G. Comegys, a practicing physician of Gainesville, Texas.

Mr. Lovejoy is very fond of travel, and generally spends his vacations in visiting prominent Masonic and Shrine gatherings in all parts of the United States and in taking occasional trips with his family to Europe, hav- ing spent six months there during the Paris Exposition. However, he finds his greatest pleasure at his home, and is now the owner of a beautiful residence at No. 401 North Kentucky street, Mckinney.

WILFORD E. RUCKER, M. D. Since 1900 Dr. Rucker has been one of the leading members of the medical profes- sion in Collin county. Dr. Rucker graduated in medicine more than twenty years ago, has kept himself in close touch with the advance in knowledge by private reading and hy post-graduate work, and has well deserved his success.

Born at Cleveland, Tennessee, May 10, 1863, Wilford E. Rucker is of Scotch-Irish ancestry and a son of Wil- liam R. and Mahala (Underwood) Rucker. Both his fa- ther and mother were natives of Tennessee. His father during his active career was a farmer and merchant; volunteered for service in the Union army from east Tennessee, and participated in some of the ireportant battles and campaigns in that part of the country. Among the engagements in his experience as a soldier were the battles of Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and many others, and in one fight he was wounded. He is now living, at the good old age of seventy-four, at his home, in Cleveland, and for several years has been com- mander of the Grand Army post at that place. His wife, the mother of Dr. Rucker, died about 1869. They were the parents of four children, two sons aud two daughters, Dr. Rucker being the oldest. Dr. Rucker's brother, W. H. Rucker, is postmaster at Nevada, in Col- lin county, and his sister is the wife of B. C. McDowell, deceased, and lives in Oak Cliff, at Dallas. He also has a half-brother, J. B. Rucker, in the real estate business at Dallas, and a half-sister, Eula Rucker, a teacher in the public schools of Dallas.

Dr. Rucker acquired his early education in the public schools of Tennessee, from the Flint Springs Academy. and in 1892 was graduated in medicine from the medical department of the Vanderbilt University, at Nashville. His practice was begun at Altoga, in Collin county, and from 1896 to 1900 he practiced in Dallas county. Since 1900 his home and the center of his professional activi- ties have been at Mckinney. For several years he was associated with Dr. T. W. Wiley in the management of

the local sanitarinm. Since his graduation from the Vanderbilt University, Dr. Rucker has taken three post- graduate courses in the New Orleans Polyclinic.

In political views, he is liberal, and usually votes for the man rather than the party. His fraternal affiliations are with the Masonic Order, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. In 1892, at Altoga, was celebrated his marriage with Mrs. Sims (nee Miss Fanny J. McMurray). Her father, Professor McMurray, was for a number of years an active educator in the state of Georgia, and taught for several years after moving to Texas. Her mother was a member of the prominent Holt family of Georgia. Dr. Rucker and wife have one son, now nineteen ycars old, who was educated in the Bingham Military School, in North Carolina, and is now employed in the hardware business in Mckinney. Dr. Rucker has his office at 105 W. Virginia street, and his home is at the corner of Col- lege and LaMar streets.

JAMES HENRY HAMNER. Among the well known news- paper men in western Texas there is perhaps none bet- ter qualified and with a more diversified experience than James Henry Hamner, editor and proprietor of the Claude News. He was born in Shelby county, Tennessee, February 28, 1839, a son of Hezekiah Ford and Cale- donia Musadora (Scales) Hamner. The father, a native of Virginia, in 1835 moved to Tennessee, where he was one of the early settlers in Shelby county and where he maintained his residence until his death, in 1845, at the age of forty-two. By occupation he was a planter; hy inclination a student and a man of great literary attain- ments. The mother was born in North Carolina, from which state her parents moved into Tennessee in 1834. The paternal grandparents were of Scotch and Welch stock, coming to Virginia at an early day, many members being prominent in the early history of that state. On the maternal side the ancestry is Scotch and the family was of ancient and noble lineage. The mother died in

Mississippi in 1865, at the age of fifty-four, leaving four children, of whom the Texas editor was the second.

Mr. Hamner was reared in Tennessee, where he at- tended the local schools. He took up the trade of printer as his first regular occupation, and for many years he was connected with the newspaper and printing business in Memphis. During his whole life Mr. Ham- ner was an ardent Southerner. When the war broke out his young heart beat responsive to the call of the drum and he gladly enlisted with General Bedford Forrest when the latter organized his battalion. From then on to the end of the war, from battlefield to battlefield, on long, hard marches and hot campaigns, he followed his leader, serving as high private with faithfulness and marked courage. At the battle of Fort Donelson he was wounded in the left leg, the smaller bone being shattered by the bullet, which killed the horse that had carried him into action. Then followed a harder fight with death in a hospital in Clarksville, Tennessee, a thrilling escape, a danger-fraught ride on horseback to Corinth, Mississippi, when a furlough enabled him to go home to his mother in West Point, Mississippi, where his stay was prolonged until he could abandon his crutches. After his return to the army his battalion was merged into the Tenth Tennessee Regiment and figured at Resaca, at Missionary Ridge and Chicka- mauga, at Franklin, at Nashville, interspersed by many lesser engagements. His surrender was made at Gaines- ville, Alabama, May 10, 1865.

Mr. Hamner took up life again with nothing but hand and head and heart as assets, handicapped by a wound that proved a life-long menace and annoyance. In 1892 Mr. Hamner and family moved to Claude, Texas, where he established the Claude News. For three and a half years he edited this weekly, only abandoning it when he moved to McLennan county. Here he again en- tered the newspaper field. At the end of six years he

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sold his establishment and returned to Claude, seeking health for his invalid wife. He resumed the original paper, the News, on July 8, 1902, since which time his name has appeared in the editorial column as editor and proprietor. He has kept the News up to the highest standard of journalism, guarding its columns jealously from the unclean and vicious, and has one of the best papers in the Panhandle country.

Mr. Hamner is a Royal Arch Mason and he served as treasurer and secretary of his chapter for several years. He has been active in citizenship and served as treasurer of Armstrong county during 1903-04-05-06, his election having come on the Democratie ticket. He was affiliated with the Christian Church.

In Marion, Alabama, April 21, 1867, Mr. Hamner married Mrs. Laura Hendrix Parker, daughter of Wil- liam and Althea Vernon (Oliver) Hendrix. Her father was a well-known Alabama planter, a former member of the Alamaba legislature and grand master of the Masonic order of his state. He was one of the three Masons in the United States who at that time had taken the 33d degree in Masonry. Miss Laura Vernon Hamner, the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Hamner, was born at Memphis, Tennessee, July 17, 1871, and after years of successful work in the schoolroom is now postmaster at Claude, Texas.

AUGUSTUS G. HUBBARD, the Postmaster at Paris, Tex., has been intimately associated for nearly thirty years with the business interests of Paris and with its com- mercial life. He was identified as a member of the Paris Dry Goods Company for twenty years, and with its financial life as an officer of some of the leading banks of the city. He is a native Texan and was born in Harrison county, December 13, 1851. His father was James Hubbard, who came to Texas from South Caro- lina, in the Abbeville district, where his birth occurred in 1824; but the family is one of New England origin, its head having migrated from Connecticut in the person of James Hubbard, who went first to Virginia, and served through the war of 1812 from that state, and later mar- ried a Miss Wilson of Staunton, that state, and moved to South Carolina. James Hubbard engaged in the wholesale grocery business at Hamburg, South Carolina, there acquired a goodly estate, chiefly consisting of Negro property, and died at that point in 1847.

The family of James Hubbard comprised James and John, who came to Texas with their mother, who, it may be said here, died in Marshall after the Civil war. Both sons served in the Confederate army, and died here. Two daughters were also numbered in the family, they being Mrs. Bayless Taylor of Marshall, Texas, and Mrs. Charles H. Bowles of that city. James Hubbard came to Texas in about 1849, and spent a few years in Harrison county. He first engaged in farming, and in 1850 married Miss Eliza M. Dandridge, a daughter of Nathaniel Watson Dandridge of Virginia, out of which family came Martha Washington. In later years Mr. Hubbard settled in Bowie county, and there engaged in farming. When the Rebellion came on, he became a strong advocate of Inde- pendence for the South and joined the Confederate Army in support of the movement to that end. He joined Crump's Battalion, was commissioned a first lieutenant, and rose to a captaincy early in his military career. His command crossed the Mississippi river in time to take part in the affair at Corinth, and for three years Captain Hubbard remained in the eastern department, where the great campaigns of the Civil War took place. Return- ing to the Trans-Mississippi Department, he raised a com- pany, and was assigned to duty under E. Kirby Smith during the remainder of the war. He escaped wounds and capture and came out of the long struggle with suf- ficient health and courage to resume the cultivation of his Red river farm, and was later elected to the office of county judge, in which he officiated for many years, die-

charging his duties in a manner most satisfactory and dispensing a justice worthy of a higher court.

Captain Hubbard was a man of education, his training having been received in a Catholic institution in George- town, D. C. He was not, however, an orthodox church- man. He was a strong writer upon topics engaging his best thought and took rank among the best citizens of Bowie county. His wife died at Boston in 1870, and he passed away in Paris in 1887. Their children were Sal- lie E., now Mrs. J. H. Barry of Paris, Texas, and Augus- tus G. of this review, he being the first-born of the two.

Augustus G. Hubbard was educated sparingly in the schools of Marshall and Boston, Texas, the best of his training coming in the years when the war was in prog- ress, when educational systems in the south were at a low ebb, and he grew up chiefly in Bowie county, around about old Boston. He began his working career as a clerk in a dry goods store there, and in 1874 he went to .Cooper, Texas, and engaged in a business of the same character on his own responsibility, just at the time when Delta county was being projected. He remained there in successful business until 1884, when he identi- fied himself with his present location, straightway assum- ing a conspicuous place among the citizenship of Paris. He quitted mercantile life in 1904, having been long identified with business there as a member of the Paris Dry Goods Company, and entered the banking business as cashier of the Paris National Bank. With the merg- ing of that institution with the First National Bank he became cashier of the latter institution, continuing as such until May, 1912, when he retired from it and from all other business activity. Circumstances, however, altered his plans, and he felt impelled to once more enter the lists, and he did so as president of the Guaranty State Bank and Trust Company in November, 1912. The con- cern just mentioned is capitalized at $50,000 and was or- ganized in 1912 by the Duncan and other local interests, and its destiny is in the hands of a popular and capable management. He was appointed postmaster by President Wilson in March, 1914.

Mr. Hubbard was married in Bowie county, Texas, in January, 1874, to Miss Eugenia Moss, a daughter of Robert J. Moss, a Virginia settler of that county in an early day. Mrs. Moss was formerly a Miss Blackburn, whose parents located near Blossom, Texas, in 1845, so that the family is one that has long been identified with the state. The children of Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard are as follows: James, a merchant of New Boston, Texas, who is married to Alberta Martin and is the father of six children-Augusta, Eugenia, Robert and Thomas (who are twins), and Alberta Lee. Robert M. Hubbard is an attorney of New Boston and is married to Miss Bertie L. Hart. Thomas is a merchant at Sweetwater, Texas; he married Pearl Lancaster and has one daughter, Vir- ginia. William E. of Memphis, Texas, is a merchant, and married Bunnie Bunting. John H. of Sweetwater married Shirley McCarty. Sallie E. married John C. Gib- bons of Paris, Texas, and they have one son, Jack Hub- bard Gibbons. Mrs. Mary Meyer, also of Paris, has one son, Gus Hubbard Meyer. Eugenia V. married Frank A. Bailey, and has one daughter, Eugenia Gibbons Bailey. Dudley C. is a young business man of Paris, and Augusta Virginia is the youngest of the ten.

IDRIS W. EVANS. One of the men of whom Bonham, Texas, is especially proud and who has accomplished a great work for this city is Idris W. Evans, who was su- perintendent of its schools for thirteen years. Mr. Evans has given his entire life to the cause of education in Texas, and he is one of the few educators who seem to have solved the problem of a practical education, a question that is causing much discussion today among not only educators, but all thinking people. He has com- bined with the scientific and literary branches such prac- tical subjects that give a student who can take no more

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than a high school course some assets when he starts out in life for himself.

The father and mother of Idris W. Evans were Welsh, being natives of the region about Cardiff, Wales, and belonging to the mining class in that industrial section. His father, Daniel J. Evans, married Jeanette Jones clandestinely when they were scarcely more than children, and their journey to the United States was their bridal tour. Mr. Evans, like so many of his countryman, was a musician of more than ordinary ability, and he first settled in Ohio, being a teacher of vocal music. In 1881 he came to the south, and located in Arkansas, and for the past several years he has been supervisor of music in the schools of Little Rock. Six children have been born to Daniel J. Evans and his wife, the two eldest of these having died in childhood. Of those living, Idris W. is the eldest; Mrs. J. E. Collius, living in Carbon, Texas; Gomer, who is auditor for a lumber company in Okla- homa, and Gwilym, who is employed by the Cudahy Packing Company in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Although Mr. Evans is thoroughly southern in his per- sonality and through the circumstances of breeding and education, by the accident of birth he is a native of Ohio, having been born in Summit county on the 20th of October, 1871. He came to Texas as a youth of sixteen, with the foundation of a good education and the ambition to acquire a broader oue. He was an unusually brilliant student, and determined to earn his living and at the same time increase his own knowledge by becoming a school teacher. His first experience in this field was near New Boston, Bowie county, Texas, where he taught the Ramsay school. He remained in that county until some time during the nineties, when he came to Fannin county and taught the Orangeville school. He was later elected principal of the Dodd City school, and then of the school at Leonard. While in charge of the school at the latter place, he was elected county superintendent of schools. He was re-elected in 1900, and served six months of his term, when he resigned to accept the posi- tion of superintendent of the Bonham schools.

This was in 1901, S. B. Foster having preceded him as superintendent. When he took charge, there was one small building for the negro pupils, and a frame build- ing almost in ruins, and a tumble-down brick structure, both of which occupied the site of the present high school, for the white children. The value of all the school property was about fifteen thousand dollars. There is now a modern high school building, a large campus and an eight-room building in northeast Bon- ham, a three-room building set in ample grounds in South Bonham, and an enlarged building for the negro school. The property valuation is placed at one hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars, and there has been an addi- tional seventy-five thousand dollars in bonds voted for a new high school. The force of instruction has been mate- rially increased, there being now twenty-three white teach- ers and four negroes. When Mr. Evans came to the school, eleven grades had been established, but he broad- ened and strengthened the curriculum until now the high school is one in fact as well as in name. There was only the nucleus of a library then, and now there are volumes of reference, text-books, and fiction, sufficient to do credit to a much larger school. The science department, which has been woefully neglected in most of our southern high schools, at the time of Mr. Evans' advent included only physics and chemistry. It has now been enlarged to include physical geography, physiology, botany, zoology, agriculture, domestic science and domestic art, manual training, and mechanical drawing, while German has been added to the literary course. Splendid instruction is of- fered in all these branches, the money expended for the high school alone for instruction being over seven thou- sand dollars.

Bonham was one of the first cities in the state to avail itself of the aid offered by the state in giving in- struction in the departments of agriculture and domestic

science and, in addition to the five thousand dollars of the state's money that has been expended, it has ex- pended ten thousand of its own money on these depart- ments.

In a bulletin just issued by the United States Depart- ment of Agriculture at Washington, D. C., the Bonham high school is given conspicuous mention for its work of pioneering education in the Texas schools. The bulletin speaks as follows:

"The Bonham High School took advantage of the provisions for state aid in teaching agriculture, manual training, and home economics, enlarged and equipped laboratories for the work, and purchased five and one- half acres adjoining the school. The first-year students have complete charge of the school farm, and upon them rests the responsibility of preparing the ground, select- ing the seed, planning the rotations, and planting the various crops. They have five recitations from the text- book in agriculture each week, and each afternoon one division of the class goes to the field.

"The farm is divided into one-fifth and one-tenth acre plats. Each plat is permanently staked and numbered, and the boys have drawn a large map and made blue prints of the farm. Under the direction of the manual training teacher, they have built a house sixteen by thirty feet, with a loft capacity of about six tons. This is being used for the storage of implements, tools, seeds, and produce, as well as for class work in seed testing, grading, and all other indoor activities of the farm.

"One or more of the following crops have been plant- ed: Cotton, corn, oats, barley, emmer, rape, millet, Kaf- fir corn, broom corn, mangels, cowpeas, velvet beans, soy beans, peanuts, cabbage, onions, tomatoes, beets, and bush beans. Other crops, such as alfalfa, vetch, bur elover, crimson clover, rye, wheat, and winter oats are in the rotations for fall sowing.

"A few simple experiments have been planned and are being carried out, such as the use of acid phosphate on cotton and lime on alfalfa, leaving cotton thick and thin in the row and so forth. In most of the work the school is aiming to demonstrate principles that have been already well established. The following are some of the demonstrations that have been undertaken: (1) That barnyard manure is valuable and should be utilized, (2) that crop rotation is a necessary feature in success- ful agriculture and that legumes should occupy a promi- nent part in these rotations, (3) that winter cover crops are essential in retaining soil fertility in the South, (4) that improved seeds are important for high yields and should be selected annually from the growing crop, (5) that early surface cultivation for conservation of moisture is necessary as a safeguard against possible drought in July and August, (6) that deep plowing rather than shallow is necessary on upland soils to re- tard erosion and (7) that the better cultivation of fewer acres and diversified farming involves less risk, distributes the work more uniformly throughout the year and in the end is more profitable than straight farming to cotton and corn. The boys do all the work and seem glad of the chance to do something from which they can see immediate results."

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A history of Texas and Texans, Part 36

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