A history of Texas and Texans, Part 81

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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DR. CHARLES P. BROKAW. When Dr. Charles P. Brokaw was graduated from the University of Ken- tucky at Louisville in 1904, he established himself in practice in Dalhart, Texas, where he continued from the first of January, 1905, until June 1, 1911. On the latter day he came to Electra, since which time he has been successfuly engaged in the general practice of medicine aud surgery, and his advancement in his pro- fession here, as well as in his former location, has been noticeably good, each season gaining something to him in popularity and prominence and the confidence of the people. He has specialized somewhat in surgery, but as has been stated, his practice is general rather than otherwise, and he has made a creditable name for him- self in professional circles since he began his life work.

Born in Pottawattomie county, Iowa, on April 9, 1880, Dr. Brokaw is the son of Isaac J. and Lucy (Mann) Brokaw, both natives of the state of Ohio. They were married in that state and made their way to Iowa in 1870, where they remained until 1882 and then moved to Florida, where the father became a prominent nurseyman. In 1899 he came to Texas, lo- cating in the eastern part, aud he died in Dallam county in 1908, at the age of sixty-two years. The mother is a woman of considerable education, and had beeu a school teacher in Ohio prior to her marriage. She is now living with her son at Electra, Texas, at the age of sixty-six years.

Of the five sons born to these parents, the subject of this brief review is the fourth born. He received fairly good educational advantages as a boy at home, and when he attended John B. Stetson University in Florida, he was graduated with the degree of A. B., receiving as well a scholarship from Stetson University to the University of Kentucky, at Louisville. He at- tended the latter institution in prosecution of his med- ical studies and in 1904 was duly graduated, soon after which he began his practice at Dalhart, as has already

SAfill

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been mentioned. His success there as well as in Electra has been of a high order, and he takes his proper place among the best known medical men of the county, re- puted among his confreres to be one of the most suc- cessful surgeons in this section of the state.

Dr. Brokaw is a member of the Wichita County Medical Society, as well as the district and state societies. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, and is a member of Dalhart Lodge No. 255, Royal Arch Masons. He is a Democrat, politically speaking, and is a member of the Methodist church.

On May 10, 1906, Dr. Brokaw was married to Miss Mattie Wiggins, of Dalhart, Texas, a daughter of Benjamin F. and Eola (Martin) Wiggins, of Clay county, where the father is living, but the mother is dead. The wife of Dr. Brokaw bas also passed away, dying on the 25th of August, 1913. One child has been born to them, Charles Austin, born on May 23, 1909, in Dalhart, Texas.

ERNEST S. FLIPPO. In the list of commercial edu- cators in Texas there is none with a better record and better accomplishments to his credit than Ernest S. Flippo, proprietor of the Vernon Commercial College at Vernon. Mr. Flippo has been engaged in this line of educational work all his career and has made a dis- tinctive success.

He was born in Millsap, Texas, May 12, 1888, the second in a family of ten children born to George Washington and Maggie (Bly) Flippo, the former a native of Alabama, and the latter of Virginia. Both father and mother came to Texas with their respected parents, and the father located and spent a number of years at Fort Worth, where he followed the trade of brick mason, and in the same line in different sec- tions of Texas. He is now living at Whitt, Texas, at the age of fifty. The mother who was educated and married in this state is now forty-five years of age.

Ernest S. Flippo, as a boy, attended school at Mineral Wells, Texas, and after finishing his high school course entered the Tyler Commercial College, taking his diploma there December 5, 1907. His first work was as assistant principal in the commercial department at the Abilene Business College, where he remained nine months. He then organized a writing school, and did work along that line for five months after which he moved to Quanah, and spent several months as com- mercial and penmanship teacher. He was connected with the MeKinney business college for two years, and then changed his residence to Vernon, where he was for some months associated with the Draughons Busi- ness College.

On September 3, 1912, he opened the Vernon Com- mercial College, an institution which has since met the needs of commercial education in this section of the state, has drawn a large number of pupils from the immediate and more remote sections, and is now a flourishing school.

Mr. Flippo is a Democrat in polities, is affiliated with the Woodmen of the World, and has membership in the Methodist church. At Vernon, on January 27, 1911, he was married to Jewel Murphy, a daughter of H. M. Murphy of Burnet, Texas. Her parents who are still living, were early settlers in western Texas.

JOHN S. HILL, M. D. With all of consistency may this well known and honored physician of Texas be termed one of the world's benefactors, for he has ac- complished a great and noble work in the treatment of the unfortunate victims of the drug and liquor habits, to which phase of professional endeavor he now devotes virtually his entire time and attention. His success, through the medium of a course of treatment originated by himself, has been most definite and unequivocal, and for the proper care of the many who come to him for succor from the pitiable and baneful habits noted, he

has established a private sanitarium in the beautiful city of Greenville, Hunt county. This institution is at- tractive in its appointments and is thoroughly modern in its equipment and facilities in all departments. It is known as the Hill Sanitarium and Dr. Hill is inde- fatigable, sympathetic and unselfish in his efforts to make the institution a veritable haven of refuge to those who seek freedom from the insatiable dominion of the drug and liquor addictions. The greater honor is due the Doctor by reason of the fact that he has been in the most significant sense the architect of his own for- tunes and has achieved prominence and distinction in his exacting profession, as well as high reputation in his chosen field of practice.

Dr. Hill was born at Searcy, White county, Arkansas, on the 28th of June, 1854, and was a lad of ten years at the time of the family removal to Lamar county, Texas, in which state he has maintained his home during the long intervening years and in which his parents continued to reside until their death. He gained his rudimentary education in the public schools of Lamar county and supplemented this by ambitious self-dis- cipline, as he devoted his otherwise leisure hours to care- ful reading and study. Through his own efforts he earned the money which enabled him to complete a partial course in the medical department of the University of Ten- nessee, at Nashville, but his financial resources reached so low an ebb that he was unable to continue his studies to the point of graduation. Upon his return to Texas he proved, by most successfully passing the required examination, that he was eligible for the practice of medicine, and he was granted the necessary license. He initiated his professional work in Delta county, and finally established his residence at Cooper, the judicial center of that county. He gained definite success as a general practitioner and through continuous study and research kept himself in touch with the advances made in medical and surgical science. He was engaged in practice for some time at Sulphur Springs, Hopkins county, and finally he located at Waxahatchie, the cap- ital of Ellis county, where he built up a large and rep- resentative practice and where he continued his earnest lahors for a long period of years.

In 1897 Dr. Hill established his home in the city of Greenville, and here he has since given his attention almost exclusively to the treatment for drug and liquor addiction. About the year 1892 he began the use of a system of treatment which he himself had devised for use in such deplorable cases, and so successful did this system prove in practical results that the Doctor finally retired entirely from general practice to devote all of his time and efforts to the treatment of those addicted to the use of drugs, intoxicating liquors and cigarettes. Hundreds of victims to these habits have been perma- nently cured through availing themselves of the advan- tages of his sanitarium, which occupies two large build- ings, and he has so improved his method of treatment that it represents virtually a specific agency for the cure of the disorders noted-a practical antidote for the poisons insidiously instilled into the human system through liquor and drugs and creating a pathological condition. The treatment is generously commended by the ethical medical profession, and a proposition has been made to bring about legislation providing for the use of the Hill system in the state institutions of Texas. A noteworthy feature of the Hill sanitarium is that its patients are entirely free from restraint and other stren- nous methods of treatment commonly utilized in institu- tions where the drug and liquor habits are treated and, further than this, Dr. Hill shows his deep humanitarian spirit by doing all in his power to aid his patients through advice and admonition, to quicken conscience and bring forward high ideals of morality and Christian faith. He is generous, sympathetic and considerate, and aside from his regular life work he is liberal in the support and furtherance of charitable and religious

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activities. His political allegiance is given to the Democratic party and his religious faith is that of the Methodist church, of which he is a zealous and liberal supporter.

As indicative of the great work being done by Dr. Hill is given an account of the redemption through the medium of his treatment of a woman of culture and refinement who had fallen to the lowest depths and whose initial step toward the rehabilitation of her life was made under the sympathetic guidance of a Metho- dist deaconess in the city of Dallas, where the unfor- tunate woman, not yet old in years, had been found by this Samaritan Woman "in an old saloon in the city of Dallas, lying on a bed of filthy rags. She who had once graced the courts of kings had fallen into the depths, lost to all hope, forgetful of all things uplift- ing. She was given treatment in four different institu- tions, but each in turn failed to bring her back from the awful realm of fantastic figures, darkness and death. Despair had almost closed in on us in our fight to reclaim her, when we found Dr. Hill and here she has been won back to life." The foregoing words are those of the devoted deaconess who effected the rescue, and who later gave a brief record concerning the life of the woman whom she "plucked as a brand from the burn- ing." From this record the following extracts. are made, with certain paraphrase and elimination:

"Ada came of wealthy parentage and she was given every advantage to secure an education; she was grad- uated in' Potters College, Bowling Green, Kentucky, where she made a splendid record. She was a beautiful girl and very fond of society. Eventually there came across her path an Austrian nobleman, Count Arthur Ford Blanther von Seipic. He was a man of winning ways and much affability, and within her young bosom, already set upon social distinctions, there came a beau- tiful vision of courts and kings beyond the seas. It was an easy matter to fall in love with the count. They were married and her dreams of the society of the east came true. She was presented at the Austrian court, to Emperor Joseph, and at the court of St. James she was presented to Queen Victoria.

"Eventually a daughter was born to the couple, at a country place near London. Soon afterward they began a tour around the world, but alas! though too late to help her, the wife learned that her nobleman was a gambler. They reached Chicago on their trip, but there the count indulged too freely his propensities for games of chance, and lost heavily. In his desperation he de- cided to end it all. He shot his beautiful young wife and, think he had killed her, he turned the gun on himself aud was dead when his side was reached. For weeks the young widow lay in the hospital and under the influence of drugs. Much to the surprise of her physicians, she recovered from the wound, but, alas! a victim of drugs. Because of her inability at that time to care for her child she gave the babe to friends, and there she began her downward course. Her fortune was gone and it was necessary for her to gain a livelihood. She tried school teaching and stenography, but the battle was more than she could bear. She fell, and became the mistress of a well known Texas millionaire. After a time he tired of her. Her beauty was fading and she began dropping lower aud lower until she reached the final depths of human degradation, lost to the world and associating with crime. She was such a being when I found her, and although she had taken treatment she was such when Dr. Hill took her into charge. She was cured and now she is in her right mind, clothed in rea- son, with hope in the eyes, and with bright prospects before her. Soon after she felt the return of conscious- ness of a better life she professed a faith in Christ. She says she is happy and overjoyed at the change in her career." A sad aud awful story is this brief record and aside from all connection with the great service rendered by Dr. Hill, in Christian zeal and all of sym-

pathy, the tale offers an object lesson that may well be read by fathers and mothers and by young men and women throughout the length and breadth of our fair land.

Dr. Hill married Miss Laura Duff in 1880. There bas been six children by this marriage: Stanley, who con- ducts a sanitarium at Ardmore, Oklahoma, owned by his father; Clarence, assistant manager of his father's Greenville sanitarium; George, secretary of his father's Greenville institution; Wallace A., also associated with his father, attends to outside correspondence outside the state; aud Joseph and Annie, deceased.

J. H. MARRIOTT. J. H. Marriott, prominent grocer, one time hotel owner and proprietor in Electra, former mayor of the city and today financially concerned in the principal oil developments in the Electra field, where he is the owner of some two hundred and seven- teen acres, is unquestionably one of the really big men of the city and county. His activities along every line have been particularly worthy and of inestimable value to his community, and he takes his place among the leaders of thought and action in the city that has long held his interests and been the scene of his activities. He is a son of William Edward and Ellen (Burtell) Marriott, and he was born on the 27th day of Decem- ber, 1857. His father was a native of Maryland and mother of Kentucky, and they came to Texas soon after their marriage in the latter named state, settling in Dallas county among the earliest pioneers to that place. William Marriott was a farmer and stockman, prominent and prosperous, and during the Civil war he participated in the hostilities as a member of a Texas company and regiment. Later in life he moved to Wiley, in Collin county, where he died in 1903 at the age of seventy-six. The mother died in Collin county also, in 1904, when she was seventy-two years of age. Nine children were born to them, and of that number J. H. Marriott was the seventh in order of birth.

J. H. Marriott attended the schools of Dallas and Collin counties as a boy, and when he left off his studies he turned his attention to farming at home, then en- gaged in the business independently in Collin and Dallas counties, and continuing until 1904.

On July 11, 1904, Mr. Merriott came to Wichita county and settled at Electra, where he launched the Electra Hotel business and continued in the mauage- ment of the hostelry for two years. He then built the Marriott Hotel, conducting the same for twelve months only, after which he started up in the grocery business. He undertook this enterprise in 1906, in association with Mr. Bob Cook and his son, and about that time he disposed of the Marriott Hotel, devoting himself to the grocery business. This establishment, begun on a small scale, is today one of the big grocery concerns of the place, and is managed and operated maiuly by Mr. Marriott's son, he himself giving his time and attention to his other interests. In the past three years Mr. Marriott has come into a deal of wealth as a result of his interest in the oil operations of the Electra Oil belt, and his holdings of two hundred and seventeen acres net him aggregate royalties of from eight to nine thousand dollars a month. His one half interest in a two hundred and seventeen acre tract in the oil belt is leased by the Producer's Oil Company, and another tract of sixty-eight and one-half acres is leased by the Forest Oil Company, and the remaining forty acres by the Five Rivers Oil Company, besides which he has other holdings in land, and also owns an interest in the oil companies that are operating on his lands.

Mr. Marriott is a man of much publie spirit and one who has since coming to Electra, shown himself to be a citizen of the most approved type. He served one term as mayor of Electra, and was elected to fill the office of chief executive for another term, but the press

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of private affairs compelled his resignation. He is a Democrat, and a member of the Roman Catholic church.

On January 13, 1880, Mr. Marriott was united in marriage with Miss Rosie Cotter, of Collin county, Texas, and the daughter of Edward Cotter and his wife, now both deceased. Six children have been born to them. Mrs. Annie Spurgin, the eldest, has three children; Mrs. Mary J. Dempsey, also of Collin county, has a family of five children; Edward Marriott, living in Electra, and his father's business associate, conducts the grocery business established by the elder Marriott some years ago and is a capable and rising young business man, and promises to do credit to his father; Mrs. Clara Turner lives in Electra; Robert Marriott is deceased, and John Marriott the youngest child, lives at home.

In Electra the Marriott family are leaders in the best social activities of the community, and enjoy the esteem and confidence of a large circle of friends and acquaintances. Mr. Marriott is one of the most prosper- ous and high standing men of the state, and his suc- cess has been evolved from a lowly beginning as a farmer's boy. He has made a name for himself in these parts, and is justly entitled to the place he now ocenpies. The family resides on Wagner street, where they have one of the finest homes in Electra.

WILLIAM G. STANNARD. William G. Stannard is manager of the Western Union Office at Paris, a posi- tion he has filled here since 1885.

Mr. Stannard came to Paris, Texas, from Mount Vernon, Indiana, to which place he had accompanied his parents as a child from Jackson, Tennessee, where his father finished a long career as a railroad man with the Mobile & Ohio railroad, the same being terminated suddenly by the outbreak of the Civil war. Rome, New York, was the birth place of William G. Stannard, and February 15, 1855, his natal day. His father was Gran- ville C. Stannard, a machinist, who went to Illinois in 1856 and worked for the first railroad built in that state. It ran from Chicago to Cairo eventually, but had its terminus at Centralia for a time. Just before the war Granville Stannard went to Tennessee, where seces- sion and rebellion changed the whole tenor of his life. Being out of unison with the principles of the south, Granville C. Stannard crossed the Ohio river to loyal northern territory and located at Mount Vernon, Indi- ana, where he bought a small farm implement factory, and occupied himself in making farming tools during the few remaining years of his life. He died in 1866, when he was but forty years old. He was born at Syracuse, New York, and was of Irish and Pennsyl- vania Dutch ancestry. He married Mary Vandenberg, the daughter of an early superintendent of the street railway of Binghampton. Mrs. Stannard died at Mount Vernon, Indiana, in 1888, and William G. is one of the six children of his parents, the others being named as follows: Charles, who died in Evansville, Indiana, in 1908, and left a family at his death; Lney, who mar- ried Charles Mauss first, later marrying David Dooley, and dying at New Haven, Illinois; Ellen married John Wilkerson and resides at Mount Vernon, Indiana; Hat- tie married John Radcliffe and lives in Jackson, Mich- igan; Henry is manager of the Western Union business at Fort Smith, Arkansas.

William G. Stannard had but few advantages of schooling, attending school but a few years, and he had just entered his teens when he gave up his studies to become a messenger boy for the old Ohio River Telegraph Company at his home town. His first posi- tion as an operator was at Carlisle, Indiana, and he was but fifteen years of age at the time, and weighed ninety-six pounds,-but he was neither too young nor too light to faithfully discharge the duties of his office as operator for the railroad office. He followed this position with a period as relief operator for the rail-

road, and subsequently was made operator at Terre Haute. He quitted railroad work there in 1872 and continued with the Western Union at Mount Vernon, continuing with that office until he was transferred to Texas in 1885. His long and continuous service with the company gives him a prominent place on the pen- sion rolls of the company when he chooses to retire, and ranks him among the few pioneer operators still handling the key. His millions of words sent over the wire and his volumes of messages taken in long hand have not destroyed the youthful cunning of his hand, and he is still quick and accurate in the handling of the key.

In 1872 Mr. Stannard married Catherine V. Moore at Mount Vernon, Indiana. She is the daughter of an old Ohio River flatboat pilot, George Moore. The children of Mr. and Mrs. Stannard are Lillie, the wife of John Moore, of Paris, Texas; Eugene, chief operator of the Western Union at Shreveport, Louisiana; Mrs. Grace Stevens of Paris; Albert, who is operator for the Shreveport Cotton Exchange; Fannie, the wife of H. A. Bass, of Fort Worth; Marie, the wife of Fred Conley, lives at Terre Haute, Indiana; and Frank lives in Paris, Texas. Mr. Stannard has been an Odd Fellow since he was twenty-one years of age and holds the veteran's jewel from the Texas Grand Lodge for his record of twenty-five years of service without a mark against him. He has passed all chairs of the subor- dinate lodge. Religiously, he is a member of the Methodist church.

WILLIAM P. DUNCAN. A man who has borne a worthy part in the business activities of the city of Paris since 1889, as well as in those of a purely civic nature, is William P. Duncan, of the Conway-Duncan Company, of this city. Active, energetic and always an ambitious man, Mr. Duncan began his mercantile career with a clerkship, as have so many of the success- ful merchants the country has known, and prior to his association with John T. Conway, to whom is dedicated a sketch on other pages of this work, he had been a member of a number of mercantile firms, in addition to his varied service as a salesman in mercantile lines. His success has been in every way worthy of the man, whose character as man and merchant have never been assailed in all the years of his commercial activity, a fact which makes his career the more pleasing to con- template. Mr. Duncan comes of an old and estimable Alabama family, he himself having been born in Tala- poosa county, at Newsite, in that state, in 1869, and a son of Admiral Osborn and Laura Ann (Powell) Dun- can, both natives of the state.

Admiral Osborn Duncan was born within a mile of the place where death overcame him. He was a son of L. Bryant Duncan, who settled in Talapoosa county, from Georgia, the latter being born in that state in 1820, dying in his Alabama home in 1904. He belonged to the aristocratie planter class and was the owner of many negroes. He was a Baptist, of the variety known as "Hardshell,"' and a man of weight and power in his community. He married Narcissa Carnifax, who was reared in Talapoosa county, near Horse Shoe Bend, where her parents settled, and where the back of the great Cherokee tribe was broken in 1814, in the famed battle of Horse Shoe Band. The family of L. Bryant Duncan and his wife were six in number, and mention is made of them briefly as follows: Allen, a resident of Bartlett, Texas; John, who died as a Confederate soldier; Admiral Osborn, the father of the subject; Wainright R., who died in Alabama after having spent many years in Cass county, Texas; Isa B., who mar- ried James Lindsay and Anna, the wife of John R. Irvin, both of whom passed away in the vicinity of the old Alabama home, leaving no issue.

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A history of Texas and Texans, Part 81

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