A history of Texas and Texans, Part 82

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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Reverting to the earlier ancestor of the subject, it may be said that his great-grandfather, Allen Duncan,

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was one of four brothers who were conspicuous in South Carolina as planters. They were: Miles T., Daniel, William P. and Allen. Of Scotch ancestry, which set- tled in New England and drifted into the south with the general movement in that direction following the days of the Revolution, the family has been since that time prominently identified with the activities of the southern states.

Admiral Osborn Duncan in early manhood married Miss Laura Ann Powell, a daughter of Jackson Powell, who lived in the vicinity of Wetumke, Alabama, when his daughter was born. Professor Jackson Powell was a man of considerable erudition, and he married the daughter of Benjamin Cogburn. Admiral Osborn Dun- can and his wife reared four children, as follows: John Bryant, who passed his life at Bartlett, Texas; he married Lorena Jones, and at his death left two children; Edna and Harold Osborn Duncan; William P., of this review; Zoe L. married Joseph C. Manning and lives in Birmingham, Alabama; Narcissa F. is the wife of William MeCrockland, of Gatesville, Texas, and has four daughters.

The education of William P. Duncan was a liberal one, gained in the public schools of Bartlett, Texas, where the family settled in 1885. He was twenty years old when he came to Paris and began a business career which is now approaching the quarter century mark. His first work in Paris was a clerkship with the old Paris Dry Goods Company, and he later became a member of the new firm of Lattimore & Duncan. After four years he became the senior member of the firm of Duncan, Pool & Hutchinson, a concern that went out of business in 1905, when Mr. Duncan en- tered the service of Fleisher Brothers, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as a road salesman, and continued with them in that capacity for two and a half years.

Resuming active business operations once more, Mr. Duncan purchased the interest of E. H. Conway, the junior member of the firm of Conway Brothers, and the firm of Conway & Duncan came into being. The later addition of T. E. Jones into membership brought about the firm which has since been known as the Conway- Duncan Company, one of the most successful mercantile establishments in the county, with branch houses at a number of different places throughout the district.

On June 26, 1895, Mr. Duncan married Miss Ida Terrell, a daughter of G. I. Terrell, who was a repre- sentative of one of the old southern families, having come into the state in boyhood from his native state, Kentucky. He is an old soldier of the Confederacy, and he married Fannie Patterson, from the Taladega Valley, in Alabama. The issue of Mr. and Mrs. Dun- can are as follows: Louise, born January 27, 1897; and Fannie Laura, born September 24, 1902.

Mr. Duncan's political activity has been in line with the prohibition Democracy of Texas, and he has long regarded the saloon evil as one of the greatest wrongs of our country. He is progressive and liberal in his ideas, and in this connection may be cited the fact that he was one of the first men in Paris to sign a petition in favor of womans' suffrage. His churchly relations are with the Presbyterian denomination, and he is one of the most estimable men of the city and county.

JUDGE G. WOOTEN. The month of May, 1913, rounded out a period of twenty years of continuous serv- ice as superintendent of the schools of Paris on the part of Judge Given Wooten, a period which covers an era of phenomenal progress and growth in the public school system of the city; and the brief facts pre- sented here tell the story as it is, accurately and shorn of all elaboration. Such a record can not fail to impress a thoughtful reader with at least a comparative ap- preciation of the great agency for the training of the human mind in its formative period. A tenure of

twenty years or more as the directing head of any enterprise, of whatever nature, indicates at once that he who has held that position has proven to the people that he has been the right man for the right place, and in Judge Wooten the city of Paris, Texas, has indubitably been justified in its long continued retention of his services as the head of its public school system. She has maintanied at the head of her educational system a man who has proven his abilities as a navigator in the waters of education, who has an accurate knowledge of the rocky points, the shoal waters and the floating derelicts upon which the ship of school administration is too often wrecked.

Judge Wooten was born in Warren county, Kentucky, not far from Bowling Green, on March 5, 1855, and is the son of Joseph W. and Ann (Brawner) Wooten. The father was born in Barren county, Kentucky, in 1828, and was a brother of Dr. Wooten, one time president of the board of regents of the University of Texas. Joseph W. Wooten was a farmer and merchant in Warren county and belonged to a Virginia family, of which his father was an off-shoot. It may be stated here that the grandfather of Judge Wooten was orphaned early In his boyhood, so that it is impossible to give authentic data concerning the ancestry and origin of this inter- esting family.

Joseph W. Wooten, as mentioned previously, married Ann Brawner, a daughter of William T. Brawner, a man who came of the old Revolutionary stock of Mary- land, and whose wife was a member of the Cooksey family of that state, well and prominently known. Mr. Wooten passed away in 1903 and his widow is now a resident of Owensboro, Kentucky. They reared four children: Judge Given, the educator of Paris, Texas; Mrs. Walter B. Hill, of Oklahoma City; Mrs. T. J. Townsend, the wife of a well known doctor of Owens- boro, Kentucky; and W. B. Wooten of Gallatin, Tennessee.

Judge Wooten began his higher education at Bethel College in Russellville, Kentucky, and from that went to the University of Virginia, where he lacked but three months of his graduation when sudden illness seized him. He returned to Russellville, Kentucky, and there, upon his recovery, prepared for and engaged in the practice of law. He was chosen to membership on the county school board, and upon the occasion of a sudden vacancy in one of the county schools, he was asked to fill the place pending the engagement of a new teacher. Instead of dropping out of the work in the ensuing month, the young man stayed in the schools for three years, and thus identified himself with the teaching profession, discontinuing his connection with the law work that appealed with great strength to his instinet for service of the highest order. In his quite accidental acquaint- ance with the work of the school room, he discovered latent talent and possibilities along educational lines, and his work was soon recognized in the community, while his favor spread with the profession as well as with laymen. His ability as a disciplinarian was not less pronounced than his capacity as an instructor, and when he learned that Yazoo City, Mississippi, required a superintendent who, to quote their own terms, could gov- ern "without regard to whether or not the children learned anything," Judge Wooten applied for the place. So readily did he adjust the difficulties that had beset this community in its educational work that he con- tinned for three years, resigning then to accept the superintendency of the schools at Benton, Mississippi, subsequently passing on to West Point and Oxford, Mississippi. He was at the latter named place for five years and came to Paris direct from there. While in Mississippi he was president of the Teachers' Associa- · tion of East Mississippi and secretary of the State Teachers' Association, and for some years he gave an added impetus to educational work in the state by his numerous addresses and contributions to educational

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journals, and by his especially telling and effective work in summer normals, a branch of school work that is coming to be more and more recognized as a necessary factor in the efficient training of teachers, aside from whatever educational advantages they may have pre- viously enjoyed along those lines, and which was in its infancy in those days.

The facilities for education in Paris when Prof. Wooten assumed the duties of superintendent of the schools of the city were most primitive in contrast with present day conditions. There were two schools for white and one for colored people, and the high school depart- · ment occupied a part of one of the ward buildings. There were seventy-three high school students, a total enrollment of about eighteen hundred, and a faculty of twenty-four teachers. There had been five annual grad- uations with a total of forty-nine pupils, and the system showed a deplorable want of reform and repair at many important points. Today, in 1913, seven buildings house the white students and four the colored, while the total enrollment is more than thirty-five hundred. One een- tral high school building, with the most ideal equipment, enrolls four hundred and sixty-one pupils, with sixteen teachers on the high school staff, and the graduating class of 1913 numbered sixty-nine. There are four colored teachers in the colored high school and seventeen grade teachers of the colored faction, while there are forty-six grade teachers in the white schools. During the regime of Judge Wooten the course of study has been greatly extended and amplified, and today embraces a Latin and Scientific course, manual training, domestic science, and a new department in the form of two companies equipped for military drill composed of the high school boys. Graduates from the high school numbering more than eight hundred have gone forth in the business of life, some into the field of finance, some into merchandising and the professions, and a large percentage of the teach- ing force of the Paris schools comprise former students of the schools.

Judge Wooten's relation to education in Texas has continued earnest and active through the passing years, and the State meeting of teachers has always known him as a positive force for the onward march of progress in educational affairs. As previously stated, he has been president of the State Teachers' Association and also of the Association of School Superintendents of the State, and for many years has been active and prominent in the conduct of summer normal work.

In 1884 Judge Wooten was married in Adairville, Ken- tucky, to Miss Anna Paisley, a daughter of J. B. Paisley. Mrs. Wooten died in Paris in 1898, leaving him two daughters and a son: Lynne is a teacher of Latin, Ger- man and Spanish in Mary Connor College, in Paris; Lucile, a graduate of the Denton (Texas) Normal School; and Jo Paisley, who has just finished in the Paris High school.

In 1899 Judge Wooten married Mrs. Etta Read, a daughter of William C. Klyce. Judge Wooten is a thirty-second degree Mason of the Scottish Rite and has also taken all the degrees in the York Rite branch and is Grand Commander of the Knights Templar body of Texas. He is a member of the Christian church, and a Democrat.

Looking back over the two decades of service of Judge Wooten in his high position in Paris, it would be diffi- cult indeed to make any adequate estimate as to the depth and breadth of his work among the student body of the city in all these years. Certain it is that he has recognized to the fullest his opportunity and his respon- sibility, and Paris has in turn shown her recognition of his splendid capacity for good in the work he long since chose for his lifework. Whole-souled, generous in heart and in mind, with splendid capabilities and possessing an unbounded popularity, it is a pleasure to contem- plate his work of past years, and Paris looks forward

to many years of future association with him as the head of its educational system.

GEORGE W. GLASSCOCK. Many pages of this publica- tion are in the nature of a memorial to the pioneer element of Texas citizenship, and as its chief author was "a leader of the Texas Revolution," it is eminently fitting that the lives of early patriots and pioneers should be given as much space as possible. Among prominent early Texans none was more honored among his friends and the several communities where he lived than George W. Glasscock, who was one of the founders of George- town, the county seat of Williamson county, where many years of his life were passed and most of his interests centered.

When he died in Travis county, February 28, 1868, it was said that no death since the close of the war had occasioned so much regret in that part of the state. George W. Glasscock was born in Kentucky, April 11, 1810, grew up in his native state and in 1830 followed the leadings of an adventurous spirit and left home, spending two years in St. Louis as a merchant. Soon after he located in St. Louis the Black Hawk war broke out, and called volunteers from every one of the middle western states. Mr. Glasscock was elected first lieutenant in Captain J. M. Early's company of volunteers, and saw service until the capture of the famous chief and the close of hostilities. After this experience he engaged in flat-boating on the Sangamon and Illinois rivers, and had no less a partner in that enterprise than Abraham Lincoln. From the river traffic he finally returned to his uncle near St. Louis, and remained there a year or more. The province of Texas was then exciting great attention throughout the country, especially on account of the troubles between the American colonists and the Mexican government, and in 1834 Mr. Glasscock located at Savalla in the extreme southeastern corner of the state, in what was then known as the Municipality of Jasper, later Jasper county. There he was engaged in merchandising with T. B. Huling and Henry Millard, aud besides selling goods the firm did a large amount of land locating, with Mr. Glasscock as the surveyor. It was as a land looker and surveyor that Mr. Glasseock first became acquainted with western Texas. In that way he traveled all over the counties of Travis, William- son, Burnet, Lampasas and Milam. He had many thrill- ing experiences and hardships, and at one time was a fortunate member of a party the other section of which was captured by Indians and all massacred.

Mr. Glasscock was one of the soldiers of the Texas Revolution, and was a part of the army in the fall of 1835 which besieged and captured San Antonio, and again responded to the call for troops early in 1836 and did service in the concluding months of the war. From Jasper county Mr. Glasscock, in 1840, moved to the present county of Bastrop. That was his home for three years, and he lived in Travis county until 1848. It was in the county of Williamson that his principal landed interests lay, and there in 1848 he took up his home. He was among the first to develop the wheat-growing interests of that section of Texas, and in order to carry out his plans and encourage the growing of that grain he put up the first flouring mill ever seen in western Texas. To advance the prosperity of Williamson county seems to have been his most cherished wish. Its county seat now bears a portion of his name, because of his donation of the beautiful ground upon which it is situ- ated. He used his influence and oftentimes liberally contributed of his possessions to encourage settlement and to help many a pioneer family that otherwise would have been discouraged and could not have stood the test of the struggle for existence.

From 1850 until the close of his life George W. Glass- cock filled a number of public positions. He represented the counties of Williamson and Travis in the tenth and eleventh legislatures; was for many years county com-

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missioner for Williamson county; was one of the con- tractors of the lunatic asylum during the terms of Gov- ernors Houston, Clark, Lubbock and Murrah; and was president of the Air-Line Railroad Company, by which Austin first came into relation with the outside world by means of railway. A short time before his death he had perfected an arrangement with the Central Rail- road Company for the completion of the line to Austin.

George W. Glasscock died as a result of injuries received when a horse he was riding fell and he was taken from life at a comparatively early age and when the promise of many useful years naturally remained for him. While living in Jasper county in 1837 he married Miss Cynthia C. Knight. They shared together the privations and difficulties of pioneer existence in Texas, and she died in the city of Austin in 1866. They were the parents of ten children altogether, three of whom died before the parents, and several of whom are still living. One of the daughters is Mrs. E. J. Talbott, of Georgetown.

The late George W. Glasscock was prominent in Ma- sonry, was an active member of Austin Lodge, No. 12, A. F. & A. M., and a portion of the tribute of respect drawn up and published by the lodge at the time of his death will supplement the brief facts already related:

"Our deceased brother was no ordinary man. There was a tireless energy in his character that entered into all his pursuits, and was the grand element of success. Possessed of a powerful native intellect and singularly clear perceptions, he understood human nature in an uncommon degree; and few combinations of circum- stances surprised him or found him unprepared for any emergency that might present itself. Of a disposition singularly generous, a heart tenderly mild, he was open handed as the day to every call of charity made upon him either as a Mason or a man.

"He was a Mason of many years' standing; and those of us who have known him longest miss, and will always miss, his presence from our mystic cirele, and as we cast our eyes around us, while we notice the absence of many with whom we have been associated in former years, the remembrance of no one will call forth a deeper sigh than we heave as we mark the vacant seat of him whose loss we now deplore.

"And the suddenness of his departure from among us increases the force of the blow under which we bend in unavailing sorrow. One day we saw him among us, living, strong, active, full of energy and vitality; and though slightly past the prime of life, with the apparent prospect of many years of active life and prolonged use- fulness; the next, our hearts are chilled with the sad news that he is done with us, and life and time and that we shall no more see and associate with him till the great Author of life shall call us all from the grave. So stunning the event, that we hardly yet realize its actual truth. * *

"Resolved, That in the death of our lamented brother, George W. Glasscock, we feel that we have sustained a loss not easily repaired; and while we bow in humble submission to that Overruling Providence, more wise than we, we cannot but give way to the grief so great a misfortune is so well calculated to produce.

"Resolved. That while we forget the frailties of our departed brother, to which all are liable, we will cultivate the recollection of his many virtues, and emulate his example in all that was good and excellent in his char- acter. * *

WILLIAM W. FITZPATRICK. The medical profession of Paris, Texas, knows as one of its younger members and at the same time one of its most promising ones, Dr. William W. Fitzpatrick, who has here been engaged in practice since 1904. His training for his profession was most thorough, and the attention that the young doctor has since given to his work has designated him one of the coming men of the medical fraternity, and indeed,

he has already won recognition of no small merit for his ability and achievement in his chosen career.

A native son of Paris, born here on November 25, 1876, Dr. Fitzpatrick comes of stanch and sturdy Irish stock, as his name indicates. His father, who came of a family of prominence in County Ulster, Ireland, was born in New York City in 1852. He left home as a youth of fourteen, thereafter maintaining himself chiefly as a clerk and salesman until he turned his face in a south- westerly direction. It was in 1872 that he first located in Texas, settling in Denison, and coming to Paris two years later. Here for some years the elder Fitzpatrick was occupied in a cigar business, but he eventually drifted in the cotton business as a shipper. Of late years he retired from that business, in which he achieved a pleasing success, and in recent times has identified himself in a more or less active way with the real estate business, although he is practically retired, his real es- tate operations being more of the nature of an avocation than otherwise. Mr. Fitzpatrick in his young manhood married Ella, the daughter of Dr. Withrow, of Denison, Texas, who located in that place from his native place, Springfield, Illinois. Dr. William W. and Miss Fay Fitzpatrick are the only issue of their union.

Although born in Paris, Dr. Fitzpatrick had but little acquaintance with the city until after he had finished his education and settled here as a member of the medical profession. After his knickerbocker days he was absent practically all the time in the pursuit of an education, first at St. Edwards College in Austin, Texas, and later in the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, where he car- ried on his literary studies. The year 1898 saw his graduation from that institution with his Bachelor's de- gree, and he then begun his preparation for his lifework in Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, from which he was graduated in 1902. From that well known insti- tution the young doctor began a thorough hospital train- ing in St. Paul's Sanitarium, in Dallas, Texas, passing a year there in careful work and study, and thereafter spent a like period in the famous hospitals of New York and Chicago. Thus equipped with theoretical and prac- tieal knowledge, Dr. Fitzpatrick did not hesitate to pre- sent himself to the people of his native community as a member of the medical profession, and since 1904 he has enjoyed his share in the work of healing in Paris, and his practice has seen a continuous growth consistent with the meritorious work he has performed in the commu- nity. His interest in his profession is of a character such as to exclude him from all connection with business or affairs of ordinary publie concerns. He is a member of the local and state medical societies, and likewise of the National Medical Association.

In February, 1907, Dr. Fitzpatrick was married in Paducah, Kentucky, to Miss Letitia Powell, daughter of W. W. Powell, prominent there as a man of business, and a grand-daughter of Governor Shelby of that state. Dr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick have one son, William W .. Jr.

SAM B. GILLETT. A native son of the state of Texas, Sam B. Gillett, well known to the legal fraternity of El Paso and vicinity, has spent the best years of his life in his birth state, a period of something like sixteen years having been given to professional associations in New Mexico in unison with Hon. Harvey B. Ferguson, congressman from that state. He returned to Texas in 1903, and since that time has been active and prominent in professional circles, and has gained a place among the foremost among the legal men of the city and county.

Born in Gonzales county, Texas, on January 30, 1863, Sam B. Gillett is the son of Rev. James D. and. Martha (Johnston) Gillett. The father was born in Matagordo county, this state, in 1833, in the days when Texas was a republic, and all his life from mature years on till retirement, has devoted his whole energies to the work of the ministry. He is now an honored resident of El Paso, where he is well known for his identification with

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every charitable and philanthropie movement that has origin in the city. His devoted wife, who also survives, was born in Indiana, and she met and married her bus- band in the Lone Star state. Nine children were born to them, of which number the subject was the fourth born. The father of Rev. Gillett was Rev. Roswell Gil- lett, who likewise lived a life of the utmost usefulness in his sphere in Texas.

Samuel B. Gillett, it may be said, is essentially a Texas product, coming as he did from a father and grandfather who carried on their life work in the great southwestern state. He received his early education in the public schools, later attending the Southwestern Uni- versity at Georgetown. Between his public school and college days, however, there elapsed a considerable gap of time, in which the young student was engaged in various activities which enabled him to make a start in his college career, and he finished that course by work- ing his way so that his education came to him at the cost of many a personal sacrifice. None will be found, however, who will dispute that his training was none the less efficient or wholesome for that fact, and it is more than probable that he learned during that time lessons that have been of the greatest importance to him in his later life, and have been significant factors in the high order of success that he has achieved.

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A history of Texas and Texans, Part 82

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