USA > Texas > A history of central and western Texas > Part 28
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TOM B. YARBROUGH .- Prominently identified with financial and in- dustrial interests in his native state and known as one of the liberal and progressive citizens who have contributed materially to the progress and upbuilding of the city of Fort Worth, Mr. Yarbrough is here incumbent of the office of vice-president and manager of the Waggoner Bank & Trust Company and is one of the substantial capitalists and representative stockmen of this part of the fine old Lone Star commonwealth. In both the paternal and maternal lines he is a scion of honored pioneer families of Texas, and thus there is special consistency in according to him specific recognition in this history.
Tom B. Yarbrough was born in Fannin county, Texas, on the 4th of June, 1873, and is a son of Thomas B. and Sallie (Waggoner) Yar- brough. The father of the subject of this review was born in Louisiana and became one of the successful business men of western Texas. He died in 1896. His wife was a member of the well known and influential Waggoner family whose name has been prominently linked with the history of Texas since the early pioneer days, when the Indians still dis- puted dominion of the soil and when this section was on the very border of civilization. The family was early founded in Wise county, where it acquired extensive landed and cattle interests, which have been re- tained by its representatives to the present day, the Waggoner estate being one of the largest and richest in Texas. Daniel Waggoner, the noted stockman, was a brother of the mother of him whose name initiates this article, and the mother died in 1880, being held in affectionate regard by all who knew her and being a native of Texas, which ever represented her home.
Tom B. Yarbrough was reared and educated in Fannin county, this state, and his initial business training was secured in connection with banking interests at Honey Grove, where he was identified with this line of enterprise for a number of years. In 1907 he removed to Fort Worth, where he acquired a substantial interest in the Hunter-Phelan Bank, which was then reorganized under the title of the Waggoner Bank & Trust Company, and which is incorporated with a capital stock of
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$134,600, which is augmented by a fund of undivided profits aggregating about $122,000, making this one of the substantial financial institutions of the state. The number of its. depositors has increased with distinct regularity, affording the best evidence of popular confidence and appre- ciation, and the progressive and yet duly conservative administration of the affairs of the institution has made it a valuable factor in connection with the financial prestige and solidity of Fort Worth. Perhaps one of the greatest assets of this institution is the well known capitalistic strength and individual integrity of its interested principals, all of whom are representative and sterling citizens of the state. The personnel of the executive corps of the Waggoner Bank & Trust Company is as here noted: W. T. (Tom) Waggoner, president; Tom B. Yarbrough, vice- president and manager; Sidney Webb and Albert B. Wharton, vice-presi- dents; and Sam D. Triplett, cashier. The directorate includes, in addi- tion to the president and vice-presidents, Earl E. Baldridge, Guy L. Wag- goner, William Capps and J. W. Mitchell.
Mr. Yarbrough is known as a man of marked ability and discrimi- nation as a financier and business man and has large capitalistic inter- ests aside from his association with the fine institution just mentioned. For a number of years past he has been prominently identified with the great cattle industry of his native state, and he is the owner of a finely improved ranch of 40,000 acres, lying mostly in Cottle county. He is the owner of valuable realty in Fort Worth, where also he is secretary and treasurer of the American Seed Company and treasurer of the American Home Life Insurance Company, two of the important con- cerns of the city and state. As a citizen he is essentially alert, progressive and public-spirited, and he maintains a lively interest in all that tends to foster the civic and industrial advancement of his home city.
On the 27th of June, 1901, Mr. Yarbrough was united in marriage to Miss Glenn Halsell, who was born in the state of Texas, and who is a daughter of Glenn Halsell, one of the representative citizens of Decatur, Texas, where are centered the extensive interests of this well known and influential family. Mr. and Mrs. Yarbrough have two children-Dan Waggoner and Josephine.
WILLIAM L. SARGENT .- Among those who have contributed mate- rially to the civic and industrial development and progress of the fine old Lone Star state is William L. Sargent, the efficient and popular immigra- tion agent of the Texas & Pacific Railroad. He maintains his home and official headquarters in the city of Fort Worth and is a citizen of promi- nence and influence, liberal and public spirited and an enthusiastic ad- mirer of the great commonwealth, with whose interests he has been so long and prominently identified and concerning whose magnificent re- sources few men are better informed or able to speak with more of authority.
Mr. Sargent was born on the fine old homestead plantation of the family, at the head of navigation on the Tombigbee River, in Fulton
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county, Mississippi, at Cotton Gin, and the date of his nativity was Au- gust 8, 1859. He is a son of Captain James L. and Melisa A. (nee Crayton) Sargent, representatives of a long line of distinguished and honored old southern families, and his mother died when he was but three years of age in 1862, during the Civil war, where his father dis- tinguished himself. His father, Captain James L. Sargent, is still living, at the age of seventy-seven, at Caddo, Oklahoma, having married after the war in Mississippi, Mary Harris of Lee county, and they have living four children, all of whom are married, settled and making useful citizens. On Christmas day, 1909, twenty-one members of the Sargent family enjoyed a pleasant dinner at the home of Captain James L. Sargent
Mr. Sargent was reared to maturity on the home plantation and was afforded the advantages of the common schools of the locality and period. In 1879 he came to Texas and took up his residence in Colorado county. A few years later he removed to the western part of the state, and with the interests of this great section of Texas he has been closely identified since the early 80's, having witnessed and assisted in its social and ma- terial development, and being a firm believer in the still more magnificent future of this opulent region. For a number of years Mr. Sargent maintained his home in Stonewall county, where he devoted his attention principally to the upbuilding of the country, which was sparsely inhab- ited, and where he was elected county and district clerk. In 1893, while a resident of Navarro county, he was elected sergeant at arms of the lower house of the state legislature, retaining this incumbency during the twenty-third general assembly, refusing a second term.
For about two years he was editor and publisher of the Lasso, at Baynor, Stonewall county, and he was for some fifteen years, either as owner or otherwise, connected with the press of Texas; as editor and publisher of the Terrell Times-Star, which, under his control, became one of the leading weekly papers of the state and was made an effective exponent of local as well as political interests. Upon his retirement from the field of journalism, Mr. Sargent engaged in the land business, with headquarters at Terrell, and in this line of enterprise his operations eventually touched nearly all sections of the state. For some time he was the Texas immigration agent for the Frisco Railroad system, also the Texas Midland, and the heads of the companies' passenger depart- ment gave Mr. Sargent credit for having personally been the means of securing for Texas a larger number of settlers and investors than any other one man in the state.
In 1905 Mr. Sargent became identified with the immigration de- partment of the Texas & Pacific Railroad, and in the following year he established his permanent headquarters in the city of Fort Worth, from which point he directs the extensive and important work of his depart- ment. Besides being immigration agent for the railroad mentioned, he also represents the general immigration bureau of the Gould system of railroads, which bureau was organized on the Ist of January, 1909, and through its agency Mr. Sargent has materially increased the Texas im-
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migration business of the Gould lines. He is an authority in the matter of the resources of Texas, especially in regard to the great western sec- tion of the state, which is largely tributary to the Texas & Pacific Rail- road. He is a frequent and valued contributor to newspapers and maga- zines, through the medium of which he has done effective service in exploiting the attractions and manifold resources of the state. He is a well trained and admirably equipped immigration agent, making a pro- fession of this line of work, and has accomplished through the same re- sults that have added in generous measure to the industrial and civic upbuilding of the fine old Lone Star commonwealth.
Governor Campbell appointed Mr. Sargent a delegate and the com- missioner of agriculture sent him as special representative of the seven- teenth National Irrigation Congress, that assembled in the city of Spokane, Washington, in August, 1909, and at this noteworthy convention he ably represented his home state. By appointment of the thirty-first legislature of Texas he is a member of the executive committee for the conservation and reclamation service provided by legislative assembly. He is a valued contributing editor of the Texas & Pacific Quarterly, and is Texas cor- respondent of the National Irrigation Journal, published in the city of Chicago. Mr. Sargent has done particularly efficient and commendable work in bringing about co-operation between the railroads, the local commercial clubs and associations and the farmers, in the promotion of the interests of Western Texas. He has arranged numerous permanent and temporary exhibits of Texas resources and products, and through this means has brought to the state hundreds of desirable settlers. He was the first to exploit the magnificent resources of the Toyah Valley, in the extreme western part of the state, and assisted in establishing the first irrigation system in that splendid section, which has become the center of a large immigration movement. He has also done much to promote the development of the Pecos Valley, and he is deserving of special tribute for his able efforts in connection with the general progress and upbuilding of the state.
In politics Mr. Sargent is a staunch adherent of the Democratic party, and has been a great political factor in party council and the many strenuous campaigns since and including the Hogg compaign and admin- istration-the ex-governor and Mr. Sargent were great friends. Few men in Texas are better known than the subject of this sketch.
While he holds no membership in any church, he is liberal in his views concerning man's future and society regarding the doctrine and teachings of the lowly Nazarene, and believes in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and is identified with various civic and fra- ternal organizations of representative order.
In the year 1891 Mr. Sargent was united in marriage to Miss Ruby V. Kennon, daughter of Dr. William Kennon, a representative physician and surgeon of Lowndes county, Mississippi, in which state Mrs. Sargent was born and reared. Mrs. Sargent was an invalid for six years before she was summoned to the life eternal on the 22d of April, 1908, and is
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survived by four children-Mary, Bessie, Winnifred and William. Her death was a great shock and a loss that was almost unbearable to her husband, as their marriage relationship was tender, devoted, and favor- ably commented upon by all who knew them.
Mr. Sargent has been vice president of the Texas Press Association ; president of the Texas Real Estate and Industrial Association ; served five years as private secretary to the brilliant and lamented R. C. De- Graffinreid, M. C. (known as the Black Eagle of the Piney Woods). He has been temporary and permanent secretary of more state Demo- cratic conventions than any man in Texas. His friends claim at one time he could have been governor and at another M. C., but his desire has always been to help his friends, and he is loved because of his loyalty to friends from whom he cannot be shaken. He is honorary vice-president from Texas of the Eighteenth National Irrigation Congress, member of the executive committee of the Texas Conservation Association and chair- man of the program and invitation committee of the congress held in Ft. Worth April 5th and 6th. He is also member of the Texas Irrigation Congress. He has done as much or more for irrigation than any man in Texas, especially in the Lower Pecos Valley of Texas, where millions are being spent and great settlement progressing.
WALLER, SHAW & FIELD .- The firm of Waller, Shaw & Field, archi- tects, is perhaps one of the best known corporations of its kind in Central or Western Texas, and it is composed of Marion L. Waller, Fred Gordon Shaw and E. Stanley Field, all well known, substantial and influ- ential business men. Mr. Waller is the senior member of the firm and was its organizer in the year of 1909, but since 1901 he has been con- nected with the profession in Fort Worth. Mr. Field has charge of the firm's branch office in San Angelo, Texas.
Mr. Waller was born in Grimes county, Texas, and he was reared there and it remained his home until he was eighteen. He prepared for his work as an architect in Armour Institute of Chicago, and his first actual work along this line was begun in 1897 at Colorado Springs, and from there he came to Fort Worth in 1901, at the time the packing houses were established here, an event that marked the beginning of the great expansion and development of the city. Mr. Waller at once entered quietly but energetically into the work of his profession and soon estab- lished a reputation that has brought him an increasing clientele and vol- ume of business with each succeeding year. With the closing year of 1909 he had erected one hundred and eight residence structures in Fort Worth. He was the architect of the Mulkey Memorial Church building and the church connected with the Polytechnic College; at the present time is the architect and the superintendent of the building of the new Magnolia Avenue Christian and the Hemphill Presbyterian churches, and he has also designed and built a number of commercial structures.
Mr. Waller's studies and inclinations, however, have led him into specializing as an architect of school buildings, and since the beginning
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of the year of 1909 he has devoted practically his entire time and atten- tion to this branch of architecture, having decided to make it his special field of effort for the future. He has been gradually leading up to this special department for some years. In Tarrant county he has designed and built twenty school houses, and in Fort Worth he has been the archi- tect of eleven of the modern school buildings that have been erected in this city. With the four years ending with that of 1909 he has erected school buildings in Texas amounting in cost to a million and a half of dollars. In the fall of 1909 he was awarded the contract to design and build the new West Texas Normal buildings at Canyon City, Texas, the structure to cost one hundred thousand dollars and to be completed in 1910. This important work was given to Mr. Waller by the state officials in competition with other well known architects, and strictly on his merits and achievements as an architect of school buildings, this being a notable instance where friendship or political preferment were entirely eliminated. Mr. Waller's work is always thoroughly done, the result of study and close application. His classical designs are particularly notable for their simple beauty and elegance, although he does not devote himself nar- rowly to any particular style of architecture, nor does he sacrifice utility for outward appearances.
In the firm of Waller, Shaw & Field, Mr. Waller, as stated above, has charge of the school architecture; Mr. Shaw, who is a graduate of the Massachusetts School of Technology, has charge of the church archi- tecture, and Mr. Field takes up generally the work of business structures, hotels and kindred lines. The firm has completely equipped offices in Fort Worth, where they employ a force of draftsmen and other assistants, including a specialist on steam heat and another on reinforced concrete. They are thus well fortified as architects in all the different departments of the profession, and their name stands among the first in their line in Central and Western Texas.
J. L. PRICE was born, reared and educated in Springfield, Illinois, but during the past nine or ten years his home has been in Fort Worth and his interests prominently associated with those of this city and of Central Texas. He studied for the law in Springfield in the office of General John M. Palmer, but was never a practitioner before the bar, choosing instead a commercial career. Going to Chicago, Illinois, he entered the service of Armour and Company as assistant credit man there, and later filled the same position for that company in St. Louis and in Fort Worth. He came to this city in 1901, about the time the packing houses and enlarged stockyards were established at North Fort Worth, and during the following three or four years had charge of the local office and the credit and financial affairs of Armour and Company's Fort Worth plant. But leaving the services of that company to engage in banking and other local enterprises, he established his permanent home in Fort Worth and became a director of the Stockyards National Bank. He is now the president of that institution, elected to the office in 1907.
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and this bank represents the extensive financial transactions of the con- stantly growing live stock and packing house industries centered at North Fort Worth, and is a large factor in giving to the city its high rank in the matter of bank clearings as reported each week from all the large cities of the country. The financial strength and backing of this banking house are notable, its stockholders including such financial powers as J. Ogden Armour, Edward F. and Louis F. Swift, Edward Tilden and others having large interests in the stockyards and packing house indus- tries. The capital of the bank is two hundred thousand dollars, with a surplus of fifty thousand dollars and deposits amounting to over a million and a half dollars.
Mr. Price is also the vice-president of the Reporter Publishing Com- pany and the treasurer of the Feeders and Breeders' Show. He has fraternal relations with the Masons, Elks and various other orders. Mrs. Price was before marriage Miss Harriet Crabbe, from Springfield, Illi- nois, a granddaughter of the late General John M. Palmer.
E. BERKELEY SPILLER .- There are no cattlemen in western and north- western Texas whose labors and characters have caused wider respect or deeper admiration than those which are represented by the Loving and the Spiller families. Their representatives have not only stood forth as large figures in their private enterprises, but have donated generously of their years and abilities to the promotion of the cattle industry as one of the gigantic interests of the Lone Star state and the southwest. The re- sult is that the typical cattleman of Texas, both of the old times and the new, has taken it for granted that whenever a Spiller or a Loving appears on the scene he is entitled to the best possible opportunity in the continu- ance of the ancestral record.
E. Berkeley Spiller, of Fort Worth, assistant secretary of the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association, is energetically and ably continuing the splen- did work inaugurated by his maternal grandfather, Captain James C. Loving, when that organization was founded in 1877. Mr. Spiller was born at Jacksboro, Texas, in 1885. His great-grandfather, Colonel Oliver Loving, was one of the earliest pioneers and cattlemen in Jack county and west Texas, and in that part of the state the family still retain large interests. For years none connected with the great industry were better known than the Lovings, Oliver (the father) and James C. (the son). The latter was at the height of his prosperity, influence, popularity and energy when the cattlemen responded so heartily to the suggestion that they organize for mutual benefit and the business good of the state. When, therefore, the Cattle Raisers' Association of Texas was organized at Graham, Young county, in February, 1877, James C. Loving, of Jack county, was elected to the office of secretary, which carried with it the most active and heaviest burdens connected with the systematic promo- tion of the cattle interests of the state. As long as Mr. Loving lived his position was secure, and he held it, by successive re-elections, until his
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decease, November 24, 1902. He also filled the office of treasurer from 1879 to 1893, and that of general manager of the association from 1884 until his death. To James C. Loving, more than to any other one man has always been freely accorded the honor of bringing the great success which has marked every distinct step taken by the association.
At the death of Captain Loving, Mr. Spiller entered the office of the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association and served under four different admin- istrations-those of Murdo Mackenzie, of Trinidad, Colorado; Hon. W. W. Turney, of El Paso; Colonel Ike T. Pryor, of San Antonio; and James Callan, of Menardville. In his annual message to the San Antonio convention of 1908, Colonel Pryor took occasion to speak in the highest terms of Mr. Spiller's work, which has embraced the able performance of duties as assistant secretary (since 1906) and acting secretary during several months of 1907. It is universally conceded that there is no man of his years in Texas better informed on all the phases of the cattle business than Mr. Spiller, and he is fast adding to the record of the Spiller family in behalf of the advancement of the association.
Mr. Spiller is a son of George and Belle (Loving) Spiller, and both his parents are living at his native town of Jacksboro, Jack county. It was in that part of Texas that he was reared, but in 1901 moved to Fort Worth and spent one year in school there. He then entered the office of the secretary of the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association as bookkeeper, the head of the department then being the late Captain John T. Lytle, who succeeded Captain Loving. Mr. Spiller's rapid and substantial ad- vancement since then is a part of the progress of the association, in whose subsequent history he is destined to be largely concerned.
ROBERT M. DAVIS .- To Robert M. Davis belongs the distinction of being one of the earliest pioneer business men of Tarrant county, con- spicuously connected during a long number of years with the agricultural implement business. He was born and reared on a farm in Clinton county, Kentucky, and he came from there to Tarrant county, Texas, in 1874, and has ever since resided here. During the first years of his residence here he started and improved a farm from raw land, clearing a part of the tract and making the rails for the fences himself. He lived there on that farm until in 1886 he came to Fort Worth and embarked in the agricultural implement business with the firm of Lathrop and Vin- cent, whose business house was located at the corner of First and Houston streets, and he continued with that firm and with that of Ellis and Huff- man for twelve years or until the year of 1898, during that time taking a more active part than perhaps any other one man in the introduction and operation of improved farming machinery in Tarrant county. He set up and started in operation in Tarrant county the first self-binding harvester that bound the sheaf with twine, this binder having been equipped with the famous Appleby knotter, a device that has continued. with improvements, in use to the present day. Mr. Davis also started out
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the first steam threshing outfit in the county, the machines having been assembled and set up in the Ellis and Huffman place.
In 1898 Mr. Davis engaged as an expert with the Harvester King Company of Chicago for the Texas territory, and during his three years' connection with that corporation his territory covered both Texas and Manitoba, he having been sent to the latter country for the wheat har- vesting season. In fact he has worked in practically every state of the Union, save that of California, as an expert for the harvesting machinery interests, and after the consolidation of these interests under the name of the International Harvesting Machine Company he continued with the latter corporation, with headquarters in Fort Worth, until in 1906. In that year he received the Democratic nomination for and was elected the tax collector of Tarrant county, his conduct of the important and exacting duties of that office leading to his being again selected for its incumbency in 1908 for another term. His administration has been effi- cient, capable and popular in every way. His acquaintance and friend- ship, particularly in Tarrant county, includes practically every citizen and family therein. He is a member of the Masonic and various other orders.
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