A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I, Part 109

Author: Paddock, B. B. (Buckley B.), 1844-1922; Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing co.
Number of Pages: 968

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

Tennessee, where William J. grew up and mar- ried his first wife. Thomas Culberhouse was a man without wealth and in the days of sla- very followed the business of overseeing. The plantation offered opportunities for plenty. of industry and at this exercise his children took serious turns. No education worth the name came to William J. and his first wife's death, in Tennessee, left him with two children, viz .: Nancy, who married William Alexander, and died in Corsicana, Texas, leaving children, William and Elisha; and George Culberhouse, who passed away in Johnson county, Texas, without marriage. Mrs. Elizabeth Janes be- came William J. Culberhouse's second wife. She had three children, whose names were: Mary, of Johnson county, is the wife of Jack Jones; Lou, who died in Dallas as the wife of Haywood Dickey, and Mrs. Fount Jones, who resides in Parker county. The issue of Wil- liam J. and Elizabeth Culberhouse is Cordelia, who died at the age of thirteen; Jonathan, of Parker county, Texas; Thomas Nelson; Sam- uel, of Indian Territory ; Clint, of Hood county, Texas; Etta, deceased wife of "Sub" Darnaby, and Emma, who married Thomas Darnaby of Cleburne.

The farm in Johnson county served as the scene of T. N. Culberhouse's youthful life and his training in school was altogether of the rural sort. There was plenty of work on his father's two hundred acre farm and about his gin and he filled a niche about the place in any capacity. When near his majority he mar- ried and started life as a renter and in a limited. way. When he came into Montague county he had a pony team and wagon and a few house- hold effects and he located, in 1884, on what is now the Cleveland farm. For four years he continued to rent and later bought a tract of land in the neighborhood of Brushy creek school house. In 1898, he came to his present location at Pleasant Ridge. His farms embrace one hundred and sixty acres, a few acres of which are already set to fruit, and he is planning extensive additions which will eventually convert a cotton farm into a fruit farm.

March 7, 1878, Mr. Culberhouse married

Mary Susan Martin, a daughter of Elisha Mar- tin, who came to Texas from Henry county, Tennessee, where Mrs. Culberhouse was born January 23, 1858. The other Martin children were: Gresham, of Montague county ; Emma, deceased, married W. J. Callahan, of Montague county ; William W., of Roger Mills county, Oklahoma; Earnest L., of Montague county ; Silas S., of the same county; Effie, wife of Cyrus Rowland, of Weatherford, Oklahoma ; and Uela, now Mrs. Charles Johnson, of Ver- non, Texas.

Mr. and Mrs. Culberhouse's children are : Elisha Aldo, who married Trula Arnold and resides in Roger Mills county, Oklahoma; Walter L., who is with the parental home; Lilie E., wife of Walter Ditto, of Montague county, and Mary Alice and Katie E., young ladies at home. Hattie died at two years of age. Democracy states the Culberhouse polit- ical faith and in voting they do their whole duty as they see it. Mr. Culberhouse is a man of thrift and much enterprise and has ever done his duty to man.

JAMES N. STUART, a prominent man of affairs in Palo Pinto county, for over forty-five years identified with its industrial and business development, is at the head of the firm of J. N. Stuart and Sons, whose business interests center at the town of Strawn, but which ex- tend pretty well all over the county. Mr. Stuart is a most representative old-time cattle- man, merchant, capitalist, of the class which has accomplished most for the material welfare and upbuilding of this state. A man in the shadow of his seventieth year, Mr. Stuart was born in 1837, in Monroe county, Tennessee, a son of Richard and Iri (McCray) Stuart. This branch of the Stuart family is descended from the Mary Stuart ancestry of England and Scot- land, and when its progenitors came to this country they settled first in Virginia and then later crossed over the mountains and settled in Tennessee, Kentucky, and other states to the west of the Old Dominion. When the son James was ten years old his parents moved to Lawrence county, Missouri, where they lived until the early part of 1859, when they

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

moved to Palo Pinto county, Texas, this early settlement making them one of the old-time families of the county. They settled on a place on Palo Pinto creek, about two miles a little south of east of the present town of Strawn, in the southwestern part of the county. Here the parents made for themselves a com- fortable home, as far as that was possible in such pioneer surroundings, and here their last years were spent and death found them.

When James N. Stuart came to this county he was a young married man, with abundance of energy and great ambition to do well in the new country. He at once began the hard work which has been responsible for the develop- ment of his large material interests. In those early days, as is still true to a considerable extent, cattle was the foundation industry in West Texas, and it was in this business that Mr. Stuart got his start, and stock still forms the principal feature of the Stuart enterprises. Mr. Stuart remained on the home place with his parents until after their death, and in 1874 moved to his present home ranch, his residence being in what is now the town of Strawn, and was the first residence on the site of that town, which, however, was not established until the advent of the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1881.

Mr. Stuart has seen and experienced many of the phases of pioneer history described on the various pages of this work. Preceding, during and subsequent to the Civil war, Palo Pinto county, though now situated so securely within the precincts of civilization, was ex- posed to the ravages and outlawry of the In- dian tribes. The property of the settlers was never safe from the red men, and oftentimes in the defense of that the white men lost their lives. Mr. Stuart and the other members of his family suffered much from these depreda- tions, which were not finally ended until the · seventies; he has often protected his home with his trusty gun, has joined his neighbors in pursuit of cattle thieves, and can relate many incidents of the desultory Indian warfare which made Texas a battleground long after other parts of the United States had been en-

tirely conquered to civilization and peaceful industry.

In the days before the railroads Mr. Stuart made frequent trips over the old trail to Kan- sas with his cattle. As his operations extend- ed he increased his land holdings, reaching northward from the home place, until now the Stuart estate comprises over fifteen thousand. acres of land, with the town of Strawn its southern boundary, and for two sections in width extending north about half the length of the county.' At one place a section and a half laps over into Stephens county. Ioni creek flows through the northern part of the estate, and Palo Pinto creek through the south- ern part. There are two ranch headquarters, at the north and at the south end of the do- main, and besides the vast range afforded by this large amount of acreage, three small farms have been set aside for systematic cultivation in general farm and feed crops. The whole comprises one of the largest and richest ranches that now remains in Texas. In ad- dition to this extensive acreage already men- tioned, certain large bodies of land have been sold to the coal companies which have devel- oped the now important coal mining industry of Strawn. Other parts of the Stuart ranch have prospects of coal, and these, taken in con- nection with the increasing value of lands in Palo Pinto county, make the Stuart holdings a very rich possession.

For many years Mr. Stuart was associated as partner with S. B. Strawn (whose history is given elsewhere) in the cattle business and, for a time, in the lumber business (Stuart and Strawn), and this firm donated much of the land on which the town of Strawn was built. Mr. Stuart is responsible for much of the prog- ress and upbuilding of his home town, and during the early history of the town was con- nected with all the prominent business enter- prises there. As his sons grew to young man- hood the firm of J. N. Stuart and Sons was established, which company engaged exten- sively in mercantile undertakings, the last and perhaps the most important of which was their drug store. Mr. Stuart established the first.

Isaac alderete 1

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

lumber yard in the town, and he was also in , ISAAC ALDERETE, filling the position of district clerk in El Paso, is a representative of one of the old Spanish families whose history has been connected with the town of V~leta, El Paso county, for many generations. In, act his paternal ancestors resided there at a pe- the grocery, hardware and feed trade. Al- though these mercantile interests have of re- cent years been disposed of, the firm of J. N. Stuart and Sons is still continued in existence for the operation of the land and cattle busi- ness. This firm, so well known and exerting ,riod remote in records that are extant at the such a large influence throughout this section . present time. They lived there during the of the state, consists of Mr. Stuart and his four sons-Thomas B., Joseph P., William B. and S. James, each of whom has charge of a sep- arate department of the business. All of these sons were born in Texas, and inherit the pro- gressiveness and ability of their honored father. One of the specialties of the firm is the breeding of high-grade Durham cattle, and they have been foremost in this section of the state in grading up cattle. Also they are deal- ers in farms, ranches, live stock of all kinds, and town property. Mexican rule to the early Spanish regime. Ysleta is one of the oldest towns on the Amer- ican continent and the Alderete family has been connected with its history probably from the earliest epoch in its development. Benigno Alderete, father of Isaac Alderete, was born at Ysleta about 1847 and for many years was one of the leading citizens of that place and vicin- ity. He has filled various positions of honor and trust, has been mayor, county commis- sioner and customs inspector of the United States and has likewise filled other offices, the duties of which have been discharged in a most capable and efficient manner. He is the owner of a large amount of the rich valley land in the Ysleta neighborhood, having nearly one hundred families living as tenants upon his dif- ferent places and conducting their operation and improvement. He married Miss Espiride- ona Gonzales, who died about twenty-five years ago. Her people were originally from Chihuahua.

A man of broad-gauge principles and gen- eral public spirit and enterprise, Mr. Stuart has also figured as*a prominent factor in building up the educational and church institutions of Strawn, contributing to all such with the open- handed generosity so characteristic of the western cattleman. But during the past three or four years his activities have been very much limited, owing to a stroke of paralysis in his left side which has practically made him an invalid and necessitated a confinement that is particularly irksome to a man of vigorous physique who has always found his greatest pleasure in wholesome and strenuous activity. At the same time this sound constitution en- ables him to bear his present infirmity with much patience and courage.

Mr. Stuart has fraternal affiliations with the Knights of Pythias, and he and his wife are members of the Methodist church. He was married in Lawrence county, Missouri, to Miss Sarah Allen, who was born in Giles county, Tennessee, and in babyhood was brought to Lawrence county by her parents. She is a sis- ter of Mrs. S. B. Strawn. Mr. and Mrs Stuart's children are the four sons who have already been mentioned.

Isaac Alderete was born in Ysleta and pur- sued his literary education in Jesuit College, at Las Vegas, New Mexico. He received his business training in El Paso, where for nine years he was connected with the Campbell Real Estate Company, beginning as clerk and bookkeeper and finally becoming general agent. In 1898 he resigned to make a race for clerk of the district court of the thirty-fourth and forty-first judicial districts, was elected and has been re-elected in 1900, 1902 and 1904. He possesses excellent qualifications for the office and moreover he exercises these so that he has proven a most capable official, and that he enjoys the entire confidence of the voting population is indicated by the fact that he has been four times chosen for the office.

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

Mr. Alderete was married to Miss Leonora Guera, who was born and reared in Ysleta, and they have two children, Isaac and Lucinda. Mr. Alderete also has three brothers and a sister, Frank G., Louis, Abraham and Leonora Alderete.

EDWARD ELMER CARHART, of Pan- handle, a pioneer resident of Carson county, where he has been actively identified with busi- ness affairs since 1887, and for a number of years served as county treasurer, is the success- ful and enterprising druggist of the town. He has spent all his adult career in northwestern Texas, and has the honor of having been a pio- neer in various undertakings in this part of the state.

Born at Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1863, he was a son of Dr. John W. and Theresa (Mumford) Carhart. His father, a native of New York state, moved from Massachusetts to Wisconsin about 1867. At that time he was a Methodist minister, and accordingly was sta- tioned at various places, though principally at Racine and Oshkosh. He became a presiding elder in one of the Wisconsin conferences, and for many years occupied a prominent place in church affairs. Later in life, however, he took up the study of medicine and proved himself a very capable physician. He came to Texas in the early eighties and after a few years' prac- tice at Lampasas moved to Austin, where he is now a well known and successful practitioner. He is a cousin of Captain I. W. Carhart of Clar- endon, whose history appears elsewhere in this work, and also of Rev. L. H. Carhart, a promi- nent pioneer minister who came from Tennessee to West Texas as a minister and founded the town of old Clarendon in the latter seventies. Dr. Carhart lost his wife while the family lived in Lampasas.

Reared for the most part in the city of Osh- kosh, Wisconsin, Mr. Carhart received the ma- jor portion of his education in that place. While still a boy he learned the printer's trade, and, with the assistance of his sister, founded and published the "Early Dawn," a weekly paper, at Oshkosh. In 1880 he went to Texas, it being his intention to seek his fortune in northwestern

Texas. With others he traveled in wagons from Gainesville west to old Clarendon, passing only three ranches on the entire route. At old Clar- endon Mr. Carhart, though still but a boy in years, established the Clarendon "News," which has the distinction of being the first paper pub- lished in the Panhandle country. He continued to issue this journal for three years. Journalism was not in a very advanced stage in this part of the country at that time, and the first two or three numbers of the "News" were published back at Oshkosh, whence the copies were sent on to Clarendon ; but finally enough of an out- fit arrived so that all the paper could be pub- lished at home.

After disposing of his paper Mr. Carhart spent about two years on the range as a cowboy, and then went into the drug business at Clarendon. On discontinuing this he took employment with White & Company, general merchants and ranch outfitters at Clarendon. In the spring of 1887, a short time before the Santa Fe Railroad was completed to Panhandle city, and when that town was just starting up, White & Company sent Mr. Carhart to the embryonic town with a stock of goods for the purpose of establishing a store, which he took charge of as manager. Some time later, when White & Company were ready to leave this field, they sold the store and Mr. Carhart purchased a drug stock of J. D. Stocking, and has since so conducted it, with a high degree of success.

Carson county, since its organization in 1888 up to November, 1904, has had only two county treasurers. Judge J. C. Paul, who was the first, served until 1896, in which year Mr. Carhart re- ceived his first election to that office, and by re- election he served continuously until the close of 1904. In the latter year he declined another nomination for that office, and became a can- didate for the office of county judge. He has had a long and honorable official career, and be- fore coming to Carson county he was elected and served a term as county and district clerk of Donley county. During the Harrison admin- istration he was appointed postmaster at Pan- handle, and also continued to hold the office during the second Cleveland regime, altogether for eight years.

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

Mr. Carhart married, at Clarendon, Miss Stella Brewer, of an Indiana family that lived for many years at Sherman, Texas. The four children born of their happy union are John LeRoy, Nina May, Emma Opal, and Thelma Stella.

WILLIAM E. SANDERS, stockman at Lub- bock, is one of the oldest settlers of the plains country, and it is not every day that one will run across a man who has been identified with the country for twenty-five years, beginning with a time when the buffaloes had not yet disap- peared from their old-time haunts, displaced by the tame cattle owned and controlled by the civ- ilizing white man. Mr. Sanders has been very successful in his enterprises, and is counted as one of the influential and financially well-to-do men of Lubbock county.

in recalling how the country appeared at that time Mr. Sanders must rely almost entirely upon memory since the present era of progress has almost reconstructed even the landscape of West Texas.

Mr. Sanders lived in Crosby county till early in 1890, when he moved over into Lubbock county. His home and estate is three and a half miles north of Lubbock, where he has a sec- tion .of rich land, and has made an unusual suc- cess as a stock farmer. He also has an excel- lent orchard, a garden, and other features of a purely agricultural country. His pretty resi- dence is the more creditable to its builder when it is remembered that the lumber with which it was constructed was hauled one hundred and ten miles from the nearest railroad station. His stock are registered Herefords, and in all branches of his enterprise he shows great pro- gressiveness and the most modern methods.

Born near Cleburne, Johnson county, this state, in 1862, he had the misfortune to be left Mr. Sanders is a Royal Arch Mason, belong- ing to the chapter at Lubbock, and is a Knight of Pythias. His wife belongs to the Methodist church. Mr. Sanders was married at Estacado, Crosby county, to Miss Mattie McNeill, and they have three children, Earl, Hattie and Theta. an orphan at a very early age. His mother died when he was two weeks old, and his father, Wil- liam Sanders, who was a native of Tennessee, and an early settler of Johnson county, Texas, was killed a short time after the mother's death, he being a soldier in the Confederate army. The orphaned son was then taken to Jack county, GEORGE P. WHITAKER. Near Cundiff, Jack county, and engaged with the cultivation of a Howard valley farm, and holding the peace of that orderly community in the hollow of his hand, is George P. Whitaker, the subject of this brief biographical notice. Having passed nearly a score of years in this fertile valley and in the and his neighborly kindness have established him in the esteem and confidence of his fellows, and he is everywhere regarded as among the county's sincere and solid citizens. Though . beaten by the storms of adversity and tossed by waves of misfortune he has "weathered the gale" and yet has faith to chant the praises of his county and the courage to bring victory out of apparent defeat. Texas, where he was under the care of his grandmother during his childhood years, and grew up on a farm. When twelve years old he left his grandmother and went to work on the cattle ranch of John Hensley in Jack county, Mr. Hensley being one one of the prominent cattlemen of those days. In 1880 Mr. Sanders - locality adjacent to it, his industry, his integrity came out to the plains country and has lived here ever since. He brought with him some cat- tle of his own, and came out at the same time as did Mr. Hensley, who also brought a bunch of cattle, and with whose outfit Mr. Sanders was employed. They became pioneers of Crosby county, where at the time, besides Hensley's, there was only one other ranch within a hundred miles, that of William Slaughter. Fences were also unknown then, the country being open From 1886 to 1894, Mr. Whitaker was oc- cupied with the cultivation and improvement of a farm near Newport but continued misfortune finally undermined his capital and reduced him to a dependent at just about "the break" of life. range from Fort Griffin clear to the New Mex- ico line, and the nearest railroad point was Fort Worth. The plains were dotted with herds of buffalo, antelope and wild mustang horses, and

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

In the latter year he came to Howard valley to live, and to become the head of a new house- hold and assume' charge of his second wife's farm. Here, encouraged by the smile of for- tune and his life brightened by the presence and help of a second family, he has taken a new hold on life, is the center of a new power in his community and promises a cheerful and happy old age.

In Maury county, Tennessee, July 5, 1843, George Petillo Whitaker was born. The family was introduced into that locality by his grand- father, John Whitaker, who went there from North Carolina, settled a new farm and died about 1836. John Whitaker married a Love, and their children were: David, Mark, William, Josephus, Larkin, Polly, wife of Petillo Patton; Sallie who married Washington Hardy, of Waco, Texas, and Susan who died unmarried.

William Whitaker was born in Maury county, Tennessee, in 1821, passed his childhood and youth upon his father's plantation and was mar- ried before he was of age to Susan, a daughter of Mr. Patton, a settler from North Carolina. Mrs. Whitaker was born in 1819 and died in 1899. while her husband passed away nine years before. Their children were: John, who was killed while on the picket line at Jonesboro, Georgia, in the Confederate army; George P., of this notice; Ophelia, who died young ; Thomas, of Tennessee, likewise Samuel; Eliza- beth, wife of Jesse Kennard, and Boone Whita- ker, all of Maury county, Tennessee.

The country schools of his home county gave George P. Whitaker his education, and his fath- er's plantation was the scene of his boyhood and youthful activities. He entered the Confeder- ate service in 1861, enlisting in Company H, First Tennessee Infantry, Colonel Manney, Cheatham's Division and Corps. He served in the Army of Northern Virginia till the battle of Shiloh, when his regiment was transferred to the Tennessee army. Before his transfer he participated in the battles of Green Briar, Rich Mountain, Carrick's Ford and Sewell Mountain, and under General Jackson fought the engage- ment at Hancock, Maryland. He was in the battles of Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro-there becoming sick and being transferred, upon his

request, to the cavalry and assigned to General Forrest's command. He remained with this branch of the service till the end of the war, and surrendered with the famous leader at Gainesville, Alabama, in the spring of 1865, with only slight wound and two horses killed under him as his nearest casualty.

He resumed farming after the war and was drawn into the organization of negro regulators known as "Ku-Klux." The entry of the black man into politics led to this extreme measure on the part of the southern people and, in the heat of passion and while carrying out some of the commands of the order, many casualties oc- curred in the ranks of the new voters, for which it seemed that somebody must eventually suffer. Too radical measures caused a revulsion of sen- timent, and a reaction set in during the seventies which threatened to imperil the personal liberty of some of the "Ku-Kluxers" and Mr. Whitaker got the consent of his mind to take up his resi- dence in Texas. He came hither, in 1877, and located in Tarrant county, six miles north of Fort Worth. Coming into his new location without means, Mr. Whitaker was compelled to make the best of an embarrassing situation, and he contracted for a black-land farm of General Knight, but after working it a few years he de- cided to abandon the "waxy stuff" and under- take something in violent contrast to it, a sandy- land farm in Jack county, and with what results we have noted above.

August, 1865, Mr. Whitaker married Susan, a daughter of John Nicholson, a Maury county farmer. She died near Newport, Texas, in 1892, having become the mother of: John and Eliza- beth, of Jack county, the latter now Mrs. Marsh Board; George, of Clay county, whose present wife was Miss Irene Jordon; Thomas, deceased; Bulah, wife of Robert Dove; Earnest, who mar- ried Maggie Johnson, both reside in Jack county and complete the list. April, 1894, Mr. Whit- aker married Mrs. Martha Jones, widow of Thomas Jones, and a daughter of William Mar- tin who came to Jack county from Lincoln county, Tennessee. Mrs. Whitaker was born in Alabama, in the month of June 1861, and, by her first marriage, is the mother of : George, of Jack county, who married Eula Mayfield, and

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A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I, Part 109

Author: Paddock, B. B. (Buckley B.), 1844-1922; Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, pub Publication date: 1906 Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing co. Number of Pages: 968

Author: Paddock, B. B. (Buckley B.), 1844-1922; Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing co.
Number of Pages: 968