USA > Texas > A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I > Part 21
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Mrs. Terrell has been, and is, prominently `identified with the work of establishing public libraries throughout the state. She proposed these as the purpose of the clubs of Texas, and has directed the movement which has been emi- nently successful. She was a charter member, and is now first vice-president of the Texas Li- brary Association, an organization composed of several hundred public spirited men and women over the state. Thus in home, in the school-room and in public work the subject of this sketch has felt it her highest privilege to be of use in her day and generation.
JUDGE A. J. HOOD, now deceased, was one of the early residents of Weatherford and one of the able public men of North Texas. Born in South Carolina, in 1824, of Irish stock, a son of Humphrey and Sarah Truesdale Hood, he was reared on a southern plantation and had the ad- vantages of education and culture that were afforded the sons of leading southern families. For books he had always a fondness, and found time to gratify his passion for literature and greedily read whatever fell into his hands. With such tastes he also combined an ardor for the
chase and all athletic games. He began teaching school at the age of eighteen, and for four years continued this in connection with his law studies. He was admitted to the bar in 1846, and in the same year came to Texas, and began the practice of law at Rusk, Cherokee county, where he lived until his removal to Weatherford in 1860.
At the breaking out of the war between the states, Parker county was on the extreme north- western frontier of the state. During the fall of the year preceding the war a large band of hostile Comanches came down into Parker county and drove off a large number of horses, after murdering citizens and committing other revolting acts of savage barbarity. Judge Hood, with a few others who had hastily assembled, early the next morning took and followed the trail. The Indians, as was their custom in such cases, traveled night and day, and having a night the' start, the pursuit was a fruitless one. This and other like bloody raids of the Indians on the frontier resulted, the same fall, in what was known as the Baylor Expedition. The expedition was composed of about two hundred and fifty men, and was commanded by Col. John R. Baylor, and its object was to administer chastisement on the Indians in their homes, from three to five hundred miles away. The men composing this expedition were out without wagons, tents or anything ap- proximating military stores, in the Panhandle and on the extreme head branches of the Brazos and Colorado rivers during the entire winter of 1860-61. Judge Hood commanded a small com- pany in this expedition. Having been unac- customed to the extreme privations and great toil encountered in this expedition, he returned home in the spring of 1861 completely broken down in health. For months his life was despaired of, and it was not until more than a year after the war that his health was sufficiently restored to enable him again to resume the practice of his profession. Hence it was that Judge Hood, though an ardent friend of the cause of the South, was prevented from being an active parti- cipant in the war.
Already he had received honors of public character. Elected in 1850, he .represented Cherokee county three sessions in the legislature.
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
In 1850-51-52, though the youngest member of the assembly, he was a member of the judiciary and other leading committees. The subjects that most engrossed the attention of the people and the legislature at that time were, the settlement of the state debt, the proper disposition of public lands, the establishment of a system of common schools, and the encouragement of railroads. In 1856 he canvassed the state as a presidential elector and that fall cast a ballot for Buchanan in the electoral college. In 1858 he was a mem- ber of the convention that nominated Hardin R. Runnels for governor. In 1874 he assumed the duties of judge of the thirteenth judicial district court, which he filled about two years, and in 1879 was appointed judge of the twenty- ninth judicial district by Gov. Roberts, being elected to that office in 1880.
In the history of North and West Texas from 1855 to 1870 the central fact of promi- nence is the hostility of the Indians, which, as we have said, was a constantly retarding force that held back the line of settlements for twenty years, so that the utmost efforts of the peo- ple were expended in defense rather than in ex- tending civilization beyond the frontier limits which had been established in the fifties.
Illustrative of this eventful period as also of the epoch which followed, when the western country began to build up, is the career of COL. J. E. McCORD, now vice president of the Cole- man National Bank at Coleman, Texas.
Born in what was formerly known as Abby- ville District of South Carolina, July 4, 1834, his parents, W. P. and Lucinda (Miller) Mc- Cord, being natives of the same district, and his father a planter and captain of a company of South Carolina militia and later lieutenant colonel of militia in the state of Mississippi, Col. J. E. McCord was reared on his father's plantation in Pontotoc county, Mississippi, where the family had removed the year of his birth. He received his education by private tutelage and in country schools, completing it at Henderson, Rusk county, Texas, to which place his father moved in 1853.
From school he went to San Marcos, where
he engaged in the land business with A. M. Lindsey, a surveyor, and up to the fall of 1860 they located lands in the frontier counties of Coleman, Brown, Runnels and others. In Jan- uary, 1860, a company of rangers was organ- ized at San Marcos at the behest of Gov. Sam Houston, its officers being Capt. Ed. Burleson, first lieutenant J. E. McCord, second lieuten- ant Joe Carson. They were assigned to duty on Home Creek in Coleman county, twenty miles south of Camp Colorado, at which post the commandants were the well known E. Kirby Smith and Fitzhugh Lee. During the summer of 1860 various companies were con- centrated at Fort Belknap and organized into a regiment of Col. M. T. Johnson. This regi- ment was ordered to the Wichita Mountains where they remained for some time and was there disbanded without having participated in any event of importance.
Returning home Col. McCord joined a batal- lion organized under authority of Gov. Houston by Col. W. C. Dalrymple and went to the pro- tection of the frontier, McCord acting in the capacity of adjutant. On one occasion the presence of Col. Dalrymple's command pre- vented a collision between the United States troops and an aggregation of men without au- thority from any source who were bent upon capturing the military post of Camp Cooper. The troops refused to surrender to such a body but declared their willingness to do so to Col. Dalrymple, as he was an officer in command under state authority. In like manner all the frontier posts were abandoned by the national troops and occupied by state militia, and, later, by Confederate troops.
Texas seceded, and the frontier service un- der Col. H. E. McCulloch was inaugurated. The legislature in the fall of 1861 authorized the organization of a regiment of ten companies for the purpose of patrolling the frontier from the Red river to the Rio Grande. The field officers of the regiment were appointed by the governor, but each company was to elect its captain and subordinate officers. J. M. Norris was appointed colonel of the regiment, his sub- ordinates being Lieutenant Colonel Obenchain
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
and Major J. E. McCord, their appointment to continue for one year. Col. Obenchain was killed shortly after the organization when Major McCord succeeded to the position of lieutenant colonel.
When the regiment was reorganized he was elected colonel without opposition, and his sub- ordinates were Lieutenant Colonel Buck Barry and Major W. J. Alexander. This regi- ment remained on the frontier in the state serv- ice until the spring of 1864, when it was trans- ferred by order of the governor to the Confed- erate service. Six companies of Col. McCord's regiment were ordered to the coast, and he was in command of the post at the mouth of the Brazos river when Lee surrendered and the end of the bloody Civil war came; much of the service consisting in guarding federal prisoners and patrolling the Gulf coast from the south end of Galveston island to the Peninsula of Matagorda. After the war Col. McCord re- turned to his father's home in Rusk county, Texas, where he worked on the farm and raised a crop of cotton, and in 1867 he returned to Caldwell county and engaged in the mercantile business at Prairie Lea, on the San Marcos river.
His early experience in the ranger service had made him well acquainted with the country about the present town of Coleman, and on March 17, 1876, when this district was still a frontier and ten years before the railroad pene- trated the county, he located on his ranch on Home Creek some twenty miles south of the site where the town of Coleman was after- wards laid out. In 1879 he moved his family to this still new and small town, and has been a resident of the same ever since. Raising cattle, dealing in land and finance has been his principal business activities, and his two sons, T. M. and J. P. McCord are associated with him in business.
When the Coleman National Bank was or- ganized in 1892, he was elected its first presi- dent, and served as such for some years, and is still vice president of the institution.
Col. McCord married, January 30, 1868, at Prairie Lea, Miss Sarah Elizabeth Mooney, who was born in Alabama and reared in Texas,
a daughter of Thomas and Clementine (John- son) Mooney. The children born to this union are : Lou C., Mary V., Thomas M., Julia T., James P. and Gertrude. Colonel McCord is a member of the Masonic fraternity, and he and his wife belong to the Presbyterian church.
DR. BACON SAUNDERS, of Fort Worth, is one of the best known and most successful surgeons of Texas and the entire south. Sur- gery is today the greatest of all applied sciences, and many far-sighted men believe that it is a question of only a few decades in the future when the knowledge of the physician will be- come universal knowledge and his profession will lose its distinctive importance to mankind, and that the surgeon with his skill will take his pres- ent ally's place as the benefactor and final re- sort of suffering humanity. At the present stage of progress in this direction only a very few, and those men of peculiar skill and pre- eminence, have, through choice or circumstance, devoted themselves wholly to the practice of surgery; and one of these-and indeed the only one in North Texas-is Dr. Saunders. The science of surgery appealed to him from his first introduction to it, the unusual skill early exhib- ited in operations marked plainly the leadings into that branch of the profession, and his fore- most merit and rank in the art have now for some years claimed his services as surgical spe- cialist to the exclusion of all allied interests.
A Kentuckian by birth, though identified with North Texas practically all his life, Dr. Saunders was born at Bowling Green, January 5, 1855. Occupying as he does front rank in his profes- sion, he none the less regards with more than parental veneration the life and career of his father, Dr. John Smith Saunders, who in his time was one of the best of old-school physi- cians, and through the influence of whose exam- ple it was that the son adopted the medical pro- fession. Dr. John Smith Saunders, who was born at Glasgow, Kentucky, after attaining high standing in the medical profession in his na- tive state, in 1857 came to Dallas, Texas, then situated almost on the frontier. As a pioneer doctor at this place in the years immediately
BACON SAUNDERS
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
preceding the war he became known over a wide surrounding territory. His visits across the sparsely settled country, bearing cheer and heal- ing to the isolated families, often penetrated into Tarrant county, and to the easy-circumstanced dweller in town or city of the present day imag- ination alone must picture the hardships which the good doctor encountered on these horse- back journeys, with his medicines packed in his saddlebags, or the joy with which he was hailed by the suffering, who had perhaps awaited, his coming for days, whereas in this age the same number of hours would seem long, and who would not see him again on his rounds for several weeks. Filling the place of friend, counselor and helper, his part in the life of that historical epoch is none the less important because it was unos- tentatiously performed. He thus continued to practice at Dallas until the war came on. A Kentuckian, it is not strange that his admiration for his fellow citizen Henry Clay made him an adherent of old-line Whig principles, and when the question of secession came up for settlement, though a firm believer in state rights, he op- posed the separation from the Union. But, like Lewis T. Wigfall, whom he so admired, and like hundreds of conspicuous and eminent south- erners his loyalty to Dixie, when the issue came to settlement, aligned him without hesitation with the Confederacy. Enlisting in 1862, he was appointed brigade surgeon on the staff of Gen- eral R. M. Gano, and as such served till the close of the war. On his return to Dallas he de- cided to give up the practice of medicine, and for several years during that period of indus- trial prostration following the war he took a prominent part in business affairs. He built and operated the first steam mill at Dallas, and was also in the mercantile business, until the failure of his health obliged him to retire. His children were then at the age where they need- ed better educational facilities than were afford- ed at Dallas, and this was the prime considera- tion that induced him to move to Bonham in 1869. There he built up a large general prac- tice, and lived until his death in 1891. He at one time served as president of the North Texas Medical Association, and stood very high among
the members of his profession. Noteworthy and successful though he was as a physician, his character was of those proportions that in- terest adheres more in the man than in his works. Of firm and positive convictions, he commanded respect and wielded influence among men as a leader, although he never used the qualities for any kind of political preferment, and the most important position he held was as brigade surgeon during the war. In the Christian church, however, he took a very ac- tive part, and was a devoted member till his death. Though his energies were almost con- stantly directed to serious affairs, yet he pos- sessed the social qualities which attached men to him through affection as well as respect. While he never posed as a raconteur, he was an engaging story teller, and was especially fond of pointing a serious principle with an il- lustrative anecdote. Schools of a primitive time supplied him with only the barest fundamentals upon which later insistent study and observation reared a most intimate knowledge of literature, men and events. His love for the classic in lit- erature never deserted him, and even in camp when surrounded by all the stern realities of military life he was wont to read his Shake- speare aloud to his fellow officers, and such was his sympathetic acquaintance with that au- thor that it is said he knew half the plays by memory.
Such was the father, and it is from his char- acter and example that the son has drawn much of the power and practical idealism for success. Beginning his education in a private school taught in the Odd Fellows' hall at Dallas, in 1869, on the family's removal to Bonham, he entered Carlton College, at that time one of the highest grade institutions in East Texas. Its founder and president had come from Mis- souri to Dallas, where he for a year or so pre- sided over the above-mentioned school in the Odd Fellows' hall, and in 1867 moved to Bon- ham and established Carlton College. After leaving this institution young Saunders taught school for a time, and in the evenings and vaca- tion intervals read medicine in his father's of- fice. When a boy of seventeen, in 1872, he spent
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
one vacation in the rough ranching life of the Texas frontier. Entering the medical depart- ment of the University of Louisville (Ken- tucky), he was graduated March 1, 1877, with the highest honors of his class, and at the early age of twenty-two began his professional ca- reer. A partnership with his father at Bonham gave him a broad practical experience and like- wise much repute for skill throughout the ter- ritory covered by their practice. His special aptitude for surgery had been shown during his university career, and it was the surgical branch of the firm's practice to which he gave special attention. His practice in Bonham con- tinued until January, 1893, and the demands upon his skill even then calling him far beyond his local residence, he moved to Fort Worth, where the unexcelled railroad facilities would afford greater opportunity to care for his increasing patronage. At Fort Worth he became a part- ner in practice with the late W. A. Adams, who afterward removed to St. Louis, and with F. D. Thompson of this city. During the five years in which this relation continued he de- voted some of his attention to general prac- tice, although even then his skill in surgery brought him all the practice he could well care for. It became necessary finally for him to re- linquish all work as medical practitioner, and though this transfer to a specialty was not easi- ly made because of the insistence of his pa- trons that he continue to attend to general cases, for the past seven or eight years he has con- fined his professional work wholly to surgery and surgical diseases of women and to consulta- tion in such cases.
Dr. Saunders is one of the founders of the medical department of Fort Worth University, served ten years as its dean, and is secretary and treasurer of the board of trustees, and also holds the chair of principles and practice of surgery and clinical surgery in that institution. He is chief surgeon for the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad, is division surgeon for the Texas and Pacific, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe, the St. Louis and Southwestern, and the Inter- national and Great Northern, and is now vice president of the American Association of Rail-
way Surgeons. His high position in medical circles is attested by membership in the Ameri- can Medical Association and high official posi- tions in other well known organizations. He was one of the founders and an ex-president of the North Texas Medical Association serving as president of that organization before his father held the same position ; is ex-president of the Texas State Medical Association; is ex- vice president of the International Railway Sur- geons' Association ; and is past vice president also of the Southern Surgical and Gynecological So- ciety, a body whose membership is restricted to those who have attained acknowledged skill in surgery, and its members are recognized as pre- eminent in the profession. It is as surgeon in charge of St. Joseph's Infirmary in Fort Worth that Dr. Saunders does most of his hospital work. Possessed of enormous energy and vitality, he is able to use his skill in work that for effective- ness and quantity is seldom surpassed, and his record for successful major operations performed day after day places him in class to himself. Within recent years in recognition of his high standing in his profession, Dr. Saunders has been honored with the degree of LL. D. by the Ark- ansas Industrial University and by the State Nor- mal University of Virginia. The active years of his life have been completely engrossed with his profession, and he has allowed no external influences or pursuits to divert him from its mas- tery and successful prosecution. His only diver- sion from practice, absolutely essential to one who gives himself so completely to his work, is a two-months' vacation each year, usually spent in the Adirondack mountains with his family. His offices, in the Saunders building at Fort Worth, are finely equipped for surgical work.
Dr. Saunders was married at Bonham, Octo- ber 30, 1877, to a prominent young lady of that place, Miss Ida Caldwell, a native of Tennessee. She is prominent in Fort Worth society and is one of the lady members of the Texas World's Fair commission and connected with various other clubs. Dr. and Mrs. Saunders have two children, Roy F. and Linda Ray. The son took his degree in the medical department of the Fort Worth University in the spring of 1905, and
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
at the present writing is pursuing post-graduate work in Jefferson Medical College at Philadel- phia. He is thus the third generation to adopt the medical profession, so that the name of Saunders will have enduring prominence in the annals of southern medicine and surgery.
JOHN L. DAVIS, a pioneer frontiersman of Western Texas and a veteran of many battles and skirmishes with the red men, is descended from a prominent and honored ancestry of Bour- bon county, Kentucky. He was born at Paris, Kentucky, January 1, 1833, but spent much of his youth in St. Louis, Missouri, where he ac- quired a good common school education. He is a son of Mathias and America (Loring) Davis, who were residents of Bourbon county and were there married. The father is descended from Welsh ancestry, but little is known concerning the early history of the family. The grandfather was Mathias Davis, who was a school teacher and later the publisher of a paper at Paris, Ken- tucky, where he continued to make his home until his death, which occurred in the year 1833. He was a man of wide acquaintance, whose def- erence for the opinions of others, genuine worth and honorable principles made him highly re- spected. His wife, surviving him, removed in the year of his death to St. Louis with her family. Her father engaged in merchandizing and re- mained in St. Louis until called to his final rest. His daughter, Mrs. Davis, never married again and continued to make St. Louis the place of her abode until she too passed away. The members of the Loring family are: John, who is a tailor by trade; Frank, a brick mason ; Charles, a prin- ter ; Mary, the wife of B. Martin; and America, the mother of our subject. There were two children born to Mr. and Mrs. Davis, John L. and Elizabeth, twins, but the latter died at the age of five years.
John L. Davis spent the days of his boyhood and youth in St. Louis and after leaving school he learned the plasterer's trade. In 1854 he went to New Orleans to secure employment and re- mained for a brief period in the Crescent city, after which he removed to Texas, locating with an uncle, John Loring, in Fannin county. He assisted his uncle with his stock and the follow-
ing year he went to Fort Arbuckle in the Indian Territory expecting to secure work at his trade there, but he was not successful in this and in consequence he left that place, going to Cooke county, Texas, where he secured work at plas- tering the house of Col. J. Bourland at Delaware Bend on the Red river, a noted place.
While there Mr. Davis formed the acquain- tance of a niece of the colonel, whom he afterward made his wife. In 1856 he removed from Dela- ware Bend to Gainesville, where he was employed at his trade, and his next place of residence was at Paris, Texas, where he was married. He then returned to Gainesville, where the young couple began their domestic life, and in 1858 they re- moved to Weatherford, Mr. Davis thus gradually working his way into the cattle country. In the spring of 1859 he removed to Palo Pinto county, with a view of making it his permanent location and engaging in the cattle business there. He located his family at what was to be the county seat, the little hamlet of Palo Pinto then con- taining only a few houses and a block house or fort. Soon, however, the Indians became very hostile and murders were committed, also many depredations upon the stock. They made raids on the little settlement which was largely com- posed of men engaged in the cattle business, and it became absolutely necessary for them to live in the forts the greater part of the time or rather to shelter the women and children there while the men looked after the stock. Some of the ranchers were murdered and robbed of their clothing and their bodies mutilated beyond des- cription. Great bravery and fearlessness, how- ever, were displayed by these frontier settlers and the husbands and fathers did everything pos- sible for the safety of their families and for the care of their stock. They formed themselves into a company of minutemen, were thoroughly or- ganized and drilled, having efficient officers, and were ready to respond almost instantly to the call which frequently came in those pioneer days. Again and again the settlers were called out to follow the red men, who were driving off the cattle, and through this organization they saved much of their stock. The first noted raid and fight in the locality was known as the Agency
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