A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I, Part 31

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

USA > Texas > A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I > Part 31

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center in North Texas and line after line was built through this point."

After the T. & P., the next important railroad to come to Fort Worth was the Santa Fe, to bring about the completion of which a donation of $75,000 was guaranteed by the citizens of Fort Worth, Mr. Cetti being one of the forty bondsmen backing the donation, and $78,000 was actually raised and given to the road. There were booming times again in 1888, 1889, 1890 and 1891. In the latter part of 1891 the depres- sion which culminated in the disastrous panic of 1893 began to be felt. The city commenced growing again in 1898, and, as told elsewhere, has continued to build up ever since.

Mr. Zane-Cetti was engaged in the real estate business for many years, and did not retire per- 'manently from the same until 1902, when he gave up everything to devote all his attention to · the active management of the great brewery of the Texas Brewing Company, of which he is president, and of which he was one of the origin- al incorporators in 1890. The original building, occupying one block, was completed in 1891. Five acres are now covered with buildings, of brick, steel and tile construction, and practically fire-proof. The first beer was brewed in March, 1891.

This is the only brewery in the south that manufactures everything it needs except the bot- tles. Extensive and completely equipped ma- chine shops and repair shops are maintained, with skilled workmen, so that the buildings and their . equipment are constantly kept at the highest standard. Tanks, barrels, boxes, crates, etc., are all manufactured in the company's shops. The company has its own fire and police departments. Supplies of the purest water are obtained from four artesian wells, from which are taken from six hundred thousand to three-quarters of a mil- 'ion gallons of water a day. A great deal of this goes into the manufacture of ice, of which this plant is the largest producer and shipper in the south. An equipment of private freight cars, for shipping purposes, under the company's name, is operated under the direction of a traffic manager. Capacity, efficiency and system seem

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

to be the cardinal features of the business. The brewery is by far the largest industrial institu- tion within the city limits of Fort Worth proper. It pays more taxes than any other local institu- tion, amounting to two per cent of the entire city taxes; it employs two hundred men, who with their families, make a population of about 700 dependent on the brewery, the children of these employes constituting about two per cent of the scholastic population of the city. For the most part the employes have been a long time in the service of the company, and the majority of them are home owners, a thrifty, honest, and law- abiding class, in proof of which it is said that no employe has ever been arrested on a criminal charge.

Asked what he considered the most impor- tant factor in the development and upbuilding of Fort Worth, Mr. Cetti replied, in the forcible and fluent utterance so characteristic of the man : "The public spirit of the citizens in sticking together in the days when it was a new and struggling western town, especially manifested in bringing about the construction of the numer- ous railroads which have made Forth Worth the great railroad center of the Southwest." And being asked his opinion as to what the present and fu- ture prosperity of the city is based upon, his un- hesitating answer was: "The agricultural develop- ment of the country, the unsurpassable means of distribution of products by the railroads, and a general influx of the proper kind of population."

COL. J. PETER SMITH is probably best known to history for his connection with rail- road building. His contributions to the various roads that centered at Fort Worth and gave this city its pre-eminence in North and West Texas were always generous and to the extent of his resources. When the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe bonus was raised to attract that line to Fort Worth, Col. Smith's name appears at the head of the list of subscribers, and that was only a sample of the liberality that marked his efforts for the upbuilding of his favorite city. A brief summary of his career is given elsewhere, and his name has been mentioned again and again in connection with the building of the railroads,

and here it remains to describe some of the phases of his personal career.

He was born in Owen county, Kentucky, Sep- tember 16, 1831, a son of Samuel and Polly (Bond) Smith, both Kentuckians by birth. His paternal and maternal ancestors were agricultur- ists, slaveholders and well-to-do people. He himself was reared on a farm and after the death of his father and mother in 1844 went to live with his cousin W. H. Garnett, of Owen county, whom he selected as his guardian. His guardian kept him in the best schools of the neighborhood, and in 1849 entered him in Frank- lin College, Indiana, where he remained ten months. In September, 1850, he went to Bethany College, Virginia, where he remained three years, Alexander Campbell being president of the col- lege during this time. Sharing the first honors of his classes in ancient languages and mathe- matics, he graduated from Bethany with the class of 1853.

He left Kentucky in November, 1853, for Texas. In December he visited Fort Worth and was so fascinated with the beauty of the place and the surrounding country that he determined to make it his future home. In January, 1854, he obtained possession of the old post hospital and opened the first school taught in Fort Worth. After three months he closed the school on ac- count of failing health. He needed outdoor em- ployment, and turned his attention to surveying, an occupation he pursued at intervals until the year 1860. While he was engaged in surveying he also read law with A. Y. Fowler in Fort Worth, and without attending any law school was ad- mitted to the bar in 1860. He opposed secession, but in 1861 assisted in raising a company of one hundred and twenty men in Tarrant county, and with them was mustered into service at San An- tonio, as Company K, 7th Texas Cavalry, Sib- ley's brigade, which served during the war in New Mexico, Arizona and western Louisiana. He participated in the principal engagements of the army in western Louisiana, was at the recap- ture of Galveston from the Federal forces, Janu- ary I, 1863; was severely wounded June 23, 1863, near Donaldsonville on the Lafourche, and slightly wounded at the battle of Mansfield. In

JAMES J. JARVIS

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

1864 he was promoted colonel of his regiment, lin county, and thence retracing his steps as far as Quitman in Wood county, where he located and began his practice. When he reached the town he had sixty dollars, but loaning fifty-five to a friend, commenced his career with only five standing at the bar, serving for two years as coun- ty judge and two years as district attorney for the which he disbanded in Navarro county, Texas, May 18, 1865. The regiment then numbered about six hundred men, well armed and equipped, and was on the march from Louisiana to Texas. In September, 1865, he returned to dollars in his pocket. He soon won an enviable Fort Worth to resume the practice of law and dealing in real estate, and entered upon a re- markable career as a business man. In 1874 he , Sixth judicial district. In 1872 he went to the became a partner in the banking house of Tid- then very new town of Fort Worth. ball, Van Zandt and Company, so well known during the seventies and eighties. He built and for a time owned the gas works in Fort Worth ; was a principal stockholder in the El Paso Hotel Company, the El Paso House being the leading hotel of Northwest Texas for many years. He was interested in street railways, cotton com- presses, and many other enterprises, and did more for North Texas in this direction than any other one man. In his death a few years ago, Fort Worth lost one of its greatest men, and his name belongs with those of Captain Daggett, K. M. Van Zandt and other leaders during the time when Fort Worth was building the founda- tions of its present greatness.

MAJOR JAMES JONES JARVIS, for half a century a member of the bar of Texas, though his extensive business and real estate interests have for many years absorbed all his time and energies, prominent as a soldier, a legislator, and one of Fort Worth's most esteemed men of af- fairs, was born in Surry county, North Carolina, April 30, 1831, a son of Daniel and Lydia (Jones) Jarvis. Receiving his early education in his native state, in Tennessee, and in Illinois, whither his parents removed when he was about twenty years old, he began reading law at Ur- bana, the latter state, and, acquainting himself with the machine work of practice by performing clerical work in the clerk's office, he was admit- ted to the bar by the supreme court of Illinois in 1856. Then going south to Shreveport in the following winter, he determined to go to Texas. He at first thought he would travel by horse, but, having only one hundred dollars, decided to save his cash and started out afoot, walking from Shreveport to the east fork of the Trinity in Col-

It was here that he displayed the foresight and good judgment which have resulted in placing him among the wealthy men of North Texas. Having saved a few thousand dollars from his practice, he showed his faith in the future of Fort Worth by investing it all in real estate, and is now one of the largest tax payers in Tarrant county. He owns one of the principal blocks of ground in the business part of the city, on Main and Houston streets, some of the leading banks and business houses being located on his prop- erty. He owns a fine ranch of five thousand acres ten miles north of Fort Worth, also an- other extensive ranch of twenty-six thousand acres in Hood and Erath counties, where, in as- sociation with his son Van Zandt, he indulges his passion for stock-raising, handling only the finest grades of short-horn cattle and fine strains of horses. The Jarvis homestead is a beautiful tract of one hundred and sixty acres lying three miles north of Fort Worth, on which is not only his own elegant residence, but also the beautiful homes which he has built for his son Van Zandt and for his daughter, Mrs. Burgess. These resi- dences and their surroundings form an estate of extreme beauty and landscapic effects.

A few years after establishing himself in prac- tice there came to Mr. Jarvis the call of patriot- ism. In 1861 he entered the Confederate army as a volunteer in Company A, Tenth Regiment of Texas Cavalry, Ector's brigade, Van Dorn's corps, Beauregard's Army of the Tennessee. He served as adjutant and major of his regiment. After the battle of Corinth the troops with which . he was connected were transferred to General E. Kirby Smith, and Mr. Jarvis served with that army and took part in its battles through the whole of General Smith's campaign in Kentucky,

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

participating in a number of engagements. On the evacuation of Kentucky he ,was also in the battles of Murfreesboro and Jackson, being slightly wounded in the former. He came home on furlough just before the close of hostilities, and was at home when the Confederate armies surrendered.

As an active Democrat, believing earnestly in both the theoretical and practical value of the grand principles of the party, Major Jarvis has rendered signal service to his state and communi- ty. In 1886 he was elected to the state senate from the Twentieth district (Tarrant, Wise, Parker and Jack counties), receiving his nomina- tion by a majority of twelve hundred. In the regular and extra sessions of the Twentieth and Twenty-first legislatures he was chairman of the committee on finance; was second on judiciary committee No. 1 ; and a member of the commit- tees on internal improvements, education, public debt, frontier protection, retrenchment and re- form, and engrossed bills-committees that tran- sact nine-tenths of all the business that comes before the senate. He was the author of a num- ber of salutary laws during these sessions, among others one enacted by the Twentieth legislature requiring assessors and collectors to report monthly their collections under oath and requir- ing them to send all money collected directly to the treasurer of the state instead of to the comp- troller, as formerly. The effect of this bill was the speedy collection of a surplus in a previously depleted treasury. Although he had retired from the practice of his profession a number of years prior to his entrance into the legislature, his ex- ceptional learning and abilities as a lawyer were well known to and recognized by his colleagues, and this fact, combined with his reputation as a financier, sound Democrat and man of sturdy and unbending patriotic purpose, caused them to accord him the position of a leader in their de- liberations and won for him their sincere esteem and friendship.

Notwithstanding his record in the field of the law, politics and finance, Major Jarvis is no doubt best known to the people of Texas as a whole, and is gratified to be able to base his principal claim to their esteem, because of his active inter-

est in and liberal contributions to the cause of higher Christian education in the state. He pur- chased the buildings and grounds and donated to the Christian denomination the well remembered Add-Ran University, which, after a most success- ful history under the leadership of Addison and Randolph Clark, was destroyed by fire in March, 1904. This institution was beneficiary of Major Jarvis' liberality to the amount of over twenty thousand dollars. A fine representative of the successful modern man of affairs, Major Jarvis" opinions and advice carry weight wherever ex- pressed. Of late years he has delivered to the students and young people of this state many ad- dresses and inspiring educational talks, and, drawing his material from the deep wells of his own experience, he has in this way accomplished as much for the permanent uplift and building of character as he has by his more material contri- butions.

Mr. Jarvis was married in 1866 to Miss Ida Van Zandt, daughter of Isaac Van Zandt, who was once minister from Texas to the United States and who was appointed by President Sam Houston to negotiate the treaty under which Tex- as became a member of the American Union. Distinguished not less by her own personality and accomplishments than by her relationship with such a character of early Texas history, Mrs. Jarvis has co-operated heartily with her husband in his life work and also has directed her talents along independent lines. She is a highly educated woman, being a graduate of Franklin College, Tennessee, at the graduating exercises of which institution in May, 1905, she delivered an address. She is president of the woman's board of missions of the Christian church for Texas. In the literary circles of her state Mrs. Jarvis is best known as the author of "Texas Poems," published in 1893, which contains many beautiful poems of the highest merit, and which, with her other contributions to literature, places her among the leading literary women of the south.

Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis have three living children, Van Zandt, Daniel Bell, and Mrs. Lennie Flynn Burgess.

CHAPTER VII.

THE HISTORY OF FORT WORTH.

Fort Worth was founded as a military post; that was its origin. This proves that it pos- sessed eligibility of location from a military point of view. Looked at from the present point of view, it was also fortunately placed in a rich and varied agricultural region and at the same time was well out toward that incompar- able grazing range country.

As a barracks pushed out against barbarism, to serve this purpose Fort Worth came into be- ing. Four years measured this phase of its history. When the soldiers left there remained only a nucleus of citizens and the eligible loca- tion. There was only a meager country popu- lation in the vicinity; barring a few supply trains, no currents of trade had yet begun to flow through this part of Texas; there was no cattle trail; nothing permanent to inspire en- thusiasm for this straggling settlement on the Trinity bluff, and the seed of civilization, plant- ed and protected during the brief period of military occupancy, might, on good and relative grounds, have experienced the blight which be- fell similar posts to the west, such as Phantom Hill or Belknap.

But that nucleus of citizens possessed a qual- ity of enterprise not to be found in the ordinary frontier village. Given the ordinary advantages of location and natural resources, men of such stamp as E. M. Daggett, C. M. Peak, J. P. Smith and their associates would soon have given some distinction and prestige to any hamlet of which they happened to be residents. Indeed, when one has studied the history of Fort Worth from its inception, he is impressed to the point of amazement by the tremendous

energy and magnificent civic spirit that have actuated the builders and promoters of the city's real greatness ; every advantage has been seized, no opportunities have been overlooked, and the place has risen to first magnitude be- cause of the vigilance and tireless endeavor of its citizens.

It was not long after the "fort" was deserted when this exuberant spirit of enterprise found its first great object-a common cause to serve as a rallying point for all the people.

Tarrant county was created by the legisla- ture, December 20, 1849, but no election was held till about 1852, at which time the county seat was located at Birdville. Tarrant county was named for General Edward H. Tarrant, an Alabamian by birth, a Texas lawyer, and a war- rior and fighter of Indians on the Texas fron- tier. He died in August, 1858. Deprived of its military post, Fort Worth people wanted the county seat. In this as in other cases where the citizens united in determined desire to accom- plish a set object, they got what they wanted. Captain Daggett, who had come to the city in 1854 and had voted at an election for county of- ficers held at. Cold Springs, about one mile northeast of the present court house, was a leader in the agitation for a relocation of the county seat. Finally the legislature consented to allow the people again to decide between the two places and ordered an election. Birdville was then the larger place, and had the will of the majority been expressed untrammeled, it is probable that Birdville would have retained the court house, at least for, some years. Old citizens of Birdville to this day charge that the

191

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

election was carried for Fort Worth by means of fraud. Fort Worth people do not deny it, so history must leave the matter as one of those cases where theoretical right has yielded to superior enterprise and in which the event has been justified by the march of progress. The Fort Worth citizens were wild with joy over the outcome of the election, and it is related by one who lived there at the time that the records were placed in a wagon, three fiddlers mounted on top, and surrounded by a reveling crowd, the official seat was transferred in triumph to the little village on the bluffs of the Trinity.

But the matter was by no means settled by that election, which took place about 1855, and it was five years before Fort Worth could rest in peace, confident that the county seat would not be taken from her. The important phases of the matter are best described in the follow- ing quotation from the Reminiscences of Cap- tain J. C. Terrell :

"We (Peter Smith and J. C. T.) were in Aus- tin when the Fort Worth and Birdville county seat question, thought to be settled, was again sprung by Colonel A. J. Walker, senator from this county. Walker was a client of mine, a native of Virginia, and came to Peters Colony from Kentucky ; had been a school teacher and district surveyor ; a good citizen, though pertin- acious even to stubbornness; he never sur- rendered or yielded a point. Dr. J. W. Throck- morton of Collin county, afterward governor, was Fort Worth's leading friend in the house. This question had cost the life of more than one good man and the state in legislation $30,000. When the question was sprung I was booked for a masquerade ball. But hearing from Peter that the county seat question was to be heard that night by the joint committee, the ball as to me was relegated, and Peter and myself delved into a cart full of legislative pa- pers from this county and held up the hands of our noble leader, M. T. Johnson, against Walker and Dr. B. F. Barclay. The committee sat nearly all night and reported a compromise bill involving another election, which eventuated in locating the county seat permanently at Fort Worth. Requiescat in pace !

"M T. Johnson was the father of Tarrant county, as E. M. Daggett was the father of Fort Worth, his face being on our city seal. Both were grand men physically, morally and men- tally. The former weighed 225 pounds, the latter 275. Johnson was physically the strong- est man I ever knew. Neither of them was ex- emplary or saintly, yet both of them were to us old settlers veritable heroes. We loved them for the manifold good they did, and long years ago have buried their foibles. Both were good Masons."

By the time the election referred to by Cap- tain Terrell took place, Fort Worth had in- creased in population to the extent where it could back up her claim to the proper place for the court house by sufficient number of votes without calling in the assistance of any per- sons not legally residing within the limits of the county. The Dallas Herald of April 18, 1860, thus states the results of the election: "Three cheers for Fort Worth! The long mooted question of county site in Tarrant county has at last been settled and Fort Worth is definitely determined upon. The following are the elec- tion returns, which, with 13 votes not counted, makes upon the full return a majority for Fort Worth of 256:

Fort

Worth. Center. Birdville.

Fort Worth.

316

Birdville

116

Grapevine

111

Hutton's

Leonard's Mills

Walnut Creek

Gipson's 16

Hanley's

McCrackin 12

Young's

Johnson's Station.

548

301

. 4

Deer Creek. 32

As is seen by this table of returns, the contest was not between Birdville and Fort Worth, but

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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

between the latter town and a point at the exact center of the county.

best citizens left to fight the battles of their southland, and the population before the decade of seventies never was a thousand.

Around the court house on the bluff there arose the commonplace village of that period, Fort Worth's history is so much a part of the history of North and West Texas, that the im- portant phases of the city's development are . treated in other chapters; here it is proper to furnish merely an outline story of its growth characteristically to Fort Worth. frame store buildings, little one-story struc- . tures with dirt floor such as Captain Terrell describes as having afforded himself and part- ner a law office and in part of which at a later time Captain M. B. Loyd had his bank. The : and mention some items of detail which belong town was built around the public square, after the common fashion of Texas towns, and the The growth of Fort Worth begins to assume some distinction about 1870. In 1873 it was in- corporated as a town. It is of interest that at the time of incorporation an effort was made to drop the word "Fort" from the name, as no longer having significance. But this proposi -. tion was defeated by those whose early asso- ciations were with the fort and who clung to the name out of respect to the hardy pioneers of early history. court house was the hub of interest and busi- ness activity. Even at this day the old-time citizens refer to the "public square" with a meaning inherited from early days when the square was really the scene of all the business activity of the place. What now constitutes the banking and commercial and hotel center, between Fourth and Ninth streets, was for twenty years an unoccupied common, on which the transient immigrants pitched their camps Already Fort Worth was gaining an impor- tance as a station on the great cattle trail, lead- ing from the west and southwest to the north- ern markets, but it was the railroad prospects, in the first instance, and the actual building of railroads that were at the foundation of Fort Worth's prosperity and growth. During 1873, when there seemed to be immediate prospects of a railroad, the town passed through a regular boom, its population reaching two thousand. Then followed three years of depression, when only the more courageous and far-sighted re- mained to work out a great future for their adopted home. Major J. J. Jarvis was one who identified himself with Fort Worth about that time. "I believe Fort Worth would be a con- siderable place," he said in giving the reason for locating here at the time. "I thought it would be a railroad center. There was a fine sur- rounding country, and the great region to the west would be tributary to this as a business center. Some persons sought to dissuade me from coming here, alleging that Fort Worth 'will never be anything but a whistling station.' Some years later, when eleven lines of railroad radiated from this point, I had a chance to re- turn the compliment to those very men. 'Your prophecy hit the facts squarely,' I assured them for the night, across which the cattlemen drove their herds from the west, while still further south, in the vicinity of the Texas and Pacific depot, Captain Daggett had his farm buildings. When one observes the great area to the south, west, east and north now covered by the city. of Fort Worth, it requires some effort of the imagination to depict the town as it was a little more than thirty years ago. There were regu- lar sessions of county and district court, at which times attorneys from all this part of the state convened to transact the routine and special legal business and, aside from this, to enjoy themselves in the social manner common to groups of old-time lawyers. When business and court affairs ceased to interest, there was the ever-absorbing theme of politics, and in the era before and during and just after the Civil war, we may be sure such topics were vital with interest. Outside of the individual char- acter of its citizens, Fort Worth was only a typically ordinary town, a center for the small trading activity of the country, and rising above its neighbors mainly as a court house town. At least, no echoes of its superior dis- tinction have reached this twentieth century. The war almost depopulated the village, the

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A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I, Part 31

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