USA > Texas > A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I > Part 34
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"I served on the first grand jury that convened in the little brick court house in Birdville. By the first vote of the people the county seat of Tar- rant county was located at Birdville, but after a year or so the people of Fort Worth decided that they wanted the seat of justice there and they proceeded to get it. A petition was sent to the
mer fellow citizens get what they wanted. There were three polling places in the county and each faction had guards stationed to prevent any frauds. Barrels of whiskey with heads knocked 'out stood in front of every building. Buckets of sugar were open for those who did not take their liquor straight. All conditions were favor- able for free and frequent drinking. We, from Wise county, did not belong to the 'anti' crowd, and under those inviting circumstances we wanted to drink worse than at any time of our lives. But I corralled my lads and said to them : 'Boys, we've got to stay sober till this election is over. I must vote every one of you, so we must hold in till we get home. It is a penitentiary offense and if they find us defrauding the ballot , we will have to leave home for several years.' I knew that would keep them in line, and it did, so that we were the soberest lot in Fort Worth that day. The Birdville people never once suspected that I did not belong to Tarrant county, and supposed that my fourteen companions were neighbors from over in the western part of the county. We never opened our heads about our intentions until late in the afternoon, when I thought it was about time to act. I led the way to the polls, followed by my supporters, and pre- tending to be in a great hurry, I pushed forward to the judges, saying, 'Come on, boys, let's vote, for we've got a long way to go and must get home before dark.' They never challenged one of us, and there were fifteen votes for Fort Worth that came from Wise county. As Fort Worth won the election by only seven votes, it was due to my help that the court house now stands in that city, and Fort Worth certainly owes me a free pass. Some of my crowd loved whiskey aw- ful, and it was the hardest work of my life to keep them away from those tempting barrels that offered refreshment to whosever would come
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and drink. When the results of the vote gave the court house to Fort Worth, the Birdville peo- ple swore we had voted every man as far west as the Rio Grande, and by a careful canvass they were not able to find as many male citizens in the entire county as that day had recorded their bal- lots at the three polling places."
JUDGE C. C. CUMMINGS, veteran soldier, judge and historian, came to Fort Worth in Jan- uary, 1873, when the village on the Trinity bluff was just beginning its phenomenal expansion which in the subsequent thirty years has pushed it two or three miles to the south and east and west and has given it the place of metropolis of Northwest Texas.
First of all, Judge Cummings is a southern soldier and gentleman. He enlisted in April, 1861, in the Seventeenth Mississippi Regiment, and was in all the battles of his command till shot out at Gettysburg. He went through the first law class after the war at Lebanon, Tenn., and began to practice in Memphis, then in Mis- sissippi, his native state, and having practiced in Fort Worth since 1873, is now the city's oldest practitioner in point of active connection with the bar. He was the first county judge under the present constitution, serving two terms, from 1876 to 1880. He administered as the first su- perintendent of the schools of both city and county, by virtue of his office as judge, this be- ing before the city assumed jurisdiction.
He met opposition to the public school system, then in its infancy in Texas, for the reason that a heavy tax had been collected under preceding Republican administrations, while the state was under military rule, but the fund rarely reached its destination. This office of county judge was then a kind of omnium gatherum; besides super- intending the education of more than three thou- sand children on the city and county rolls he had to dispense the civil and criminal laws under his jurisdiction, as well as being ex-officio head of the Commissioners' Court, governing the finances and roads and bridges of the county. To add to his difficulties, the court house was burned about the time of his induction into office, and not a road was left of record; all had to be re-estab-
lished by the appointment of a commission by this court. County scrip was then at its lowest ebb, selling on the market at forty cents on the dollar. In the four years of his administration the finances of the county were brought up to par, besides the expenditure of $100,000 on a court house and jail and bridges over the county where none had existed before. The law required the county judge to be at his office every day to meet these multiplied duties, and at the same time demanded that this officer should visit school communities and lecture them on the new school laws just then put in vogue by the legislature. To overcome the physical problem involved by this demand, of being in two places at the same time, he devoted Sundays to lecturing school committees as to their duties and in settling the many new problems suggested by the trustees, whose appointment was committed to him by the law. There being no schoolhouses, wherever a neighborhood had a church house he secured room in that to lecture on these sabbatical duties, and considered it God's service that the state should embrace the new system of public schools ; and when no room could be had for this purpose he lectured under the shade of the trees. No pay was allowed for this extra service. During the four years he issued thousands of dollars in school money to teachers, without bond, none being required of the superintendent under the law as it then was. And while the laws were all new, under a new constitution, he served four years with the remarkable record of never being reversed, though hundreds of civil and criminal cases were appealed from his decision.
Judge Cummings is widely known as a writer on current issues of the day, and it is especially noteworthy that for several terms he has been historian of the Texas State Division of the Con- federate Veterans.
Of COLONEL NAT TERRY, who came to Fort Worth in 1854, and was one of the best known of the familiar figures of the past, Captain J. C. Terrell has written as follows: He had been the Democratic nominee for governor in Alabama, and was defeated by Governor Jones, his brother-in-law, in a three-cornered race. At
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Then M. Fedhall
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that time lieutenant-governors in Alabama were elected by the state senate. He was twice elected lieutenant-governor. His defeat for governor, by an independent candidate, probably made him the strict partisan that he was. His wife, nee Jones, was a refined, educated and lovely woman. Two daughters and two sons, with some thirty- six negroes, constituted the family. These slaves were given to Mrs. Terry by her brother, for the Colonel had failed in business, and eighty of his slaves were sold by the sheriff under execu- tion at one sale. The Colonel had been one of the highest flyers in the Union. Among his assets was Uncle Daniel, his body servant, keeper and rider of Ringgold, a famous horse costing him $3,000. Daniel, with Ringgold, won a great race at Saratoga, when it was safe for a southern man to travel with his slaves through the north without John Brown's interference.
Colonel Terry settled the H. C. Holloway place northeast of and adjoining this city, in 1854. He bought this land from M. T. Johnson. He was a pronounced secessionist, and in 1862 sold his farm to David Snow, an anti-secession- ist, for $10,000, which he took in Confederate money in preference to gold coin offered him. In 1863 the Confederate Congress compelled the funding of this money into bonds, and I fell heir to the same in an iron safe which I bought from Captain M. B. Loyd-the bonds worthless, of course. David Snow, under a dirt floor in the rear of No. 109 Weatherford street in this city, buried $10,000 in gold coin, which he resurrected in 1866.
The Colonel's house consisted of several rooms snow-white and well furnished, facing the south, fronted with a porch with floors of stone. There were separate apartments for the aged couple. He kept the most hospitable home I ever knew. When Governor Houston, Jack Hamilton, M. P. Wall, A. W. Terrell and other noted men visited the village, no one dreamed that they would go to the hotel. Colonel Terry entertained them, as matter of course, and their friends also.
Utterly ruined by the result of the war, this aged couple died here about the same time. Like Cicero, the Colonel loved and served his coun- try, and lost all by espousing a lost cause.
THOMAS A. TIDBALL was born in Lafay- ette county, Missouri, on the 24th day of March, 1838. His father, Joseph Tidball, was a native of Allegany county, Maryland, and was by oc- cupation a farmer. His mother was Rose, daugh- ter of Cromwell Orrick, of Morgan county, Vir- ginia. Thomas grew up without educational ad- vantages other than such as were afforded by the country schools of the country in which he was born, at that time it being very difficult for a farmer boy to receive a higher education. He began to make his own living at the age of four- teen, when he became employed with Lightner & -Miller, of Sibley, in Jackson county, Missouri, with whom he remained for about a year. Re- turning to Wellington, his then home, he became in a short time a clerk in the mercantile house of Porter & Ferrell, afterwards becoming the book- keeper of their successors in 1857. In the fall of 1860 he visited Virginia to look after some property interests and to visit relatives, and was there at the time of the breaking out of the war between the states. He and his family had been ardent sympathizers with the southand immediate- ly, upon the call to arms, in May, 1861, he enlist- ed in a cavalry company known as the "Rock- bridge Rangers," and served in western Virginia until the company was disbanded in 1862, but im- mediately in March, 1862, he enlisted with the Rockbridge artillery, which was attached to Stonewall Jackson's Brigade, and in the artillery he served until the end of the war. He is one of many men who served from the breaking out of the war until he was surrendered at Appomattox without ever being wounded or taken prisoner, but it is probable that few men with such a rec- ord fought in the great number of important bat- tles that he did. Beginning with Kernstown, he ended with Lee's surrender and fought at Win- chester, Harper's Ferry (when the Federal forces were captured), Sharpsburg, the second Manas- sas, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Chancellors- ville, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, Port Republic, Chantilly, Malvern Hill, Mechan- icsville, Cedar Mountain, and was in all of the great fighting around Richmond before the sur- render. Any one who knew him after he returned to the walks of private life would never judge
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that his military experience had been so exten- sive.
At the closing of hostilities he returned to Missouri, and for two years was salesman in a store at Lexington, and in 1868 he became book- keeper in William Morrison & Company's bank, which position he filled for four years. This was his first banking experience, and it was here that he acquired that training which enabled him aft- erwards to successfully manage that bank, which was the origin of the Fort Worth National Bank, in the organization of which he took such a prom- inent part. In 1872 he left Missouri and took up his residence in Fort Worth, where he lived until his death, on the 26th of October, 1899. In 1873 he formed a partnership with J. B. Wilson, and the two began the business of banking. At that time Fort Worth had no railroads, was a mere in- land country village and this country was very sparsely settled, there being only a few houses between Fort Worth and Dallas. It was, how- ever, being rapidly developed, and he saw the needs of the country as well as its future possi- bilities. His partner, Mr. Wilson, in a very short time was compelled to return to Virginia by rea- son of the death of his father, and the manage- ment of the banking business devolved solely on Mr. Tidball. His management was very success- ful, and Mr. Wilson, desiring permanently to re- tire, in the year 1874 Mr. Tidball organized the banking firm of Tidball, Van Zandt & Company. The firm was composed of Thomas A. Tidball, K. M. Van Zandt, J. J. Jarvis and J. P. Smith, and under that name for many years they did a most successful banking business; in fact, the most successful private banking business in North Texas, and the name was only changed when, by reason of the expansion of the business of the firm, it was thought advisable to have the bank nationalized. The capital of the firm of Tid- ball, Van Zandt & Company had from time to time been increased, and when the Fort Worth National Bank was organized the capital was in- creased to the sum of five hundred thousand dol- lars. On the nationalization of the bank Mr. Tid- ball took the office of vice president, K. M. Van Zandt being president and N. Harding cashier, but for many years he was in the same active
management of the national bank that he had been in the private bank which had preceded it and of which he was the founder. In 1891, after having been in the active banking business for about twenty years and after having given such active attention to both the detail and the me- chanical workings of the bank that it began to affect his health, and believing that a life of less responsibility would have a beneficial effect upon his general health, he resigned as an officer of the Fort Worth National Bank, though continuing to be a director, and he then proceeded to manage his investments and seek in a quiet manner to re- tain his health, which continued gradually to fail until the time of his death.
Mr. Tidball was a man of striking appearance, being six feet in height and weighing over two hundred pounds, but his appearance was not nearly so striking as were those characteristics which endeared him to his friends, made him a power in the financial world of North Texas and made the enterprise to which he had given his life work such a success. True, not all of the credit for the phenomenal rise to prosperity of the Fort Worth National Bank can be given to him, but it can be truly said that without those characteris- tics of sterling worth, of business integrity, of close attention to details, of the ability to make true and lasting friends, the enterprise could not have grown from its inception without any check or hindrance, and to him must be ascribed in some great measure the prosperity which now marks that bank as the leading financial institu- tion in this part of the state. Not only in busi- ness circles, but in the circle of his friends, was he greatly beloved, for no man was ever more loyal to his friends or did more to help those who needed it, and his death was an occasion to them, as well as to his financial associates, of great sor- row.
On October 21, 1873, he was united in mar- riage with Miss Lelia F. Arnold, of Lexington, Missouri. Three daughters bless this union, An- na, Virginia and Edna. Anna married Jerry F. Ellis of Fort Worth, Texas, and Edna married Edward C. Hoadley of Lewes, Sussex, England. His wife and daughters still survive him.
On the death of Mr. Tidball it may truthfully
A. @ Wacker MR.
Rich! I. Walker.
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be said that not even his family could have mourned his loss with greater sorrow than did his host of friends, to whom he had endeared him- self by individual kindness, and that for years to come his memory will be kept very green by those who knew and loved him.
DR. AMOS C. WALKER has manifold claims to recognition in a history of Fort Worth and of North Texas. In the first place he is the son of one of the most able lawyers that ever graced the bench and bar of the Lone Star state. He has himself achieved distinction in the profession of medicine and surgery, and stands in the front rank especially as a surgeon, his scientific knowl- edge of this greatest of modern arts, and his re- markable skill and deftness as an operator con- tributing to his wonderful success in this work. He is, furthermore, president of the well known Protestant Sanitarium of Fort Worth, and is professor of clinical surgery in the medical de- partment of Fort Worth University.
Dr. Walker was born at Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1852. His father, Judge Richard Sheckle Walker, was one of the most noted and brilliant men in the early history of Texas. He was born in Barren county, Kentucky, in 1824, of "good stock," his father being a prosperous man. He received an exceptionally good education both literary and in the law. He graduated in 1842 at Centenary College, Jackson, Louisiana, and in 1844, when but twenty years old, received his diploma from the law department of Transylva- nia University at Lexington, Kentucky. He re- turned to Jackson, Louisiana, which had become his home, and spent a year in further study in preparation for practice in the Louisiana courts. But Texas had recently been admitted to the Union, and he determined to cast in his fortunes with the bar of the new state. In February, 1846, he located at San Augustine, where he began his long and distinguished professional career. In the summer of 1848 he was married to Miss Eliza J. Clark, a daughter of Judge Amos Clark, of Nacogdoches, and in the fall of that year he moved to Nacogdoches and formed a law part- nership with his father-in-law. From that time his rise to distinction at the bar was rapid. In
1847 he had been appointed district attorney, and he was elected to that office at each successive term for a period of nearly eight years. In 1857 he formed a partnership with Judge George F. Moore, who was afterward chief justice of the state. During his partnership the two were ap- pointed to report the decisions of the supreme court of Texas, and they prepared the twenty- second, twenty-third and twenty-fourth volumes of the Texas reports, which became statutory models for subsequent issues. . In 1866 Judge Walker alone reported the twenty-fifth volume, and in that same year was a member of the con- stitutional convention, in which he took an active part in framing a constitution which should, · while complying with the exigencies of the situa- tion immediately following the Civil War, at the same time assert the rights of the dignity of the state. In 1873 he was appointed by Governor Coke as judge of the judicial district in which he lived, and, by election, he served in that capacity until 1879, when he was appointed a member of the court of commission of appeals, to which position he was subsequently elected twice. Be- sides achieving to such a high position in the le- gal profession in Texas, he was further noted for · his literary attainments, which were of a very high order. His address to the Texas Bar Asso- ciation in 1883, published by the Association, is a model of didactic composition, sparkling with refined phraseology and verbal elegance. He was a man of broad mind and fine accomplish- ments, and was greatly respected throughout the state. He died in Cincinnati, whither he had gone on account of failing health, in 1901.
Dr. Walker, the son of this prominent and high-minded Texan, was reared and has spent nearly all his life in this state. His higher educa- ·tion, both literary and scientific, was received in the University of Virginia. After graduation from there he went to Bellevue Hospital Medical College, in New York, where he prepared for the medical profession and was graduated in 1873. His first practice was in Rockdale, Milam coun- ty, Texas, and there he was soon ranked among the foremost of his profession, especially because of his skill as a surgeon. In 1893 he came to Fort Worth and formed a partnership with Dr. E. J.
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Beall, a noted physician of this city. He later joined with Dr. Adams in practice, and in 1901 these two founded the Protestant Sanitarium, of which Dr. Walker is president and chief surgeon, and, since Dr. Adams' death, has been the prin- cipal owner of this model institution. Dr. Walk- er's specialty is general surgery, but most of his practice and attention are confined to the Sani- tarium.
Some facts in regard to the Protestant Sani- tarium will add to the completeness of this his- torical work and at the same time throw light on the progressive and enterprising spirit which an- imates Dr. Walker in his life work. The Sani- tarium is most eligibly situated at the corner of South Main street and Railroad avenue. The buildings consist of the main portion of the hos- pital proper, which is of two stories and con- nected by covered galleries, with the surgical wing on the south and the convalescent wing on the north. The ground floor of the main building contains the parlor, the reception room, the treat- ment room, the offices, matron's headquarters, dining room and culinary department. The sec- ond floor is fitted with four apartments for the sick or convalescent ; the rooms have been made as home-like and comfortable as is possible by outlay of means. The north wing has a dozen or more private rooms, furnished in the best manner for the accommodation of the sick. In the south wing is the surgical department. The operating room is a model of its kind, fitted out with all modern and up-to-date appliances and equip- ments known and necessary to the successful practice of twentieth century surgery. Surgery is no longer the simple matter it was when the un- tutored barber performed for mankind the two- fold office of hair-clipper and blood-letter and limb-amputator. In fact, modern surgery is not possible without the most complete equipment in the way of sanitary hospitals, countless instru- ments and antiseptic and aseptic appliances, and such institutions as the Protestant Sanitarium are absolutely essential to the proper treatment of disease and care for the sick. The Protestant Sanitarium has complete sanitary furnishings, including sterilizers of the latest type and also an X-ray apparatus, so indispensable to modern med-
icine. Cases of contagious diseases, consumption, delirium tremens, insanity, or any cases of of- fensive or incurable nature, are not received in the Sanitarium. The attendance and care of pa- tients and the cuisine and general service are un- surpassed, and the institution is of the highest class and perfectly fulfills its purposes.
Dr. Walker is a member of the Tarrant Coun- ty Medical Society and the American Medical Association. He is a Royal Arch Mason and is past master of the blue lodge at Rockdale. He was married in 1900 to Miss Lelene Wright.
WILLIAM ALEXANDER DARTER, an old-time citizen of Fort Worth, connected with its business, industrial and general development since the sixties, a man of the highest integrity and of soundest principles in both business and personal life, is conducting a prosperous real estate business in Fort Worth and is one of that city's most prominent and popular men of af- fairs. Eminently public spirited, he has never hesitated to offer his personal services and his money for the advancement of the welfare of the city, and his soundness and honor in business have been attested in many ways. While private business and the promotion of the material wel- fare of his community have been the principal ob- jects of his endeavor, he will also be long re- membered in his city in connection with many public services rendered through official position and as a member of the body politic. A varied, withal prosperous, useful and worthy career has been his history, and the sixty years of his life, most of it spent within the boundaries of the Lone Star state, have been fruitful and happy.
Of a well-known southern family, various of whose members have been worthy citizens of Texas, he was born in Randolph county, Ala- bama, in 1846. His parents were Frank and Mary (Boyd) Darter. His mother, a native of Ken- tucky, died in Fort Worth; and his father, born in Wytheville, Virginia, died in Tarrant county, this state, near Azle, on December 7, 1870. Frank Darter came to Texas in 1859, settling in Erath county, six miles northwest of Stephenville, and establishing a ranch on the Bosque river six miles above. The country thereabouts being then
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new and sparsely settled, and but scant means being afforded for protection against the Indians, who were then giving the settlers so much trouble, he remained in his exposed location only a season or two, and in the spring of 1861, trading off his cattle for horses, brought all his household and movable effects to the northern part of Tarrant county, where, with less danger from the red men, he permanently located his home. The two years spent in Erath county will be ever memora- ble to the family, for they were fraught with constant danger and adventure with the Indians. One of the most tragic of these happenings oc- curred in the spring of 1860, when the Indians made a raid on the Lemley Tucker and Darter ranches and carried off four women, three of them the daughters of Mr. Lemley and one of them the wife of Mr. Woods. The Indians killed Mrs. Woods and one of the Lemley daughters. The other two, after being horribly mistreated, were, after being kept out one night, turned loose and made their way back to the settlement. James I. Darter and about six other men got together quickly and followed the Indians for several days, when the trail was lost and they had to re- turn home with the awful crime unavenged. Con- stant care and watchfulness had to be exercised to protect home and property, and among other necessary precautions was to secure the horses and mules by a log chain around a tree near the house. The Darter house had port holes in it for watching and defensive purposes, and on occa- sions the Indians, violating their usual customs, would approach the place in the dark instead of the light of the moon, thus adding to the horror of their raids.
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