USA > Texas > A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I > Part 38
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While residing in Tarrant county the war between the states came on and Mr. Rogers enlisted in Company H, Thirtieth Cavalry, Colonel E. J. Gurley, and after two years' ser- vice was transferred to the Seventeenth Texas Light Artillery, serving under General Gano when the war closed. He fought at Poison Springs, near Camden, Arkansas, at Marks's Mill and at Prairie Dian, and was in several brushes with the Indians in the territory. When the issue was decided and the war over he re- turned to his farm and resumed civil life where he had dropped it three years before.
Mr. Rogers married Miss Martha Layton, a daughter of Major William Layton, a Kentucky millwright and stone-mason, who passed his life in Garrard county where Mrs. Rogers was born February 17, 1831. Four daughters have resulted from this marriage, viz: Alice Maud, one of the proprietors of the Jacksboro Gazette; Lizzie and Mary S., twins, the former now Mrs. W. N. Leek and the latter the widow. of James Colvin, of Jack county ; Joanna Lois, the youngest, is the junior member of J. N. Rogers & Company, owners of the Gazette.
Mr. Rogers is a stockholder in the Jacksboro Mill and Elevator Company and of the Trinity Valley Trust Company, of Dallas, but all his personal energies are directed toward the proper editing and successful conduct of the
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creature of his young and vigorous manhood, the Jacksboro Gazette. He joined the Tempie of Honor many years ago, and the family are workers in the Master's cause as members of the Missionary Baptist church.
EDWIN S. GRAHAM. As Emerson has aptly said, "Biography is the only true history." It is the key which unlocks the treasure box con- taining the state's jewels-the actual events of history themselves. It is the highway leading to the inner life of a commonwealth, the invisible trail which identifies man's pathway and the
Many of his acquaintances in and around Louisville were substantially interested in the lands of the Peters Colony, which were scattered moving picture which vitalizes it from beginning - about over nearly a dozen different counties of to end. With it our civilization has substance and tone and character, but without it we become stale and insipid and uninteresting and there is no stimulant to spur us on to still greater achieve- ment.
A reference to the life work of the leading characters of a community seldom. discloses a figure so surpassingly a peer in civil life, so pre-eminently successful in his business relations, so admittedly foremost in promoting his coun- ty's welfare and so closely allied to all the civil affairs of his municipality as was the late Edwin S. Graham to those cardinal interests upon which the welfare of any community depends. As a pioneer citizen of Young county, as founder of the city of Graham, its county seat and metropolis, and as man-of-affairs, busied with his county's domestic development and the rather unconscious creation of a private fortune, he was the most striking personality among the list of honored first settlers and the focus about which the gen- eral history of his county should cluster.
Edwin Smith Graham was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on the 15th of February, 1831, and was a son of Robert Graham, more extendedly mentioned elsewhere in this work. His child- hood and youth were passed at Grahampton and Rockhaven, Kentucky, and the country and vil- lage schools of his day provided his meager edu- cation. He became connected with his father's mercantile establishment in Rockhaven, when he entered business, and was one of the firm of Robert Graham & Sons until 1862, the year of the father's death. He bought up the interests of his
partners later on, and conducted the business alone for a few years after the war.
Closing out his store he became interested in . the development of the Glasgow oil fields of his state, and for some years was leasing lands, form- ing companies and drilling oil wells, and out of it he realized a handsome profit. He disposed of his interests in this venture toward the close of the sixties and immediately looked in the direction of the Lone Star state.
Northwestern Texas, and he was induced to in- vest many thousand dollars in the lands of this colony at a few cents an acre, in some in- stances, the land where he afterward founded the town that bears his name costing him only seven- ty cents an acre. Probably a hundred thousand acres of this wild land came into his possession at this time and this purchase centered, for all future time, his interest in this state.
The first enterprise with which he was actively connected in Young county was the old salt works on Salt creek. This industry was estab- lished many years before his advent hither by Judge Bowers and was conducted by his suc- cessor, Captain Gant, until the Grahams bought him out, in 1871. The Judge and the Captain were making salt in a primitive way, having a few kettles each in which evaporation was brought about, but when the Graham brothers put five thousand dollars into the industry, for the plant and all rights, they put in several thousand more in equipping it with modern machinery and vats which they brought from Pittsburg, Pennsyl- vania. When at its best the plant contained four vats, eight by sixteen feet, with copper coils passing through for steam evaporation, and other fixtures to correspond, the plant having a capaci- ty of two thousand five hundred pounds of salt per day. The product was marketed in sacks and was hauled east and south by freighting trains returning from Fort Belknap empty.
When the salt industry declined and finally closed down Mr. Graham opened a land office on the new townsite and began a career as land
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agent which extended over many years and which gave him much business prominence and no little profit. Besides his own lands he handled many thousands of acres for the Peters Colony and much of the settlement of the first twenty years of the history of Young county was in- duced hither by him.
In 1872, in association with his brother, he laid out the town of Graham. They were induced to do this by the promise of some of the stock- holders of the Texas and Pacific road who were friends of theirs and living about Louisville that when the road should be extended from Shreve- port it should pass through their town. But when Jay Gould got control of the road in 1873 the Kentucky stockholders lost their influence and the road was built through the lands offered as 'a bonus by the state for the construction of a line across to its western border.
Graham's first building was a little storeroom built by a Philadelphian named Wilson, but the first residence was erected by J. G. Tackett and is occupied now by Mr. Wallace, the Sheriff of Young county. The first commissioner's court was presided over by Judge N. J. Timmons, the first district court was opened by Judge Hood and Governor S. W. T. Lanham was the active and efficient district attorney.
Mr. Graham did not bring his family to Gra- ham until 1879, from which time for nearly fif- teen years he was the most active and powerful citizen of the town. In the prosecution of his private business he was always alert to the inter- ests of his town and county at large and no lo- cality ever got a more effective advertising, with the methods used, than he gave this one. He ever had in mind the needs of railroad communi- cation here, but his efforts never brought imme- diate results and he died some three years before the first train whistled into Graham. In 1893 he took up his residence in Spokane, Washington, and engaged in his favorite vocation, the land business, and there he died May 7, 1899, and is buried in Oak Grove cemetery in Graham.
As a citizen Mr. Graham was a gentleman of much energy and of great determination, a fact which explains his substantial success in life. He was public spirited and dispensed charities
modestly and largely. He never engaged in ac- tive politics but held the Democratic principles of his ancestors and those of his own following the events of the Civil War. He was not a par- ticipant in the events of the rebellion, being a merchant at the time, but two of his brothers were Confederate soldiers and the family in gen- eral entertained strong sympathy for the southern cause. His name was on no church roll but he held no opinions hostile toward church work or church influence and he tacitly admitted, by substantial contributions thereto, that the Chris- tian religion is doing a great and positive work in the moral and spiritual elevation of humanity.
In Harrison county, Indiana, August 8, 1865, Mr. Graham was united in marriage with Miss Addie M. Kintner, a daughter of the pioneer, Jacob Kintner, who settled on the Ohio river thirty miles below Louisville and became a prom- inent citizen and successful farmer there. Mr. Kintner was of German origin and he married Miss Elizabeth G. Shields, and Mrs. Graham was one of their five children. The latter was born at Cedar Farm, the home of her parents overlook- ing the beautiful Ohio, on the 10th of December, 1843, and is passing her evening of life surround- ed by her children in Graham. The issue of her marriage were: Robert G., of Graham; Eliza- beth, who married William D. Craig and died in Graham February 9, 1901, leaving children, Agnes G., Mary C., and Anna Catherine; Mal- com K., of Graham; Edwin S., who completes his course at Boston Massachusetts as a mining engineer in 1905; and Miss Bertha, the com- panion of her mother at the old home.
His work is finished and night has settled over the career of Edwin S. Graham. His ori- gin was most honorable and his life most up- right and his mind directed the accomplishment of terrestrial results which shall never fade away. He bore his phenomenal success with becoming modesty and used it to his family's and his community's good. When the great rec- ord is finally unrolled which contains the names of the useful men of the generations gone be- fore, the name of Edwin S. Graham will appear in indelible characters on the scroll of time.
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MALCOM K. GRAHAM, the worthy gentleman whose name initiates this review, is a distinguished representative of the eminent pioneer and founder of the city of Graham and is in active command of the large interests of the latter's estate. He is the active head of the Graham land office, an institution which is ac- complishing marked results in the settlement of Young county, and he has other private busi- ness connections which place him in the cate- gory of prominent and influential men of his county.
Mr. Graham was born at Cedar Farm, his maternal grandfather's homestead in Harrison county, Indiana, March 20, 1872, and was a boy at Louisville, Kentucky, until seven years of age. At this time his father brought his family to Texas and established his home in Graham, permanently, and here his son Malcom has since resided. The town schools of Graham and the Southwestern University at George- town, Texas, gave him his fundamental prin- ciples of an education and prepared him for taking up the serious duties of a business life. At seventeen years of age Congressman, now Governor, Lanham, appointed him to a cadet- ship at West Point, the military academy of the United States and he successfully passed the required examinations and entered upon his work.
His life in the academy where professional soldiers are made was fraught with hard work and always under military regulations and restraint, but his position stimulated him to his best efforts and the second year of his tuition found him at the head of his class. His father's failing health at this time served as a barrier to his further stay in school and he resigned his place and took a position in the land office at home. At twenty- one years of age he succeeded to the business of the office and, from thenceforward, establish- ing and promoting a business of his own.
As executor with his mother of his father's estate, Mr. Graham is in active control of and has the active management of their landed estate
and of other interests which, together with his own affairs, make his office one of the busy marts of the county seat of Young county. .
Like his father, Mr. Graham has been ever mindful of his county's welfare and the matter of a railroad for his town was the burden of his thoughts from year to year. In an effort to jenlist the Rock Island company to come to the town's relief he made a trip to Chicago, but his visit was without results. He met General Manager Parker at Topeka and got him to promise that when the company were ready to act in the matter he would notify him. In time this notification was received and the city's proposition was inquired for. The business men of the town then came into the negotia- tions and committees were appointed to look after the work. It was proposed by the city to donate a thousand dollars a mile to the com- pany for the road between Jacksboro and Gra- ham, and to give also· the right of way and the depot grounds at Graham. Mr. Graham and Mr. Johnson were sent to Fort Worth to present the proposition to the company and it was then and there accepted. The company built the road at once and Graham was connected with the outside world in October, 1902.
In August, 1901, Mr. Graham took in mar- riage the hand of Miss Maud Garrett, a daughter of the early settler, B. B. Garrett, of Young county. Mr. Garrett was born in Ala- bama and for his wife he chose Miss McJimsey. Mrs. Graham was born in Young county, Texas, in 1884, and she and Mr. Graham have a little daughter, Louise.
Mr. Graham is a Royal Arch Mason and a steward in the Methodist church. While he has never posed as a political worker in local or other campaigns he sustains the relation common to all good citizens and votes with his party at every election. He is a Democrat and, in 1894, was elected county commissioner for precinct No. 1 and filled the office for a single term. He is a stockholder in the Beckham National Bank and is second vice president of the institution.
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JOSEPH ALFRED WOOLFOLK. When Judge Burford opened the first district court of Young county, in 1858, there appeared before him a galaxy of young lawyers as able as any which ever honored a court or graced a bar, and a glance at its personnel, wherein Throck- morton, Llewellyn, Everett, Weaver, McCoy, and District Attorney Record are included, re- veals a coterie who attained to distinction in the law and some of whom wore the ermine and became able jurists of the Lone Star state. Present also before that first court at historic old Fort Belknap was J. A. Woolfolk, the sub- ject of this notice, a young lawyer fresh from his books, whose diploma bore the names of such able Kentuckians as James Speed, W. T. Bullock, Henry Pirtle and Judge James Guth- rie of the Louisville Law School and whose initiation into active legal connection with the great southern commonwealth it was the privi- lege of Judge Burford to accomplish. From law to official life, to deeds of loyalty and dar- ing as a soldier and back again to nearly a quarter of a century of application to the law, and finally to his retirement to the quiet of his Brazos river estate and farm, marks briefly the career of Mr. Woolfolk as a citizen of Young county.
Soon after his advent to the county Mr. Woolfolk bought a section of land in the bend of the Brazos river, three miles northwest of Belknap, where he purposed making his abode eventually, and which in 1869 he actually opened out into a farm and upon which for fifteen years he has maintained his home and achieved reasonable prosperity. Here the digest is shelved, the brief is pigeon-holed and au- thorities lose their precedence and the mind rests while the body takes its daily round of recreation and wins healthful repose. What lot more appropriate can be meted out to the declining years of one accustomed to a more or less strenuous career than the simple and easy going life of the farm.
Seeking an opportunity to meet with some of the real excitements of the frontier our subject enlisted in the Ranger service prior to the war and at times when he was not an advocate
before the court he was scouting the prairies of the northwest in search of the red man. While Indian raids were frequent and reports of them of daily and nightly occurrence at times, and while he passed many months all told in the saddle and about the camp no hostile brave ever obscured his visual angle and no blood- chilling whoop ever penetrated his auricular cavity. He was in Colonel Norris's regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Obenchain, and when his last enlistment for this service had expired he resigned his office as county clerk and enlisted at Fort Belknap in 1862 under Colonel Norris for the Confederate service. When his twelve months in this command had expired he was commissioned by R. M. Gano enrolling officer and sent east to report to General J. H. Morgan at McMinnville, Tennessee. Joining Morgan's command he took part with it in all its eventful and exciting service along and across the Ohio river, being captured by the Virginia militia near Point Pleasant. Taken with him were three other Morgan men and a two-man detail was sent with them toward the point for ren- dezvousing prisoners, but en route the four men overawed the two and tied them to a tree and made for liberty, but were again captured and confined several months in Federal camps and prison.
Mr. Woolfolk was paroled from Camp Chase, Ohio, toward the close of the war and returned to Kentucky and was not again in the field. During the circumstance of his capture one of his comrades obtained the pistol which he had carried all through his Ranger service and which had done him effective service among the Yankees along the river border and he was parted from it until the Dallas meeting of the Confederate veterans when the South Carolina comrade brought the historic weapon to the encampment and restored it to its owner.
Resuming civil life our subject spent two years in his native state when the war had ended before he returned to Texas. He then established himself at Weatherford, Young county being disorganized and not yet restored to its municipal entity. He practiced at Weath- erford until 1874, when he returned to the
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bar in Young county with which he was ac- tively identified until his retirement to the farm. Among the many interesting cases with which he was connected here was the State of Texas vs. Chiefs Satanta and Big Tree, tried for leading their band against a wagon train on Salt creek bound for Fort Griffin with forage for the post and the murdering of its little com- pany. S. W. T. Lanham prosecuted the famous red men and the court appointed Mr. Woolfolk to defend and the verdict was "guilty as charged." The prisoners were sentenced to death, but Governor E. J. Davis commuted it to imprisonment for life on the Dry Tortugas, at the lower end of Florida, but Davis again came to their relief and agreed to liberate them if the tribe would return all horses captured and stolen from Texas citizens. This the chiefs assented to and they were released, but the tribe declined and resisted the return of the property and thus the matter ended in a muddle.
Joseph Alfred Woolfolk was born in Mead county, Kentucky, April 19, 1838, a son of John F. Woolfolk, who accompanied his father from Orange county, Virginia, to the Blue Grass state where he began a successful career at hemp and tobacco raising and died in 1845. The grandfather was Joseph F. Woolfolk, a successful planter and slave owner who es- tablished his family in Kentucky in 1801. By his two marriages the latter was the father of James, William, Fleming, Thomas, Willis and John F., sons, and Catherine, who married John Stout; Betsy, wife of William Forshee, and Polly. John F. Woolfolk was married to Mahala A., daughter of Thomas H. Harris, which union was productive of Eugene F .; Joseph A., our subject ; Thomas, of Grandview, Indiana; Virginia, who married P. D. Gordon and died at Montgomery City, Missouri; and Annie, who married Dr. V. Foote, deceased, and resides in Louisville, Kentucky. Woolfolk married J. H. Boarman and had three children, viz: John, deceased; Hamilton, of Grandview, Indiana, and Miss Sallie.
Joseph A. Woolfolk grew up in affluence and had nothing to do but to acquire an education.
He attended St. Mary's College, near Lebanon, Kentucky, the University of Missouri, and fin- ished as a law student in Louisville, as above stated. When he reached Fort Belknap --- which he approached by the Butterfield Stage line from Sedalia, Missouri,-he found a consider- able village with probably eight business houses with large stocks and a military post of some seven companies commanded by Major, afterward General, George H. Thomas. He took part in the social life of the place as well as to share in its professional obligations, and life on the frontier had its charms as well -as its draw-backs. He was not much in touch with the place after the war and when civiliza- tion began centering its energies around other points the prestige of the old fort waned and it finally became only a store and postoffice hold- ing the ancient name.
February 9, 1865, Joseph A. Woolfolk married Miss Lizzie Lewis in Jefferson county, Kentucky. She was born in Jefferson county and was a daughter of A. F. Lewis, a farmer and a Virginian by birth. The issue of Mr. and Mrs. Woolfolk are: Alfred H., of Vernon, Texas, who married Lula B. Chandler; Mollie, wife of Roland J. Johnson, of Young county; Charles G., who married Earnestine Browne and is a Young county farmer; Eddie G., of Spearfish, Wyoming, married Libbie Castle; Joseph L., who married Fannie Knight, now deceased; Jess C., a Young county farmer who married Lizzie Whitely; Archie M .; and Virgil N., yet under the parental roof. In his political affiliations Mr. Woolfolk is and has ever been a Democrat. He was elected county clerk of Young county at the beginning of the war and when he resigned it he terminated his .connection with holding public office. As previously intimated, his life is a quiet one now and he is absorbed only in the events which mark the progress of the age and in the welfare Mrs. ; of his children and his children's children.
WILLIAM WESLEY HOWETH, well known business man and influential citizen of Gainesville, has been identified through his own career and that of his family with Texas
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from its republican period to the present, and so worthy and beneficial have been the rela- tions of the Howeth family with the affairs of the state that they are deserving of permanent historical position.
Major William and Harriet (Bell) Howeth, the parents of our Gainesville business man, spent the greater part of their lives in the frontier districts of Texas. The former was born at Brainard's Missionary Station, after- ward better known to history as Missionary Ridge, near Knoxville, Tennessee; the place acquiring its name from the fact that mission- ary teaching was carried on among the Indians at that locality, and the father of Major Howeth had a business connection with this Indian mission. Major Howeth moved to Texas in 1839, three years after the revolution, and settling at Nacogdoches, there met and married Miss Harriet Bell, who had come to Texas about the same time, with her parents, her former home having been near Knoxville, where she was born. In 1852 Major Howeth moved his family to Hunt county, and in the following year to Cooke county. A half century ago Cooke county was situated on the wild and howling frontier, being more of a wilderness than any spot in Texas now is. The Howeths were among the first settlers of this county, at that time there being not more than four log-cabin houses in Gainesville, and old Fort Belknap being the only established white settlement west of Cooke county. By taking up land for their home six miles west of Gaines- ville the Howeths became the most advanced settlers on this part of the frontier. Major Howeth was a land surveyor, and, having been appointed, before locating here, deputy land surveyor for the west district of Texas ex- tending clear out to the New Mexico line, his duties took him all over that then entirely un- inhabited section of the vast plains which have since become the seat of a great population. A typical pioneer, fond of travel and adventure, he became acquainted with and was associated with some of the famous public men of the day, such as Sam Houston, Judge Reagan and others. He and his family continued to live on
their place west of Gainesville until the tornado of May 28, 1854, in which two of his children, Thomas and Louisa, besides his cousin Andy Howeth and the latter's two children, were killed. These were the first persons buried in the cemetery at Gainesville, the land for which was donated by Major Howeth's father, who had also accompanied the family here and who owned fifty acres of land now covered by the city of Gainesville. After the destructive tornado the family moved into Gainesville. In 1858 Major Howeth, with his wife and children, including the son William, who was then a young boy, crossed the plains and desert to Southern California, going by the southern route through New Mexico and Arizona, and were six months and six days on their journey. One of the older sons, a physician by profession, died in Cali- fornia. On their return to Texas the family made the journey in stage coaches, their resi- dence being resumed in this state in 1860. Dur- ing the war, on account of the defenseless and exposed condition of Cooke county as regards the wild tribes of the Comanches and Kiowas, the family lived temporarily in middle Texas. Major Howeth, loyal to Texas in all things, joined the armies of the Confederacy, and served something over two years, part of the time on Galveston Island and other portions of the state, and in the service rose to the rank of major. On the return of peace he moved the home back to Gainesville in 1868, where he lived until his death in 1891, at the age of seventy-four. He was one of the most es- teemed of the old settlers of the county, and as a prominent and successful man left the im- press of his activity permanently upon the wel- fare of his community. Major Howeth's aged wife is still living in Gainesville, being one of the remarkable pioneer women of the state, the fron- tier, with its hardships and unusual experiences, having been her home for most of her life.
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