USA > Texas > A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I > Part 62
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107 | Part 108 | Part 109 | Part 110 | Part 111 | Part 112 | Part 113 | Part 114 | Part 115 | Part 116 | Part 117
George Metcalf, whose name introduces this
review, began his education in the local schools and subsequently attended Add-Ran College at Thorp Springs, Texas, where he made a special- ty of the study of surveying. In 1894, when less than twenty-one years of age, he was elected county surveyor and served for two terms, or four years, and proved a worthy successor of his grandfather and father in this position. In 1898 he was elected district clerk of the district court, serving for two terms of two years each in that capacity and in November, 1894, he was chosen county clerk, so that he has had a notable official record as a young man. The trust reposed in him has been well placed, for he is public-spirited in citizen- ship, interested in the welfare and progress of his county, and has always been prompt, faithful and reliable in the discharge of the duties which have devolved upon him.
JUDGE ALBERT A. PARSELL, who is one of the oldest residents and among the foremost citizens of Roberts county, which he has served as county judge and as commissioner, has made a very remarkable success at ranching, and his ranch in the northern part of Roberts county is conceded to be one of the finest and most valu- able individual properties in the Texas Pan- handle.
Judge Parsell was born in Steuben county, Indiana, in 1849, being a son of Dr. Aaron and Emily (Emerson) Parsell. His father, a native of New Jersey, moved to Steuben county, In- diana, with his parents when he was ten years old, and the family was among the first settlers of that part of the state. Although a successful physician by profession, Dr. Parsell lived on a farm, and spent all his life from the time of boy- hood in Steuben county, where he died in March, 1904, at the age of eighty years. Judge Par- sell's mother, who was born in Ohio, also came to Steuben county when a child, and her father, who was a still earlier settler there than the Parsells, became a large land owner in Steuben and DeKalb counties. The mother died in 1897.
Judge Parsell was reared and spent the first twenty-one years of his life on a farm, after which he entered upon the varied and active ca-
371
HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
reer which has brought him into prominence and success. He went to Colorado in 1870 and began working in the mines. After continuing this for a time he came to Texas, crossing the Red river on his way to Palo Pinto county on Decem- ber 31, 1873. In that county he went to work in the cattle industry. Leaving there in 1879 he spent a few months on the Pease river, and in 1880 arrived in Roberts county, which has been his home and the scene of his business activity ever since. That was a number of years before the county was organized and Judge Parseli has lived here so long that he has been the witness of all the material growth and development of this section of the country, which was in fact a wild and desert region when he came. His first home was eight miles north of the present site of Miami, and he located at his present place, twenty-eight miles north of Miami, in Roberts county, in Feb- ruary, 1887. Here he has the finest homestead in the county. The residence, which was built in 1892, the surrounding garden, trees and orchard, present a beautiful prospect from every point of view, and comfort, convenience and beauty are most happily combined in this estate. Judge Parsell has six sections of land in the Roberts county ranch, and in Ochiltree county he has pasturage to the amount of twenty-five sections leased for his cattle. By his enterprise and ener- gy he has made a success of everything he has undertaken, and has gained the deserved repu- tation of carrying on every piece of business in the most thorough manner and maintaining every department of his estate in most up-to-date style. His cattle are of the best, and he takes pride in breeding the finest stock and being able to grade them up to the best northern standards. In fact, his cattle are of such excellent quality that he does not have to ship them, since the northern buyers come and purchase them right on his place.
We may now speak of that phase of Judge Parsell's career which has been of special bene- fit to his county and his fellow citizens. When Roberts county had reached the degree of settle- ment when it could properly be organized, the offices of the new county were seized upon by a crowd of unprincipled persons who secured their
election through the grossest fraud. This aroused the better class of citizenship to assert their rights and after legal process lasting less than a year the corrupt office holders were ousted and a bona fide election held, at which Mr. Parsell was èlected the first county judge. But before these duly elected officers could take their places the county affairs had been brought into a deplorable condition through the period of misrule and the squandering and misappropriation of the school and other funds that came to the new county from the state. As a consequence the county was sad- dled with a debt of fifty thousand dollars at the outset, and to remove this and bring order out of chaos required the hardest kind of work on the part of Judge Parsell and his associates. Good management has brought about an excellent state of affairs in the county, which can now point to as good a fiscal and administrative record as any county in the state, and instead of a debt there is now'a surplus in the treasury. In 1900 Judge Parsell was again called to serve his fellow citi- zens, being elected a county commissioner, and by re-election in 1902 served until January 1, 1904. In this capacity he also proved his wisdom and ex- ecutive worth, and the county has reason to be grateful that a citizen of such public spirit may be found when his services are needed.
As one of the leading cattlemen of this part of the state Judge Parsell takes an active inter- est in all matters affecting the industry and is one of the charter members of the Panhandle Cattle- Raisers' Association.
Judge Parsell was married in Palo Pinto county to Miss Isabel Frazer, who is a native of Canada and of Scotch family. Mr. and Mrs. Parsell have a happy family of nine children, named in order of age as follows: Emily, Eva, Fred, Carrie, Joe, Wesley, Bertha, Hugh and Maggie.
ROBERT SAMUEL DALTON, a wealthy stockman of Palo Pinto, controlling extensive and important business interests, wherein he dis- plays excellent business ability, marked enterprise, and keen discernment, was born March 8. 1859. on his father's ranch on the Brazos river, eighteen miles north of Palo Pinto, in Palo Pinto county,
372
HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
Texas. His parents were Marcus Lafayette and Lucinda (Gamble) Dalton. The Dalton family, together with the family of Rev. G. W. Slaughter, father-in-law of Robert S. Dalton, were among the oldest and most noted in northwestern Texas. Marcus L. Dalton was born in Tennesseee and came to Texas in 1838, locating first in the Red river country, whence he removed to Palo Pinto county in 1855, settling at the mouth of Rock creek on the Brazos river. It was a wild and un- settled country, infested by hostile Indians, who made raids into this locality from their reserva- tions in Indian Territory. Mr. Dalton was an ex- cellent business man and prospered in the cattle business notwithstanding the fact that frequently his cattle were stolen by the Indians. As the years passed his lands and cattle increased in value. He made many trips over the trail with his cat- tle to Kansas and on returning from one of these trips he was killed by the Indians, November 4, 1870, in Loving's Valley, six miles north of the present town of Mineral Wells and twenty miles east of his home on the Brazos. He had settled at Weatherford, Texas, and from that town he was accompanied by James Redfield and James McCaster. The latter was driving a bunch of horses, while Mr. Redfield and Mr. Dalton each had a wagon and team. They were attacked by Indians at the point mentioned and all three men were killed. Mr. Dalton of this review still has one of the bows from which was shot the arrow that killed his father. The three men were scalped and their bodies mutilated in an inhuman man- ner. Mr. Dalton was a man of many excellent traits of character and was regarded as one of the substantial and worthy citizens of western Texas.
His wife, who was born in Logan county, Kentucky, came to Texas with her parents and was here married. After her husband's death and even before that time, she frequently had oc- casion to display the brave, courageous qualities that were necessary in maintaining a pioneer home in a wild, unsettled district. With her hus- band she was interested in giving their children good educational privileges but it was hard to keep the boys in school in those days where there was so much excitement out-of-doors. After Mr. Dalton's death his widow assumed the man-
agement of their important cattle and ranching interests and carefully controlled all of the busi- ness affairs, displaying an excellent executive force and keen sagacity, caring for the business with due regard to the future interests of her chil- dren. She was a most noble woman, a devoted mother and one who deserves the unqualified love of her sons and daughters. She died February 8, 1900. Unto Mr. and Mrs. Marcus L. Dalton were born the following named: Mrs. Jennie Vollentine; John ; William ; Mrs. Therah Denton, now deceased; James, also deceased; Charles ; George, who has passed away; Mrs. Mary Her- ron ; Robert S., and Lee.
Robert S. Dalton was reared upon the home ranch to the life of the cattle trade, his boy- hood days being fraught with exciting incidents and dangers characteristic to that period in the development of Palo Pinto county, when it was a largely unsettled district and the Indians were on the war-path. In the course of time he em- barked in the cattle business on his own account and his entire career as a dealer in stock has been successful and free from financial embar- rassment of any kind even in times of wide- spread financial depression. He is today one of the largest taxpayers in the county and one of the wealthy citizens of this part of the state. His first independent venture in business was when he was fifteen years of age. His mother gave him twenty-five calves and it was at this time that he started the brand L. A. D., which has ever since been the brand he has used.
On the 8th of October, 1879, in Palo Pinto county, Mr. Dalton was married to Miss Millie Slaughter, the sixth daughter of Rev. George W. Slaughter, a historical character of western Texas. She was educated at Emporia, Kansas, and at Staunton, Virginia, and is a lady of su- perior culture and refinement. Her father, Rev. Slaughter, was born in Lawrence county, Mis- sissippi, in 1811. He afterward came to the southwest and in 1830 crossed the Sabine river, settling in what was then the Mexican city of Coahuita, now Texas. The Mexican govern- ment at that time was enforcing in such a tyran- nous manner the regulation of adherence to the Catholic church that armed resistance was made
373
HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
by the settlers who had come into Texas from the United States, and the Rev. Slaughter, then a young man, joined in this resistance. From this time on until after Texas gained her independ- ence, he was engaged in almost constant conflict on the side of the Texan patriots. He had met and became acquainted with General Samuel Houston, when the latter was on his way from Louisiana to southern Texas to become a leader of the Texas revolutionists and the liberator of the state. He at once joined General Hous- ton's forces and was appointed on his staff, doing duty as a courier, and as such he carried the last message from General Houston to General Travis, who with his men suffered martyrdom in Alamo. Some time after these events Rev. Slaughter organized and was made captain of a company to fight the Cherokee Indians. He came to Palo Pinto county in 1857, and from that time on until his death almost his entire life was passed in this county. He had been married to Miss Sarah Mason, theirs being the first wedding ceremony solemnized in the new republic of Texas. She was a prominent pioneer woman of culture, worthy of respect and honor as was her husband.
He was a Missionary Baptist minister for more than a half century and a devoted exponent of the gospel. He was also a physician and prac- ticed medicine, thus carrying healing to the body as well as to the souls of men. He was a strong character, brave and fearless, of broad humanitarian principles, recognizing matters of duty toward his fellowman. With his wife he was greatly interested in the education of their children and with this end in view they spent some time in Emporia, Kansas, making their home there in order that their children might enjoy the privileges of a college education. One of their sons, John S., was shot by the Indians in Palo Pinto county. Others of the family have become well known and prosperous, one of them, Colonel C. C. Slaughter, being especially a noted citizen of Texas, known as a wealthy cattleman, banker and capitalist. Rev. Slaugh- ter died March 19, 1895, and his wife passed away January 6, 1894.
. At the time of his marriage Mr. Dalton start- ed with his bride for western Texas, where at the foot of the great plains on the Salt Fork of the Brazos he established himself in the cattle business. He took over eight hundred head of his own cattle in addition to several thousand belonging to his mother and brothers, all of which he herded on a free ranch, such as was common in those days. He lived there for five years. In 1884 he sold his cattle on the ranch for fifty-one thousand dollars and returned to Palo Pinto county, where he purchased the Kyle ranch. Later he sold this place and for some time engaged in the business of buying and selling cattle. His next transaction of note was the purchase of his present ranch six miles north of the town, for which he paid eleven thousand dollars, but which has gradually increased in value through the addition of other tracts of land and the improvements he has placed upon it. His ranch now comprises over nine thousand acres all in one body. This is a beautiful ranch located in the rich Brazos Valley and is stocked with immense herds of fine cattle. In 1898 Mr. Dalton removed from his residence on the ranch to Palo Pinto, where he has since made his home.
Unto Mr. and Mrs. Dalton have been born eleven children, namely: Mrs. Ottie D. Cunning- ham, George Webb, Marcus Lafayette, Millie Robert, Sarah Jane, Georgia Lee, William Car- roll Slaughter, Columbus Charles (deceased), John Bell, Vivian Ruth, and Mary Allie Leta. Mr. Dalton is a member of the Knights of Pyth- ias fraternity, prominent in the organization, and enjoys the unqualified esteem of his brethren of the fraternity and of the general public as well. His life history, especially concerning his boyhood days, if written in detail, would fur- nish a most thrilling story. He has lived to see great changes while in western Texas as the comforts and conveniences of a civilization have been introduced, while the business methods of a settled district have given place to those of pioneer times. In all his business transactions he has displayed marked ability, strong purpose and unfaltering diligence and his investments have been so carefully made that he has gathered therefrom a rich financial return.
374
HISTORY OF NORTH `AND WEST TEXAS.
HENRY C. HOLLOWAY. By the death of Henry C. Holloway, on April 28, 1905, Fort Worth and Northern Texas lost a citizen and business factor who had been prominent in this vicinity since before the war. The men of prom- inence and success who have spent fifty years in this part of the country are now, unfortunately, rapidly passing away, and it is with that melan- choly regret which pertains to all mortal history that the chronicler speaks of one whose career has just closed in such honor and esteem. And yet the place which the late Mr. Holloway held in Fort Worth was such as to give his name and prosperous career an enduring prestige in the annals of this section of the state.
Born in the state of South Carolina, March 31, 1838, Mr. Holloway was past the age of six- ty-seven when he died. He was a son of Wiley and Mary (Reems) Holloway. He lived in his native state until he was twenty years of age, being reared on a farm and educated in the schools there, and about 1858 he came to Texas and settled in the vicinity of Fort Worth. It was as an overseer of negroes that he came here, being employed in that capacity by Captain Rich- ard Ward. As has been told elsewhere in this work, Tarrant county, at the date of Mr. Hollo- way's arrival, was sparsely settled, the county seat had only recently been established at Fort Worth, and it is therefore as one of the youthful pioneers of the country that he began to figure in its history. He had been with his employer some three years when the south was called upon to defend the issue of states' rights and the negro question, and young Holloway was one of the men who enlisted from Tarrant county and served till the close of the war as a member of the Texas artillery. The close of the war found him again in Tarrant county, ready to assume the burdens of civil life and assist in the rehabilita- tion of the country from the wreckage caused by Civil and Indian warfare. He engaged in the cattle business, and in the course of his early connection therewith spent some eleven months in the territory of New Mexico. Returning to this state he engaged in farming two years, then was a cattle drover to Arkansas for a like period. Mr. Holloway is also well remembered as hav-
ing been engaged in the mercantile business in Fort Worth a number of years, but during the years preceding his death his business interests were in farming and stock-raising. A successful man, he was liberal in opinion and means, did much for his city in the line of public-spirited endeavor, and his name is permanently identified with the history of Fort Worth.
Mrs. Holloway, the surviving widow, is with- out doubt the oldest living woman resident of Fort Worth, and for that and other reasons is one of the most interesting historical personages in the city. Margaret Loving was born in Moniteau county, Missouri, October 12, 1837, a daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth (Brown) Lov- ing. In 1846 she accompanied her parents to Texas, and in the year 1849, known to history as the year in which the soldiers of General Worth established the military post on the bluffs of the Trinity river and gave origin to the future city of Fort Worth, she, then a girl of twelve years, came with her parents and began her long resi- dence at this place. She married Mr. Holloway on August 26, 1860, and their one child is now Mrs. A. S. Dingee, of Fort Worth.
DR. CORNELIUS F. YEAGER, who for so many years has been prominently identified with the development and prosperity of Mineral Wells, and who is also one of the foremost physicians of Palo Pinto county, has been a prominent resi- dent of this section of the state from the pioneer days of the early seventies until the present. Being a man of keen observation and interested in all the events which transpired during his earlier career in Parker and Palo Pinto counties, he has long been known as an authority on the pioneer times, and his reminiscences and stories of adventure have often appeared in the public press for the entertainment and instruction of many readers. Early local history of many parts of our country will often be found thus carried in the memories of the old- timers, and too often, unfortunately, it never obtains permanent record in writing so that succeeding generations may know what their ancestors endured in the founding and build- ing up of a great country. Even in a coun-
375
HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
try still so nearly removed from pioneer days as is the case with North and West Texas, the progress of civilization has been so rapid that traces of old times are being obliterated and the past is almost impossible of realization. There- fore it is fortunate that in a work of this province the life history of one of the leading old-timers may find place, one who has thus seen and ex- perienced what went before in order that the pres- ent might be possible.
A native of Washington county, east Tennes- see, where he was born in 1848, Dr. Yeager has membership with a family which has claimed many distinguished people throughout its various branches and generations. His parents were Cornelius F. and Selina (Hoss) Yeager, both na- tives of east Tennessee, and the father a farmer. The parents came to Texas in the latter seventies, some years after the doctor himself had settled there. Their first home was in Alvarado, where the mother died, and then the rest of the family moved to Parker county, and still later the father came to Mineral Wells, where · he died in 1884. The Yeagers have quite a noted ancestry, especially where it branches off into the Garr (originally Gaar) family, of German ori- gin, the descendants of which are numerous and many of them prominent, particularly in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. The Garr family genealogy, which was published in 1890, shows many well known people in different parts of the United States, the family being a prolific one. The Garr family crest was received as a reward of merit from the Emperor Charles V, in 1519. The connection of the Yeagers with the Garr fam- ily comes through Dr. Yeager's great-grand- father, Cornelius Yeager, whose wife, Elizabeth Fisher, was the daughter of Stephen and Magda- len (Garr) Fisher. On the maternal side of the family, also, there are many prominent people, represented mainly in east Tennessee ; namely, the Hosses and Boones, descendants of the illus- trious family of Daniel Boone, originating and many of them yet living in Washington county. Mrs. Selina (Hoss) Yeager was first cousin of the father of Rev. E. E. Hoss, D. D., a distin- guished divine, who was made a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal church South, in 1902, and
who resides at Dallas, Texas. The importance of ancestry cannot be ignored in the history of any man now living, and coming of such antecedents an honorable career and worth and capability have been natural accompaniments of Dr. Yea- ger.
The principal part of his early education was obtained at Science Hill College, Johnson City, Tennessee, and he pursued his medical studies at Johnson City with Dr. Seehorn, a former well known physician of that place, as his preceptor. While a young man he was licensed to practice, and in 1870, when a young and ambitious fellow of twenty-two, he came out to Parker county, Texas. Parker county, although it had been organized for fifteen years, was then still on the frontier, without railroad communication, still exposed to Indian raids, and generally unsettled and new. Veal's Station was the point he selected to begin his practice, a place which at that time was'beginning to grow to some importance as a trading and outfitting point, but which in later years declined on account of the building of the Texas & Pacific railroad and the consequent transfer of commercial activity to other centers.
Also in 1870, this section of the state was in the midst of Indian troubles. It may be a matter of surprise to many that at such a late year the Indians were a constant menace to the permanent welfare and prosperity and even the lives of Texans, and within a region not a hundred miles west of the present metropolitan city of Fort Worth. But in fact the history of Texas must record that such was the case up to the year 1875, and Texas was the last of the great states of the Union to be rid of the hostility and con- stant dread of the native tribes, who had, indeed, assaulted the bulwarks of advancing civilization from the earliest times. At the time of Dr. Yea- ger's arrival the Comanches, Kiowas, Wacos and other tribes were in the habit of breaking away from their reservations, and in bands too power- ful for the individual settler to cope with, and yet so small as to render escape easy, they would, about the time of every full moon, swoop down upon the unsuspecting rancher and in the bright moonlight round up his horses or cattle and make off with them before effective pursuit could be
376
HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
organized. And of course wherever there was resistance the white settler often lost his life at the hands of the red villains, so that the entire frontier was in a state of unrest and fear. Parker and Palo Pinto counties were about the center of these raids, whose general extent, however, was from the Red river southwesterly almost to the Rio Grande, and the depredations were kept up till as late as 1874, when the national govern- ment sent sufficient troops here to drive the ma- rauding bands back to the Indian nation. But in the meantime the settlers themselves had to do all the fighting to protect themselves and families and their property, and in some localities were organized into quasi-military companies, which were very effective in this direction.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.