USA > Texas > A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I > Part 85
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inal home place, on which he lived until the latter part of 1882, when he established his residence in Cleburne, where he has since re- sided.
Mr. Caps was first married in Dickson county, Tennessee, to Miss Martha C. Marsh, and they became the parents of three children, all of whom are yet living: Mary A., the wife of Dr. Stratton; Sterling B. Caps; and Mrs. Alma T. Houshour. Following the death of his first wife Mr. Caps was married in Cle- burne to Mrs. Arka (Brown) Duckworth, a sister of E. Y. Brown and Hannah Owen Brown, prominent old residents of Johnson county. Mrs. Caps died in Cleburne and Mr. Caps has since married Mrs. Annie (Adams) Major. He is a member of the Methodist church and the Masonic fraternity. He form- erly served on the city council of Cleburne as the representative of the third ward. For a time after his removal to this city he engaged in the grocery business and he has been closely identified with the development and substan- tial improvement of his town and county. His business affairs have been capably and ener- getically conducted and his keen discrimina- tion and untiring energy have been fruitful factors in his richly merited and desirable suc- cess.
MARCELLUS GEORGE TALBOTT. For a third of a century Texas was the cynosure of the eyes of all men ambitious to connect them- selves with the cattle industry and the latter became paramount to all other interests a few years after the Civil war and has remained so to the close of the nineteenth century. As an industry it had its eras of prosperity and ad- versity, when men made and lost fortunes almost in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, but with the preponderance of the testimony on the side of success men sought Texas prai- ries, cast their lot with her growing and favor- ite industry and became permanent fixtures upon her wide domain until its broad and grassy acres were specked and dotted with the bison's successor, the bovine tribe. Ambitious
to share in the emoluments of stock raising and to participate in the acquisition of cheap land and to experiment with its agricultural possibilities, yet apparently a trifle tardy in his advent to the state, Marcellus G. Talbott cast his fortunes with Clay county in March, 1894, and staked his all upon the outcome of his act.
A settler from Saline county, Missouri, Mr. Talbott chose his location just south of the Big Wichita river in Clay county, and his maiden and somewhat extensive efforts at farming there the first years of his Texas ex- perience is a record of adversity seldom sur- passed by one of his means and presents a picture of desperation and consequent gloom calculated to chill the stoutest heart and make the hot blood of vigorous manhood run cold. Bull-dog tenacity tells the whole story of final success for Mr. Talbott and nothing that has come since nor that is scheduled for the future will checkmate him or turn the wire edge on so stable a nature as his.
October 29, 1868, Marcellus G. Talbott was born in Saline county, Missouri. His father, Dr. Edward M. Talbott, was an early settler of that county, going there as a young man fresh from his medical studies and seeking a location where he could aid in the development of a new country and establish for himself an honorable name. He erected the first store in Fairville and became a resident of the new vil- lage soon after his advent to the county. His original capital was just twenty-five cents and with it he can be said to have begun his busi- ness life. He opened a drug store, operated it profitably, invested his surplus in real estate and became one of the large land owners about Fairville.
Dr. Talbott was born in St. Louis county, Missouri, but was reared and educated in Louisville, Kentucky. His ancestors were from Virginia where his father, Nathan Talbott, was born. The latter was prominently identified with the west in the capacity of a missionary to the Miami tribe of Indians and resided in Red River county, Texas, many years prior to the Civil war. It was at Clarksville that the
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
childhood experiences of Dr. E. M. Talbott in two to seven hundred head of beef cattle. and school took place. It was also during the early. his grain farming embraces several hundred times of the frontier that Rev. Talbott estab- acres. lished the Indian Mission at Westport. Mis -. souri, near Kansas City, and was connected with its management for some years. His last years were spent in Saline county, Missouri. . Missouri. Mr. Shaw has extensive Clay county He had a family of five children of which the doctor was the only son.
Edward M. Talbott's literary education was of a superior quality. The Louisville Medical College prepared him for a life of successful practice and his social and intellectual attain- ments fitted him for such a mingling with his fellow man as to win him a wide clientage, a firm friendship and an enviable position in his county's affairs. He married, in Saline county, Mildred Hudson, who died there in 1877. Her people were from Virginia, her father being Capt. John Hudson of the Confederate service and a Saline county farmer. Two of the ten children of Dr. and Mrs. Talbott are deceased and those living are: Virginius, of Baytown, Missouri; Albert, of Ayr, Nebraska; John, of St. Louis, Missouri; Marcellus G .; Jesse, of Sheridan county, Missouri; Meredith, of Kan- sas City ; Dr. Hudson, of St. Louis; and Mil- dred, wife of Edward Cohenour, Catula, Texas. Emma died as the wife of W. H. Guthrie, leav- ing a son, and Edward died at the age of nine- teen years.
Marcellus G. Talbott acquired a good edu- cation in the public schools and in an academy and worked on his father's farm till he was sixteen years old. He then began farming with an older brother, Virginius, and after four years engaged in the same business alone. He was a successful grower of corn and wheat .way and becoming a prospector and miner in
procure a firm hold on Texas. He left his na-' he was a blacksmith and with his efforts in this
and abandoned a good situation to eventually tive state and came to his present location, built a house for his bride of a few months, and set about the real objects of his migration here.
A ranch of eighteen hundred acres is the property of Mr. Talbott and his partner, and he is further interested in some four thousand acres of pasture and farm land. He runs from
In 1893 Mr. Talbott married, in Wichita Falls, Catherine, a daughter of W. M. Shaw, of Weatherford, Texas, formerly of Saline county, real estate interests under the control of his son-in-law, our subject. Mrs. Talbott is one of seven daughters in her parent's family and is the third child. Mildred Ophelia Talbott, born April 28, 1904, is Mr. and Mrs. Talbott's only child.
ROBERT L. ROBINSON. One of the suc- cessful modest farmers and stock-raisers of Clay county and one who has for the past score of years been identified with the county's in- ternal development, is Robert L. Robinson, the subject of this notice. He came to Texas in 1884 and, after a few months passed at Wichita Falls, came into Clay county, where he estab- lished himself and has since resided. He located near Benvanue, where he purchased a tract of new and unfenced land right out on the open prairie and set intelligently and vigor- ously to work at the making of a home.
Mr. Robinson came to Texas from Newton county, Missouri, but was born in Barton county, that state, June 9, 1860. His parents migrated to the Lone Star state in 1884, passed some seven years in Clay county and then changed their residence to a farm in McCul- loch county, where the father died in 1902 and the mother the year previous. Mr. Robinson Sr. was one of the California gold-seekers of the early days, crossing the plains in the old the Golden state for about two years. By trade line and at farming he led what may be termed a successful life. In Newton county, Missouri, he married Sarah Archer, their issue being : Dee, James, Moses, Michael, Henry P., Robert L., our subject ; and John M.
The educational advantages of our subject were of the common school order. When he
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
became a youth, strong in body and full of vigor, he made a hand on the farm and thus in early life did he learn the value of industry and the reward it always brings. When he came to Texas he had accumulated less than two hundred dollars which slipped away from him really before he had located. His start in Clay county began with his planting a crop on his father's farm, being furnished with every- thing and getting all he made. After five years of maneuvering and unceasing employ- ment he found himself in a position to buy a quarter section of partially improved land. Farming and investing his surplus in stock was the plan he followed and in a few years he bought four hundred acres more land on which he runs about one hundred head of stock.
Mr. Robinson married in Clay county, Helen, a daughter of Royal W. Grogan, a pioneer and prominent citizen of the county. The children of their marriage are: Mabel, Warren, Grover, Dare, Matthew, Eugene, Ida. and Victor Lee.
The domestic interests of Clay county have been conserved by the presence of such men as Mr. Robinson in the county. While he has been occupied with his personal affairs he has unconsciously contributed toward the upward and forward tendency of his municipality and it is the work of such settlers in the aggregate which works out its final destiny. He is a school trustee, and has been for some years, and in politics owns allegiance to the principles of Democracy.
ISAAC S. LIGHTLE. The agricultural and stock-raising interests of Clay county find a worthy representative in Isaac S. Lightle, who is carefully conducting his business interests and meeting with gratifying success. He was born in Pike county, Illinois, May 31, 1861, and is a son of Samuel and Martha (Dempsey) Lightle. The mother was a native of Ohio and was taken by her parents to Missouri, where she was reared and married. The paternal grand- parents of Mr. Lightle removed to Pike county, Illinois, purchased a farm there and reared
their family. Samuel Lightle was married in Missouri and remained in Pike county for a number of years, but in 1889 removed to Kan- sas, settling in Butler county, where he pur- chased a farm and yet makes his home. His entire life has been devoted to general agricul- tural pursuits and stock raising. In his political views he is an earnest and inflexible Democrat, never faltering in his allegiance to the prin- ciples of the party, but he has never sought to figure in public life. Those who know him entertain for him a warm regard because he is found reliable in business and faithful in all duties of citizenship and private life. His wife is a daughter of Coleman Dempsey, a farmer and tobacco raiser, also engaged in the cultiva- tion of fruit. In the family of Mr. Dempsey were six children: Isom C., an attorney at law; J. W., a merchant, of Detroit, Illinois; John, a brick mason; Nelson; Mrs. Mary Boothe, and. Mrs. Martha Lightle. To Mr. and Mrs. Lightle were born the following children: Mary, the wife of Thomas A. Wood, an attorney: Isaac S., of this review; Clara, who died at the age of twenty years; John W., a farmer; Nettie, who died at the age of twenty-one years; Lottie, who passed away at the age of eighteen years; Nelly, the wife of Dr. Brown. The parents of these children are members of the Methodist church and are people of the highest respecta- bility.
Isaac S. Lightle remained under the parental roof until twenty-two years of age, when he married and settled upon a farm belonging to his mother-in-law. Later he purchased a tract of land which he cultivated a few years, when in 1895 he sold the property and came to Texas. In that year he purchased a farm in Clay county, an extensive tract of land nine hundred acres, of which seven hundred were under cultivation. In May, 1905, he sold this farm, and located three miles north on Red river, farming still more extensively than before. He cast in his lot among the pioneer settlers of the neigh- borhood and has aided largely in reclaiming the district for the purposes of civilization. During all this time he has never had a total failure in
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ISAAC S. LIGHTLE AND FAMILY
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
crops, although there have been some short
year he came to the then new town of Wichita crops on account of drought, but if the wheat . Falls, and in an official capacity and as a private failed the corn bore and the other crops were good, and thus he has always had plenty to support his family and stock. He is also demon- strating that horticultural pursuits may be profit- able, and put out a large orchard of five thou- sand trees and is well pleased with the outlook of the country, for he realizes that industry and labor find their just reward here. He carries on general farming and stock raising and he pur- chased and operates a thresher, having a trac- tion engine and doing not only his own thresh- ing, but also threshing for his neighbors. citizen has been co-operating most heartily and effectively in its progress and upbuilding ever since. For the first three years he con- tinued mercantile pursuits in this place, and in 1886 was elected to the office of county clerk 'and clerk of the district court. He was a com- petent and trustworthy official, as he demon- strated from the very beginning of his career, and åt each subsequent election he was re- turned to office by good majorities. He gave his active supervision to the affairs of office until. he recently suffered a paralytic stroke, and he is now an invalid. He has made him- self a loved and trusted member of the com- munity, and his integrity and upright conduct have been sustaining forces in all the affairs of Wichita Falls and vicinity. His wife was Miss Mary L. McCoy, also a native of Ken- tucky. -
Mr. Lightle was married to Miss Dorcas H. Wade, who was born in Pike county, Illinois, in February, 1861, and is an estimable lady, who has been a good helpmate to her husband. She is a daughter of Frank and Jane (Elliott) Wade, a resident farmer of Pike county, where both he and his wife died. In their family were three children, Mrs. Lightle being the youngest, the others being Ella, the wife of E. Newport; and John K., who died January 1, 1906. The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Lightle has been blessed with five children: Guy E., a traction engineer; Lela M., and Ross S., who are at home; Allen I. and Mildred D., who are in school. Mr. Lightle is a stanch Democrat, but without aspiration for political office. His wife belongs to the Methodist Episcopal church. He is regarded as a most enterprising business man, brooking no obstacles that can be overcome by determined purpose and carrying forward to successful completion whatever he undertakes.
WALTER A. REID, clerk of the county and district courts with office at Wichita Falls, Texas, has followed in the footsteps of his most worthy father and attained at a young age to a prominent place in the official and bus- iness affairs of this city of North Texas.
His father is Charles E. Reid, who was born at Greenup, Kentucky, August 2, 1850. He early became identified with the mercantile affairs of his birthplace, and was a prosperous merchant in Greenup until 1883. In the latter
Mr. Walter A. Reid was born to these par- ents in Greenup, Kentucky, in 1875, and was eight years old when the family home was transferred to Texas. He accordingly received most of his education in the schools at Wichita Falls. He entered his father's office and was the competent and efficient deputy for ten years before he took his father's place on ac- count of the latter's illness. He is now (at this writing) the candidate for election to the office and has practically no opposition since the affairs of the office have so long been in his and his father's hands that they would not seem rightly placed with any other person. The business of the clerk's office is conducted in a most up-to-date ands thorough manner, fully justifying the confidence reposed in these men by the citizens of the county.
Mr. Reid is a Master Mason, and his father is both a Royal Arch and a Knight Templar Mason.
JUDGE WILLIAM B. SLAUGHTER, banker and cattleman residing at Dalhart, in the extreme northwestern county of the Pan- handle, is a member of the famous Slaughter
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
family of Texas, and to any one at all ac- quainted with the civil and political history of Texas and with the state's great cattle indus- try no introductory mention is necessary to call to mind the prominence of the various members of the Slaughter name in the various departments of Texas life and activity from the days of the revolution to the present. Of the present generation, besides the Judge, is his brother, Colonel C. C. Slaughter, of Dallas, one of the most noted of Texas cattlemen, and the great Slaughter ranches in Texas and New Mexico have for years been stocked only with herds of thoroughbred cattle. Another brother, P. E. Slaughter, is a cattleman in Arizona, while another, John B. Slaughter, has his cat- tle headquarters in Lynn county, Texas.
Judge Slaughter's father was Rev. George Webb Slaughter, whose name figured actively with Texas history for over fifty years. Of a Culpepper county, Virginia, family, he came to Texas in 1836, when the war for independence from Mexico was still in progress, and he became a pony expressman, or messenger, on the staff of General Sam Houston, and was associated with that great general during all the stirring times coincident with the estab- lishment of Texan independence. His connec- tion with the events of those days is interest- ingly recorded in John Henry Brown's volum- inous and accurate history of Texas. After the war for independence George Webb Slaughter located in Palo Pinto county, be- ing among the early settlers of that then far western and border community, and he spent the remainder of his years in that county, where he died in 1894. He was a minister of the gos- pel for many years, although his active and useful life was directed into numerous chan- nels whence flowed material progress and social uplift. The old Slaughter homestead near Palo Pinto is now occupied by his daugh- ters. Judge Slaughter's mother was Sarah Jane (Mason) Slaughter.
Born in Freestone county, Texas, in 1852, Judge Slaughter spent his boyhood days in Palo Pinto county and in Dallas. While he
was growing up the great industry of Palo Pinto county was cattle-raising, and he has known and been identified with this business from very tender years, thus following the same lines as the other members of the family. When only fifteen years old he was intrusted with the taking of a herd of eighteen hundred cattle from Palo Pinto county to the shipping point at Newton, Kansas, and by cool-headed- ness and good judgment he stood off a band of Osage Indians who met up with the company while going through Indian Territory, their evident intention being to stampede the cattle.
In 1870, at the age of eighteen, he was sent to Chicago to attend Bryant and Stratton's Business College. But after remaining there six days he returned to Texas and began the handling of cattle, buying and shipping on his own account, his operations being carried on mostly in Concho and San Saba counties. He became associated in this business with his brother John B., and this arrangement contin- ued until about 1877. In 1878 he moved to Blanco canyon in Crosby county, where he es- tablished a large cattle ranch and remained until 1883, in which year he took his cattle to Socorro county, New Mexico, where he was in the cattle business until 1892. In the latter year he moved his outfit up into Beaver county, Oklahoma, being there about three years, and in 1895 came to Sherman county, in the ex- treme northern tier of Panhandle counties. Here his ranching operations have been cen- tered ever since. He owns eighteen thousand acres of land, and leases enough more to make his entire pasturage for cattle amount to fifty- one thousand acres, over which princely demesne range his fine herds of graded Here- fords, and his stock has always been of ac- knowledged quality and quantity ; keeping up with the reputation always maintained in Slaughter enterprises. On his ranch he has erected one of the fine residences of the Pan -; handle, at a cost of seven thousand dollars, and its equipments of hot and cold water and all other modern conveniences make it a close rival of the best urban dwellings.
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
In 1900, as a side line to his other enter- prises, Mr. Slaughter went into the mercantile business at Stratford in Sherman county, es- tablishing the Stockmen's Mercantile and Banking Company. After continuing this con- cern for two years he sold the mercantile de- partment, but retained the banking depart- ment, which then became known as the Bank of Stratford, of which Judge Slaughter is pres- ident. Its capital stock is fifteen thousand dollars. On March 1, 1904, he extended his financial operations by buying the bank at Dal- hart, Dallam county, and converting it into the First National Bank, with a capital of twenty- five thousand dollars, he being president of this institution also. Judge Slaughter now re- sides in Dalhart, and from this point conducts his various cattle and banking interests. .
Judge Slaughter has not been a passive wit- ' ness of the advance of public affairs, but is a liberal, energetic and progressive citizen of Dalhart, working to build up this new town, and he has manifested a like degree of public spirit wherever he has maintained his residence for any considerable time. He served, by elec- tion, as county judge of Sherman county for two years. He is well known in Masonic cir- cles, having attained the Knight Templar de- gree.
Judge Slaughter was married in May, 1877, to Miss Anna A. McAdams, daughter of Cap- tain McAdams, of Palo Pinto county. They have one son, Coney C. Slaughter, who is cash- ier of the First National Bank at Dalhart. Mrs. Slaughter is quite prominent in Eastern Star circles, having been most worthy matron of the lodge at Stratford for some time.
JOHN SMITH BARLOW WALKER. In Mr. Walker we find a gentleman whose efforts toward the domestic improvement of Mon- tague county have covered more than a score and a half of years, and since 1877 he has been identified with his farm on the Sunset and Forestburg road. In 1873 he settled in the rolling country about three miles west of For- estburg and his home has been maintained on
the same place ever since. Farming was the vocation taught him as a boy in Cooke and Gray- son counties and that and kindred vocations have claimed his time since he became a man. As a carpenter he has had a hand in much of the building done in his locality and as a farmer he has creditably improved and suc- cessfully cultivated the one hundred and sixty acres of land where he has so long made his home.
By nativity Mr. Walker is a Tennesseean, having been born in Jackson county, that state, September 19, 1850. He was a son of Francis D. Walker, born in Kentucky in 1801, and brought up there by Watt Walker, his father. Just what family Watt Walker had we cannot tell, but William, Green and Francis D. were three sons and the last passed his life as a farmer. About 1838 he married Mary J. Coundry who was born in 1811, who was his companion through all his trials and vicissi- tudes in the west and died in Benton county, Arkansas, in 1867.
Francis D. and Mary Walker's large family consisted of the following children: Marion, of Orr, Indian Territory ; Rachel, who died in the Cherokee Nation as the wife of Joseph Bridges ; Jesse, who was killed by the Indians at Belknap, Texas, while in the military ser- vice of Texas ; Mary J., of Hardy, Texas, wife of T. B. Clark; Sarah and Minerva, twins, the former married Charles Hayes and died in Ar- kansas, and the latter married James Craft and died in the Cherokee Nation; John S. B., and Andrew J., of Bowie, Texas. In 1856 the parents began their westward journey and stopped first in Dade county, Missouri, and in 1857 they came on to Texas and settled near Whitesboro in Cooke county, and later, moved to Grayson county. The house they first built was afterward moved to the townsite of Whitesboro and was the first house of that now substantial town. After remaining in Texas about ten years, and still believing that the best place was yet ahead, the parents mi- grated to Benton county, Arkansas, and there the father also passed away, in 1888. Mrs.
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HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.
Walker's folks were of the Virginia Coundrys, and farmers, a branch of which dropped down into the state of Tennessee where Mary J. was born, in 1811. At about seventeen years of age John S. B. Walker began life as a team- ster and freighter between Jefferson, Whites- boro, Gainesville and Ft. Sill, Indian Territory, hauling lumber, supplies and grain to and fro for a period of four years. With his accumu- lations from this source he settled in Montague county and began his life on a new farm. He finally bought a piece of deeded land, built a toy box house on it and launched himself into the heat of the fight. Practically the whole of his farm has been brought under the plow, and cotton, corn and the stock of the farm have brought him his substantial results. Some years ago he erected a cotton gin near the Walker schoolhouse, but this was some-
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