USA > Texas > A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I > Part 86
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what in the nature of an experiment and its . young man but turned his attention to farming - owner's hopes for it were not realized.
A year subsequent to his advent to the county Mr. Walker was united in marriage, July 23, 1874, to Louisa C. E. Box, a daugh- ter of Cornelius and Mary B. (Wells) Box who came to Texas from Calhoun county, Ala- bama, in 1857. Mr. Box settled in Rusk county and there Mrs. Walker was born December 16, 1858. They then moved to Cooke county in 1859. In the order of their birth Mr. and Mrs. Box's children are: Joseph, of Montague county ; Calvin and Mrs. Julia Marteen, of Hale county ; Belle, wife of Ben H. Steadham, of Montague county, and Mrs. Walker.
Mr. and Mrs. Walker's children are: Law- rence, who married Minta Farmer and resides on the home place; Lillie, wife of E. E. Farmer living near by; Miss Linnie, still at home; Ruth, who married Arthur Teague, of Mon- tague county, and John and Elward, still under the paternal roof.
DEFOREST E. BENTLEY. Prominent among the Illinois colony of settlers in Clay county, and energetic and upright as a citizen, we introduce him whose name initiates this personal record.
Mr. Bentley, in becoming a resident of Clay county, Texas, was one of the colony above mentioned, and as advance man prospected the location which resulted in their choice of location and final settlement at Thornberry. For himself he purchased a tract of two hun- dred acres and at once began its reduction and cultivation in a modest, though successful, way. Grain, stock and fruit growing employ him and his ambitious and industrious family, and that they have done something toward beautifying and enlightening Clay county all acquaintances are forced to admit.
While Mr. Bentley came to this state from Illinois, his native state is New York and his native county Chautauqua. He was born near Ellington, February 26, 1854, of parents Perry and Sarah (Cartright) Bentley. The father be- came a carpenter and followed the trade as a afterward and died in August, 1903, at the age of eighty-one years. He was born in Rensse- laer county, York state, and went to Chautau- qua county as a boy. His wife died in 1866 and he then married Mary Cox, by whom he also reared a family and whom he also buried. His first children were: Harvey, of Chautau- qua county, New York; Clem, who died young ; Deforest E .; Nicholas, of Michigan ; Margaret, of Ellington, New York, and Estelle, who died early in life. Of his second children, Ashley resides in Ellington, Arthur died at East Liver- pool, Ohio, by accident; Nellie married Her- bert Crook and resides near Ellington, and the same place is the home of Eugene; Mildred, wife of Oscar Nelson, and Abbie who married a Frary also abide near that town.
The Bentleys are of English origin and the family is believed to be an old-established one of New England, as it was from either Connec- ticut or Rhode Island that grandfather Bentley migrated to New York state.
D. E. Bentley acquired only a common school training. He learned farming from his father and started in life as such himself. At the age of fifteen years he, by day's work, earned the money to buy a couple of calves and
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when they grew up into an ox team he traded
years he worked as a farm hand for wages and then rented land and began farming as ex- tensively as his limited accumulations would permit. He started west in 1874 and stopped in Pike county, Illinois, where his first earnest efforts may be said to have been made and where, as the head of a family, his life work really began. He married July 4, 1876, and took his wife to a rented farm. Their com- bined labor and sensible economy put them in possession of a sum sufficient to establish them fairly comfortably in their new place in Texas and it was to escape the severe winters of the north and to acquire the cheap and fertile land of the Wichita country that induced their re- moval south.
Mrs. Bentley was, prior to her marriage, Miss Eliza Temple. Her parents were James and Sarah (Hawker) Temple, people of Eng- lish birth, the former of Lincolnshire and the latter of Devonshire. The father was born March 3, 1813, and died May 8, 1875, while the mother's birth occurred August 19, 1822, and her death October 27, 1886. They came to the United States about 1832. Their children were: Mary R., widow of Stephen Evans, of Griggs- ville, Illinois; Elizabeth, of Bellplain, Kansas; Mrs. William R. Wallace; Mrs. Bentley, and George F. Temple, of Abilene, Texas. Mrs. Bentley was educated in the Griggsville high school and taught four terms of country school while she was yet Eliza Temple. She is a lady of bright, active and alert mind and has shown her belief in the efficacy and power of education over ignorance by making personal sacrifices and enduring personal hardships for the sake of providing her children with an advanced education.
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Mr. and Mrs. Bentley have nine children, namely: Charles, born June 8, 1877, resides near Chattanooga, Oklahoma ; Margaret, born December 5, 1878, is the wife of Martin Stubbs, in charge of the government's weather obser- vations at Galveston, Texas. Mrs. Stubbs took a four-year course in Fort Worth University,
where she met her future husband, one of the them to his father for his time. For about six . faculty of the institution. His duties have been so distributed as to give Mrs. Stubbs an opportunity for travel and she has visited the West Indies-San Domingo and Cuba-and talks most interestingly of life and conditions there. She and Mr. Stubbs were married June 5, 1902. Hattie, born December 7, 1880, was educated also at Fort Worth, and taught in the schools of her home vicinity. She was married August 22, 1905, to T. M. Runnells, of Illinois. She is now living in Oklahoma and expects Lawton to be her home. Her husband is a bright young man of good educa- tion and had been bookkeeper for a Chicago firm, until failing health compelled him to go south. He is now in connection with a lumber firm. Harvey, born October 31, 1882, is an invaluable assistant at the family home; George, born March 21, 1888; Mary, born Feb- ruary 21, 1891 ;' John, born May 14, 1893, Lloyd, born November 5, 1895, and Ruth, born November 17, 1897, are all members of the family circle.
The family of Mr. Bentley hold allegiance to the Methodist church. The parents have taught their children the lessons of the bible where right living and right action are set forth as cardinal principles of an upright life. They have strong faith in the life to come and do the Master's will by fearing God and keep- ing His commandments.
DR. HERBERT E. STEVENSON, a capa- ble and successful representative of the medi- cal profession in El Paso, was born at Vaca- ville, Solano county, California, July 3, 1871, his parents being Hon. George B. and Ann M. (Maupin) Stevenson. The father was born in Kentucky of southern parentage and was one of the "forty-niners" who, attracted by the dis- covery of gold in California, started around Cape Horn in 1848, and was in California at the beginning of the great placer gold excitement of 1849. He realized a large fortune in placer gold mining and became associated in a busi- ness way with several of the most noted busi- ness men of the Pacific coast, including Leland
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Stanford, with whom he was connected in rail- road building. Mr. Stevenson built the Vaca- ville & Clear Lake Railroad, which he sold to Leland Stanford and which became a part of the northern branch of the Southern Pacific Rail- way system. He was an active, energetic man, of large capacity in business affairs and engaged extensively in mining throughout the greater part of his life. The proposition of completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad from the west to El Paso together with the mining possibilities of this vicinity brought him to El Paso in 1880, about a year before the completion of the road, and here he maintained his residence up to the time of his death in 1896. When El Paso began to grow, following the building of railroads, he took a public-spirited part in promoting the wel- fare of the town. In politics he was a stanch and unfaltering Democrat and was elected to the Texas state legislature on that ticket. He made and lost several fortunes during his life, but in the promotion of varied business inter- ests contributed in substantial measure to the promotion and development of various locali- ties. His wife, who was born in Missouri, be- longed to an old southern family. Her father, Thomas Maupin, was a native of Boone county for ten years, covering the period of the Civil war. When a young girl she crossed the plains in 1849 with her parents and was married to Mr. Stevenson in California. She now makes her home in El Paso.
In a still earlier period before the advent of G. B. Stevenson in El Paso, the family became connected with the history of that city and the opening up of the west. Afterward Captain Stevenson, formerly of the regular army, an un- cle of Dr. Stevenson, was with the noted Doni- phan expedition, which going to the southwest in 1846 to join the armies under General Taylor and General Scott in Mexico, captured El Paso from the Mexican forces and fought in the bat- tles of Brazolia and La Verd and Chihuahua, which resulted in adding all of this great south- west country to the domain of Uncle Sam.
Dr. Stevenson came with his parents to El Paso in 1880, having spent the first nine years of his life in northern California, where he ac- quired his early education which was continued
in the schools of this city. He was one of the first graduates of the El Paso high school. About this time, being thrown upon his own resources, he went to work in this city, being employed for seven years by the Wells-Fargo Express Company. He had decided, however, upon making the practice of medicine his life work and accordingly he pursued a course in Rush Medical College at Chicago, from which he was graduated in 1899. Previously, however, in 1898, he enlisted at Chicago for service in the Spanish-American war with the Seventh Illinois, known as the Hibernian Regiment, in which he received the appointment of hospital steward, having passed the necessary examination before the medical board. He went to Washington, joining the Second Army Corps and was as- signed to duty in the various camps amid cases of typhoid fever and other diseases, thus serv- ing until after the close of the war. Both in his college work and in his term of hospital service he had the advantage of being associated with Dr. Nicholas Senn, who was made surgeon in charge of all operations in the field and who is one of the most distinguished surgeons of America.
After a few months' practice in Chicago fol- lowing his graduation and in the various poly- clinics Dr. Stevenson returned to his home in El Paso, where he has since practiced with splendid success, being onc of the leading rep- resentatives of the medical profession in this section of the country. He belongs to various medical associations, county, state and the American, and has been for some years an offi- cer of the El Paso County Medical Association. In 1906 he was elected honorary life member of the International Medical Society of Mexico. He received the first diploma issued by the Rush Medical College, after it had come under or a part of the University of Chicago. Also re- ceived the first diploma of the four year class, same school, and was a member of the commit- tee selected from the medical department, Uni- versity of Chicago, to be present at the con- ferring of the degree of LL.D. on President Wiliam Mckinley in 1899. Hc is also a mem- ber of the staff of Hotel Dieu, the noted Sisters' hospital at this place. He has maintained active
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interest in military affairs and is now a member of the Texas National Guard, in which he holds . the rank of captain.
Dr. Stevenson was married in El Paso to Miss Florence G. Vilas, a daughter of Dr. Wal- ter N. Vilas, a prominent pioneer physician of El Paso. They have one son, Walter H. Stev- enson, and they lost their first born, Herbert Vilas. Dr. Stevenson ranks today with the most prominent representatives of the profession in the southwest, having skill and ability that places him in the front rank in his chosen field of labor. He is yet a young man and arguing from the past one may well prophesy for him a successful future.
JUDGE RICE MAXEY. The subject of this sketch is a native of Kentucky and was born at Tompkinsville, the county seat of Monroe county, on the Ist day of May, 1857. He is the third son of Dr. A. H. Maxey and wife, Lucy A. Maxey (nee Garner) who were also natives of the state of Kentucky, and were married in Monroe county in 1850. There were born of said marriage ten children, of whom seven are now living, namely: Radford, Rice, Fannie, Lucetta, J. B., S. B., and Leslie Maxey, all born in Kentucky, except the last named, who was born in Texas. Radford Maxey is a farmer and stock raiser and lives in Collin county ; Fannie married S. L. Brown of Deca- tur, Texas, and she with her husband, who is a merchant, now resides in Velasco, Texas ; Lucetta married J. P. Leslie, an attorney, and they now reside in Sherman, Texas; Samuel B. Maxey is a graduate in medicine and now actively engaged in the practice of his profes- sion at Angleton, Texas; J. Benton Maxey is an attorney and resides in Sherman; Leslie, the youngest child, is now teaching, but is studying law and expects to make law his pro- fession.
Dr. Maxey, the father of Judge Maxey, was a graduate of Jefferson Medical College at Louisville, Kentucky, and was actively en- gaged in the practice of his profession for more than thirty years in the state of Ken- tucky and sixteen years in Texas. In 1873 he
removed with his family to the state of Texas and located in Collin county. In 1880 he moved to Grayson county, and died in Sherman, Texas, on the IIth day of December, 1889, at the age of seventy-three years. His widow made her home with Judge Maxey until the date of her death, which occurred at Denison, Texas, on the 28th day of June, 1905, she then being seventy-five years of age.
Judge. Maxey was admitted to the bar in 1880. In 1881 he formed a partnership with Colonel A. A. DeBerry and Captain Tillman Smith at Cleburne, Texas, where he was en- gaged in the practice under the firm name of DeBerry, Smith & Maxey until the latter part of 1883, when he removed to Crockett, Houston county, Texas, where he lived and practiced law until 1890. In 1886, as the Democratic nominee, Judge Maxey was elected county at- torney of Houston county, and re-elected to the same position in 1,888. In 1887 he was married at Palestine, Texas, to Miss Margaret A. Broyles of Asheville, North Carolina. In 1890 he removed to Sherman, Texas, where he en- gaged in the general practice of his profession until 1892, when, as the Democratic nominee, he was elected prosecuting attorney of Gray- son county. He was re-elected to the same position in 1894. After the expiration of his second term as prosecuting attorney of Gray- son county he re-entered the general practice of law with Hon. C. L. Vowell under the firm name of Maxey & Vowell, which continued until 1900, when, as the Democratic nominee, he was elected Judge of the fifteenth judicial district ; this position he held until January, 1905, at which time he resigned and entered the firm of which he is now a member, namely, Wolfe-Hare & Maxey. The firm of Wolfe- Hare & Maxey maintain offices at both Sher- man and Denison, Texas. Judge Maxey re- sides at Denison and the other members of the firm at Sherman.
Judge Maxey never failed of election to any position he sought before the people and bears the reputation of being one of the best elec- tioneers and campaigners in the state. He filled every official position occupied by him
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with great credit to himself and unusual satis- faction to the people. He has had charge of much important litigation, both civil and crim- inal, and is recognized as one of the most suc -- cessful trial lawyers in the state. He was a terror to criminals while prosecuting attorney, and no man, perhaps, ever occupied the district bench in Texas who was sustained in a greater per cent of cases on appeal to the higher courts than was Judge Maxey.
OZIAS DENTON JONES. In the person of the subject of this personal sketch, Howard valley, in Jack county, owns a citizen who has participated in the civil-and some of the military-affairs of the Lone Star state during the past forty-three years, and whether at fighting Indians, defending his politics or pushing on the handles of his plow, he has made it a strenuous battle and has succeeded or failed according to the courage of his adver- sary or the odds of the fates against him.
His early experiences in Texas Mr. Jones acquired in the state service during the war. He came hither in 1862, just discharged from a brief term of service in the Confederate army and enlisted in Colonel Bowlin's regiment for service against the Indians. As is well known this was chiefly a service of scouting all over the frontier of the state, in small bands or large according as the danger seemed greatest, never fighting an orderly pitched battle but always conducting a running fight with the odds from five to fifty against them. During his months of this sort of warfare our subject encountered the red man many times, but only once face to face and then under circumstances to freeze the blood and to make the hair stand.
Just west of Belknap fifteen of the regiment. including Mr. Jones, were indulging in their usual lookout for the "Braves" when they spied two at some distance and made a charge after them. The Indians retreated into an ambush and joined a band of several hundred posted and waiting about the jaws of the trap they had set for the soldiers. The boys fell in and the trap was sprung but the soldiers beat
back the cowards before they were surrounded and a running fight for ten miles was kept up, the remnant of the soldiers then reaching a small stockade where they felt temporarily safe. On the way to safety the boys picked up the family of a cowman away from home and all pinned their faith and their safety to the im- provised fort and to the trusty carbine. Until darkness hovered over all the Indians kept beating at the stockade, threatening every mo- ment to overwhelm it and scalp the last vic- tim it contained, but nightfall and the possible suspicion of relief from the fort or re-enforce- ments from the camp caused them to retire. The next morning ten soldiers returned along the trail of the fight and buried their dead and mutilated comrades and found thirty "good Indians" to tell the story of the accuracy of the white man's aim.
Mr. Jones was mustered out. of his frontier service at Gainesville in 1865 and then took up farming near where his parents had lived. He remained in Grayson county until his de, parture for Jack county, in 1879, and had gath- ered little "moss" up to that date, for his team of ponies and a wagon and seventy-five dollars in money comprised the sum total of his assets upon his arrival in Howard valley.
For two years subsequent to his entry to the county Mr. Jones was a tenant on rented land but, deciding to own a home at the expense of heroic effort and some sacrifice if necessary, he bought, as the man without money always does, an eighty acre tract on the Holmark sur- vey. He erected a box house sixteen by six- teen feet, put up a pole stable and "made him- self at home." At first crops were good and then poor, as the seasons run, but his testi- mony on this point is to the effect that there has been a marked improvement in the char- acter of the seasons and that now this portion of Texas has come to be a fairly reliable agri- cultural country.
Raising cotton at first, and then, when his help began to leave him, turning his attention to grain, with as many cattle as his growing area would support, prosperity has shown itself
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and been visited upon him. until his eighty acres has increased to four hundred and thirty, and this almost single-handed, he having had hired help not more than three months while accomplishing these results.
Ozias D. Jones was born in Claiborne county; Tennessee, March 22, 1838, a son of Samuel Jones and a grandson of Samuel Jones Sr. His father was reared and married in Tennessee, his wife being Rhoda, a daughter of Obediah Hensley. Of this union there were born : Hil- lary, who died in the Indian Territory leaving a family ; Mary Ann, wife of Charles Dent, of Springfield, Missouri; John, who was killed by the "Red-legged Kansas Jayhawkers" during the war; Ozias Denton ; William Crocket, who died in Missouri; James M., of Dade county, Missouri; Nancy, who married Isaac Under- wood and died in Missouri; Shelby, who passed away in Missouri, and Julia, wife of Andrew Scott, of the Creek Nation.
In 1852, Samuel and Rhoda Jones migrated to Dade county, Missouri, and there our sub- ject acquired the finishing touches to his very limited education. The radical differences of the people of that locality over the issues of the war caused them to come to Texas where southern sentiment abounded and they reached the Lone Star state and settled near Collins- ville in 1862, where Mr. Jones soon died. His widow survived him a brief time and died in 1864.
Under his home environment nothing but real work confronted Ozias D. Jones from a very early age. He got in between the plow handles before his age could be expressed by two figures and he has not seen fit to abandon his calling since. He enlisted in the Confeder- ate service in 1861, with Clarkson's regiment, Price's command, and, in the six months of his enlistment, he helped fight the battles of Oak Hill, Dry Wood and Lexington, and when he was discharged from the army he came to Texas and got into the frontier service here.
In September, 1862, Mr. Jones married Mar- tha, a daughter of Elihu Cox, from Jackson county, Missouri, to Grayson county, Texas,
where he and his wife passed away. Mrs. Jones ivas born in Jackson county, Missouri, in 1843, and is the mother of Dicey and John, the daughter yet at home but the son a young law- yer of San Antonio, who is married to Mary Ames and has a daughter Mary. In prepara- tion for his profession John Jones studied law with Mr. Sporer, of Jacksboro, and was ad- mitted to the bar there.
In his political beliefs and practice our sub- ject is a Democrat and he has attended party conventions in the county in a delegate ca- pacity. He relies for spiritual strength on the teachings of the Word and communes with the congregation of the Methodist church.
LANGDON S. SPIVEY. Connected with the leading mercantile establishment of Belle- vue and standing as a foremost citizen of Clay county is the worthy subject of this biographical review. Esteemed as a citizen, loved as a man and faithful as a neighbor and friend, he is the architect and builder of his own situation and the modest part he has taken in the material and moral advancement of his community re- flects the character of the man and adds strength to the municipal and social fabric.
Orphaned in childhood and dependent upon filial guidance and support, Langdon S. Spivey began life in earnest before his twentieth year, humbly but honorably, and in whatever busi- ness or calling his interests have been centered he has pursued an open and upright course. His life exemplifies the trite adage that "right is might and will prevail," regardless of the tempting rewards offered by opportunities to do wrong. Nature endowed him with strong in- dustrious tendencies, as if supplementing his disadvantages of childhood environment, and a strong physique and a warm heart have done the rest. Work was food for him in youth and it seems to have no equivalent as a factor in the satisfactory experiences in approaching age.
Mr. Spivey is a native of Alabama, where in Green 'county his birth occurred September 8, 1854. His father, George B. Spivey, was a farmer and wagon maker and died two years
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after our subject's birth at forty-four years of age. The latter went into Alabama from North Carolina when a young man and in Green county married William Melton's daughter Mary. In 1857 Mrs. Spivey brought her family to Texas and settled near Dresden, in Navarro county, where she passed away in 1865. Her oldest child, Ann, died in Texas in 1857, and her second, Paola P., passed away in Navarro county in 1890; George B., her third child, died at San Antonio in 1875; Alva V. survived until 1864; Alice is the wife of A. S. Howard, of Am- arillo; David F. resides in Navarro county, and Langdon S. completes the family. P. P. Spivey served in the Confederate army in the rebellion, Polenac's division, Spaight's regiment and Captain Phanly's company, and George B. served on Galveston Island. After the mother's death the oldest son hired a cook and kept the children all together and it was under his guid- ance that our subject reached the years of ma- turity.
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