USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 12
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CHARLES H. PATTISON, vice president and one of the organizers of the National Bank of Commerce of Fort Worth, began his active career as a banker but subsequently became a prominent operator and producer in the Mid- Continent oil field, and is well known in oil circles in the Southwest.
Mr. Pattison was born at Champaign, Illi- nois, July 18, 1869, son of L. W. and Mattie (Harris) Pattison. His father was a native of New York and his mother of Kentucky. His father died at the age of sixty-three and the mother is still living. The oldest of three children, Charles H. Pattison spent most of his youth and boyhood in Southwest Colorado and in Texas, acquired a common school edu- cation, and at the age of fifteen began doing for himself. When he was twenty years of age he became assistant cashier of a bank at Solomon, Kansas. Later he was vice presi- dent, manager and principal owner of the Abi- lene National Bank at Abilene, Kansas. He left Kansas in 1900 and for three years looked after interests in the financial district of New York City. He then returned to the West and identified himself with the production of oil and natural gas in the Mid-Continent field. He continued his business and operations in several successive fields until 1914, and was instrumental in bringing in and maintaining a natural gas supply for many towns in Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.
Mr. Pattison moved to Fort Worth in 1919 and became one of the organizers of the National Bank of Commerce, taking the post of vice president in its management. He is one of the members of that old and substantial social and civic organization, the Fort Worth Club, also of the River Crest Country Club, and is a Mason and Shriner.
ARTHUR D. HODGSON. One of the oldest wholesale houses of Fort Worth, and one with a substantial reputation all over the southwest, is the Nash Hardware Company. Thirty years ago when the house was still young there entered its service, as office boy, Arthur D. Hodgson, then fourteen years old. Mr. Hodg- son devoted his time, energies and character to the fortunes of this company, has contrib-
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uted to its success and growing prestige, and his service and abilities have been well repaid, since he is now president and manager of the company.
Mr. Hodgson was born at Fort Scott, Kan- sas, August 25, 1876, only child of W. D. and Mary (Hume) Hodgson. His father is a vet- eral Texas railroad man, came to Fort Worth in 1880, and is still in the railroad service after forty years. He was born in Pennsylvania and his wife in Ohio in Morrow County. She died in 1906.
Arthur D. Hodgson was five years old when brought to Fort Worth, was educated in the city schools, and in 1890 began his employ- ment with the Nash Hardware Company as office boy. Perfecting his knowledge of book- keeping he was assigned to the books, and in 1895 was given further responsibilities, soon achieved financial interests in the concern, and in 1900 when the company was incorporated became its secretary and treasurer. He han- dled a growing routine of executive duties under those titles, and at the death of Mr. Nash in 1917 took active charge of the busi- ness and in 1919 was elected president and manager. This is altogether a wholesale busi- ness, and about a hundred persons are em- ployed in the offices, warehouses and on the road. The company maintains a branch at Wichita Falls, with a staff of about fifteen employes in that office.
Mr. Hodgson has also acquired some other business interests, being a director of the Mid- land Brass Works of Fort Worth. He is a member of the Fort Worth Club, River Crest Country Club, Rotary Club, is a Mason and Knight of Pythias and a member of the Broad- way Baptist Church, being a deacon. Mr. Hodgson married in 1900 Miss Georgia Pool, daughter of Mrs. E. A. Pool of Fort Worth. To their marriage have been born nine chil- dren, a happy household, their names in order of birth being Mary E., Josephine, Arthur D., Jr., George W., Helen, Margaret, Elizabeth, Virginia and James Lawrence.
RAMSEY C. ARMSTRONG, JR. Admitted to the bar in 1895, Ramsey C. Armstrong, Jr., has rounded out a full quarter of a century in the active practice of law and is regarded as one of the ablest members of the Fort Worth bar.
Mr. Armstrong is a native Texan, born in Jasper County, February 5, 1872, son of Rev. R. C. and Matilda (Smythe) Armstrong. His father, whose home is at 1436 Eighth Avenue
in Fort Worth, is one of the veteran ministers of the Methodist Church in Texas, and for a number of years was pastor of the First Church of Fort Worth. He was born in Ala- bama, served as a chaplain in the Confederate army, and has lived in Texas for nearly sixty years. His wife was the daughter of George WV. Smythe, a prominent Texan who at one time represented his district in Congress.
Ramsey C. Armstrong, Jr., is fourth in a family of six children. He acquired a thor- ough education, graduating in 1894 from Southwestern University at Georgetown, Texas. He studied law at Weatherford, was admitted to practice in January, 1895, and be- gan his professional career the same year at Fort Worth. Mr. Armstrong was identified with the Fort Worth bar continuously until 1908, when he moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma, about the time Oklahoma was admitted to the Union, and enjoyed a widely extended prac- tice in the new state. In March, 1919, he established professional connections with Fort Worth, and his offices are on the sixth floor of the Wheat Building.
Mr. Armstrong has taken an active part in the democratic party, and is affiliated with the Lodge of Elks. In January, 1909, he married Miss Fannie Whaley of Oklahoma. They have one son, R. C. Armstrong III.
FRANK DOUGLAS BOYD, M. D., F. A. C. S. Locating at Fort Worth twenty-five years ago, Doctor Boyd has achieved secure success and reputation in his profession and as an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist takes rank among the first physicians and surgeons in the South- west in this field.
Doctor Boyd was born at Rusk in Chero- kee County, Texas, December 24, 1867, son of John A. and Amy E. (Harrison) Boyd. His mother was born in Alabama and was related to the Harrisons of Virginia, one branch of which produced Gen. William H. Harrison, one time President of the United States. John A. Boyd was born in Tennes- see, came to Texas in 1852, and for many years was a farmer and merchant in Cherokee County and finally lived in Tarrant County, near Fort Worth.
Frank D. Boyd had made a definite choice of his life's vocation before he left the farm in Cherokee County. He graduated from the Rusk High School, attended the Agricultural and Mechanical College at Bryan, Texas, and began the study of medicine in the office of a physician at Waxahatchie. He graduated in
Fat Boyl. M.Q
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1890 from the medical department of the University of Louisville, following which he specialized in diseases of the eye, ear, nose and throat at New York, also at Louisville, and for a time was assistant to a noted phy- sician and surgeon at Chicago. Doctor Boyd practiced five years at San Antonio, and in June, 1896, removed to Fort Worth, where for a quarter of a century he has kept his pro- fessional reputation and achievements apace with the growing importance of the city. He has always been a student, and on an average has taken time from his practice every four years for post graduate study and observation, and several times has been abroad, a student at Vienna, Berlin and London. Doctor Boyd is a Fellow of the American College of Sur- geons. He was at one time oculist to the State Masonic Orphans' Home at Fort Worth, and was also a member of the faculty of Fort Worth University Medical School, now pro- fessor of oto-laryngology of Baylor Medical College at Dallas, and has contributed many formal articles and reports to medical jour- nals, particularly to the transaction of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Oto-laryngology. He is a Fellow of that Acad- emy. He is an honorary member of other medical associations, and belongs to the Amer- ican Medical Association and is a former chairman of the Board of Council of the State Medical Association. Doctor Boyd is a Scottish Rite Mason, an Elk, member of the Fort Worth Club, an ex-president of the Texas State Medical Association, senior mem- ber of the Boyd & Boyne Hospital for the treatment of the eye, ear, nose and throat, and an active deacon of the Baptist Church.
April 21, 1892, at Louisville, Kentucky, he married Mattie E. Callahan, daughter of James E. Callahan, of Louisville. Three chil- dren were born to their marriage. Both sons, Frank D. and John A., are deceased. A daughter is Amy Margaret Boyd.
MARCUS M. BRIGHT is a successful Fort Worth banker and has to a concentrated de- gree those special qualifications and abilities of a financier. Business men and citizens gen- erally repose the utmost confidence in his financial integrity and judgment, and it is per- haps a significant fact that while he is active head of one of the larger banking institutions of Northern Texas he has a minimum of out- side interests, and all of them are subsidiary to his real vocation and profession.
Mr. Bright was born at Jackson, Tennessee,
February 24, 1880, and achieved the presi- dency of one of the metropolitan banking in- stitutions of Texas before he was forty years of age. His father, Marcus M. Bright, Sr., was a lawyer by profession, but died at the age of twenty-eight, before his promising abil- ities had borne their full fruit. The mother of the Texas banker was Belle G. Perkins, whose father, Colonel G. G. Perkins, was a distin- guished Confederate soldier. Marcus M. Bright was the only child of his parents. His mother subsequently married Dr. R. H. Alvis, a railway surgeon of the Frisco lines at Ard- more, Oklahoma. She was a resident of Ard- more from 1889 until her death, February 17, 1920.
Marcus M. Bright was about nine years of age when taken to Oklahoma, and he acquired a good education both in public schools and under the instruction of his mother, who was a woman of great artistic talent. Mr. Bright finished his education in the University of Texas, and studied law one year in the Uni- versity. His early knowledge of banking was acquired as a messenger boy in the First National Bank of Ardmore, and when he left that institution he was its assistant cashier. In 1906 he was chosen cashier of the First National Bank of Mineral Wells, Texas, and while there became well known among Texas capitalists, including Winfield Scott. When Mr. Scott and other Fort Worth business men started to organize a new bank in 1910 they delegated Mr. Bright with the chief responsi- bilities, and with the opening of the Fort Worth State Bank he occupied the post of cashier. In January, 1919, he was chosen vice president and sixty days later was made presi- dent. While established only about ten years, the Fort Worth State Bank is one of the larger financial institutions of the state, operating on a capital of one million five hundred thousand dollars, and some of the wealthiest men of the city are interested as stockholders and direc- tors. In a large degree its successful manage- ment has been directly in the hands of Mr. Bright from the beginning. He has achieved his ambition to become a successful banker, and to his bank has given his undivided atten- tion. He is a thirty-second degree Mason, a member of the Fort Worth Club, of the First Methodist Episcopal Church and is a democrat in politics.
The great incentive to his work as a banker Mr. Bright acknowledges as his home and family. He has enjoyed an ideal home and family life. June 10, 1905, he married Miss
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Amye Vickery, daughter of R. and Nellie Vickery, of a prominent Fort Worth family. The four children of Mr. and Mrs. Bright are Marcus, Jr., born in 1906; Hemming, born in 1908; Willard V., born in 1914; and Marjorie Belle, born in 1916.
HON. TOM C. BRADLEY. A successful law- yer needs to know men and affairs, and fre- quently gets that knowledge after being admitted to the bar. In the case of Tom C. Bradley of Fort Worth, the period of actual contact with the world began when he was a boy, and when he became a lawyer he had the invaluable background of a successful service in the operating department of railroads, and the self-reliant qualities that enabled him to make something of himself from limited op- portunities have brought him a high degree of achievement as a member of the Fort Worth bar.
Judge Bradley was born in Drew County, Arkansas, October 6, 1867, son of William and Martha (Bell) Bradley. His father, a native of Rutherford County, North Carolina, spent his active life as a contractor and farmer. Judge Bradley on both sides is of Irish ances- try. His mother was born and reared near Corinth, Mississippi, being a granddaughter of a native Irishman. Tom C. was the eighth in a family of eleven children, five of whom reached mature years. He did not spend many years in the home environment, and even as a boy showed the faculty of making himself at home in the midst of changing and frequently adverse circumstances. He came to Texas at the age of seventeen, and while he worked at a number of different things his employment soon became concentrated in railroading, and he worked as a section hand, bridge hand, then as fireman and conductor, and was an efficient railroader before he set himself seriously to prepare for a legal career. In the intervals of work he had done much to supplement his meager primary education, and after gaining the fundamentals of a common school train- ing he applied himself to the study of law while at Bonham, Texas, and was admitted to the bar in 1898. He at once engaged in prac- tice at Bonham, and his abilities and personal character soon won him important honors. For four years he served as mayor of the town, resigning that office to become county judge. He was elected county judge by the largest majority ever given a county official up to that time. He handled the business ad- ministration of the county with the highest
degree of credit for two terms, and then came to Fort Worth to enter upon his larger career as an attorney.
In Fort Worth he first practiced in partner- ship with Judge R. B. Young, now judge of the Forty-eighth District Court of Tarrant County. Later he entered a partnership with Mike E. Smith, Gains B. Turner and T. J. Powell, under the name Smith, Turner, Brad- ley & Powell. His next association was with the firm of McLean, Scott, McLean & Brad- ley, his partners being Judge W. P. McLean, Walter B. Scott, and W. P. McLean, Jr. Judge Bradley was with this firm three years, at the end of which time he became associated with Lloyd H. Burns, his pres- ent partner. The firm of Bradley & Burns has been subsequently enlarged by the taking in of A. W. Christian and Captain Durwood H. Bradley, the name of the present firm be- ing Bradley, Burns, Christian & Bradley. They have a large civil law clientage, and maintain offices in one of Fort Worth's most conspicuous skyscrapers, on the eighth floor of the Waggoner Building.
Judge Bradley is a member of the Masonic Order. He married Edna Boswell, who has special distinctions of her own in the Texas bar. She studied law, making a specialty of real property, and is one of the ablest lawyers in Texas on land titles and has performed a great deal of professional service in that field. Judge and Mrs. Bradley have two children: Patsey Geneva Joanna Bradley is the wife of S. J. Robinson, of Chicago; and Joseph Wel- don, born in 1900, is now in Tampico, Mexico, in an official position with one of the large drilling companies.
GEORGE W. BURROUGHS. Former post- master of Fort Worth and now in the insur- ance business, George W. Burroughs came to Texas more than forty years ago and was a rancher until he identified himself with the commercial life and affairs of Fort Worth, a city that he has seen and helped develop through the most important epochs of its history.
Mr. Burroughs was born in Lynn, Massa- chusetts, June 27, 1845. His father. George Burroughs, was a native of Londonderry, New Hampshire, and married Miss Lydia Russell, a native of Bradford, Massachusetts. Both spent their last years in Massachusetts, and of their six children, George W. is the only son and the only survivor.
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His boyhood was largely spent at Newbury- port, Massachusetts, where he attended the primary, grammar and high schools. After leaving school he went to Boston and acquired a thorough commercial training as salesman in a wholesale dry goods house. Mr. Burroughs continued to be identified with business in New England until 1877, when he came to the Southwest and invested his capital in a ranch and some cattle in Erath County.
In July, 1883, he came to Fort Worth, and was for several years secretary and treasurer of the W. A. Huffman Implement Company. Later he was in the wholesale grain business, and from 1902 to 1906 gave up his participa- tion in commercial affairs to serve the city as postmaster, to which position he had been ap- pointed by President Roosevelt. Since leaving the postoffice Mr. Burroughs has established and built up an extensive general insurance business, with offices in the Touraine Build- ing. For many years he has been an active Mason, and has held offices in the Lodge, Royal Arch Chapter and Council Degrees. He is a member of the St. Andrews Episcopal Church. In 1885 Mr. Burroughs married Miss Hilda Cetti.
JAMES A. BUIE. A wealthy and successful Fort Worth business man, James A. Buie has to a singular degree deserved all the good fortune that has come to him. His youth was a period of unaided work and struggle, and he developed his keen business talents by solv- ing the problems of existence with a minimum weekly wage.
He was born at Ennis, Texas, July 22, 1877, son of Aaron H. and Virginia (Hebra) Buie, the former a native of Mississippi and the lat- ter of Germany. He was the fourth of their ten children, eight of whom are still living. Mr. Buie's boyhood days were spent on a farm in North Central Texas. Three months each year he attended common schools, but when about fourteen his education was considered complete. After working on a farm for sev- eral years he went to Dallas, at the age of eighteen, and secured employment in a book store of that city at wages of $3 a week. He did housework for his room and board. This was his business apprenticeship, and he re- mained attentive to his duties for three years, and then went on the road as a traveling salesman, and for fifteen years represented different lines. Later he became interested in
the automobile industry and for a time was state manager of a motor truck factory.
Mr. Buie entered the oil industry as an investor in 1918. Two thousand dollars was all the capital he had to invest, and he put it in a development company which six weeks later struck oil and soon afterward Mr. Buie sold out his interests for $40,000. Since then he has done an extensive business, represent- ing Texas investments with offices in Fort Worth, New York and Boston, and has also developed a large business in automobiles and motor trucks, maintaining a branch office and storage plant at Breckenridge. The annual volume of his business now runs close to two million dollars.
In 1898 Mr. Buie married Eula Morgan, of Italy, Texas. They have three sons: Carey M., V. Wycliffe and Morgan J. A.
CYRUS ARTHUR WRIGHT has achieved a place of leadership at the Fort Worth bar in a very brief time, though he had a well established reputation as a Texas lawyer based upon about ten years of practice at Amarillo in the Panhandle region and a still earlier period of practice in McCulloch County. Mr. Wright has been an active member of the Texas bar for eighteen years.
He was born in Westmoreland County, Vir- ginia, August 27, 1873, and represents an old and aristocratic Virginia ancestry. The founder of the Wright family in America was William Wright, who located in Westmore- land County in 1725, and lived the life of an English country gentlemen. He had a large plantation, numerous slaves, and the fine old manorial dwelling, still standing and occupied by his descendants, was erected by mechanics imported from England. In later generations members of the family were soldiers in the Revolutionary war and the War of 1812. The father of the Texas lawyer was M. U. F. Wright, a native of Westmoreland County and practically a life-long resident on the old homestead there. Though under age, he en- listed at the beginning of the war between the states in the Ninth Virginia Cavalry as a sub- stitute for a cousin, whose father had died. He continued in the army after the cousin returned to the ranks, and was in service until Appomattox. Through half a century after the war he continued his work as a Virginia planter. In his generation the Wrights be- came Methodists, though formerly of the Episcopal Church. M. U. F. Wright was a
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democrat. He married Eliza Harding Coles, a native of Virginia, who died at the old home- stead in 1890, at the age of thirty-eight. Her grandfather, James Coles, was a colonel in the war with Mexico, while her father, Thomas Richard Coles, was a major in the Forty- seventh Virginia Infantry in the Confederate army. He married a Miss Harding, a rela- tive of Commodore Perry.
The oldest of five children, Cyrus Arthur Wright was given every advantage of home and the best schools in the country. He at- tended William and Mary College at Wil- liamsburg, Virginia, and through competitive examination won a scholarship in the Univer- sity of Nashville, from which he was gradu- ated with the A. B. degree in 1898. For four years before taking up the profession of law he was a teacher in Tennessee, South Carolina and Texas, coming to Texas in 1901 and teaching at Arlington. Mr. Wright began the practice of law at Itasca in Hill County in 1902, but soon engaged in practice at Brady, McCulloch County in West Texas, where he attained a high rank as a lawyer and served one term as county judge. After seven years at Brady he removed to Amarillo in March, 1909, engaging in the general practice of law and acquiring a legal business that made him one of the legal lights in the entire Panhandle district. From Amarillo Mr. Wright removed to Fort Worth, where he ranks with the ablest lawyers of the great city. Mr. Wright's of- fices are in the new F. & M. Bank Building. He is a member of the State Bar Association, is a democrat, but as a busy lawyer has had time to work in politics merely for the cause of good government. He is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
June 26, 1911, Mr. Wright married Miss Gladys Yoakum Gillette, who was born at Greenville, Hunt County, Texas. She was four years of age when her father, William S. Gillette, died. Three years later she went to Los Angeles with her mother, and lived in California until she was twelve, acquiring her early advantages in the schools there. Her mother, a member of the well known Taylor family of Tennessee and connected with the family of James K. Polk of that state, became the wife of Judge C. H. Yoakum, attorney general for the Frisco Railroad Company, and a brother of B. F. Yoakum. Mrs. Wright lived for several years with her mother and stepfather at Fort Worth and afterward grad-
uated with honors from the National Park Seminary of Washington, D. C. Mr. and Mrs. Wright have one son, Gillette Foy, born at Fort Worth February 9, 1913.
JOSEPH BRUCE WADE has been a member of the bar of several West Texas cities and coun- ties, and for the past six years has practiced at Fort Worth, as member of the well known firm of Bryan, Stone & Wade.
Mr. Wade came to Texas as a young Ten- nessee lawyer, and was born near Trenton in that state July 24, 1882, a son of Isham F. and Lou M. (Freeman) Wade. His parents were natives of Tennessee and of Scotch-Irish an- cestry. The Wades came originally from Scotland to Maryland, and many of the name became well known in that and in other states. Mr. Wade's grandfather, William Wade, was a native of Maryland, and left that state and settled in middle Tennessee and afterwards in West Tennessee. One of the direct ancestors sister to the mother of George Washington. Isham Wade and wife had ten children, all of whom are still living except one son. Joseph of the Fort Worth lawyer was Mary Ball, a Bruce was the seventh child.
He spent his boyhood in West Tennessee, was educated in the Trenton High School, and graduated in law from Vanderbilt University at Nashville in 1903. He was admitted to the bar a few days after his twenty-first birthday, and for two years practiced in his home town of Trenton as member of the firm of Harwood & Wade.
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