USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 16
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WILLIAM D. REYNOLDS. For all the re- markable variety and extent of its wealth and resources Texas has been, and in the opinion of competent judges, will continue for several generations to be one of the world's greatest feeding and breeding grounds for livestock. Livestock, chiefly the old Texas Longhorn, was for years Texas' principal product. Just now the world's eyes are focused on Texas because of its petroleum wealth. There are many forms of mineral resources, agriculture and lumber in Texas, yet in spite of what en- thusiasts may say a time may come when Texas will cease to produce oil, but the indus- try of stock raising will go on and flourish as long as mankind regards meat an essential part of its diet.
For this reason all the elements and tradi- tions of permanence and substantiality are associated with Texas stock men and they seem more to the manner born as part of the Lone Star commonwealth than men engaged in any other line of business. Among men of this class still living whose experience com- prehends nearly every phase of the great southwestern cattle industry from its begin- nings as an insecure occupation in the midst . of the buffalo and wild Indian one of the most conspicuous is William D. Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds for a number of years has lived at Fort Worth, the city which primarily owed its greatness to the livestock business. Mr. Rey-
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nolds is a younger brother of George T. Rey- nolds, and both became identified with the cat- tle industry in Western Texas about the close of the Civil war.
William D. Reynolds was born in Mont- gomery County, Alabama, April 22, 1846, son of B. W. and Anna Marie (Campbell) Rey- nolds. In 1847, the year after his birth, the family came to Shelby County, Texas, and about 1859 they moved to old Fort Griffin, the famous military post and rendezvous of cattle men in West Texas. B. W. Reynolds was long a prominent cattle man.
Except for a few terms of instruction in the school of East Texas, William D. Reynolds acquired that sort of education which is an appropriate balance between the activities of the body and the seat of good judgment. Like the ancient youth, he learned to ride, to shoot and to tell the truth.
While he acquired the rudiments of experi- ence in the cattle industry on his father's ranch, he had an interesting point of contact when he undertook his first work away from home. That was as an employe of the historic firm of Loving & Goodnight. September 22 1867, he hired out to this outfit at fifty dollars a month, furnishing his own horses and saddles. He was one of the cowboys who as- sisted in moving a herd of thirty-two hundred head of cattle for Loving & Goodnight to Colorado. He took along some forty odd head of his own. It was during this expedition that Oliver Loving was killed by the Indians, and Mr. Reynolds assisted in bringing back the body of that Texas pioneer to his old home at Weatherford. At the close of his term of service Mr. Reynolds had increased his per- sonal capital to seven hundred dollars in cash and a mule worth a hundred and twenty-five dollars. In the spring of 1868 he and his brother George combined their capital, and that was in fact the beginning of the Reynolds Land & Cattle Company, a business partner- ship and corporation that is one of the oldest in the Southwest and has become famous among stockmen all over the West. For a number of years they kept much of their stock on the range in Eastern Colorado, but follow- ing the drought of 1876 they moved their herds and headquarters to Roberts County in the Texas Panhandle. The next year most of the Reynolds stock was sold to Charles Good- night. W. D. Reynolds then returned to the old family seat at Fort Griffin, and continued in the cattle business from that point until 1883. That year he took up his residence at
Albany, and became a stockholder and later vice president of the First National Bank of Albany.
The operations of the Reynolds .brothers have nearly always been conducted on a large scale. However, the extent of their operations has not been the sole distinction of their work. They were pioneers in the introduction of high class cattle to the range in West Texas. They showed a willingness to spend money and pa- tience in adapting the improved strains of beef animals developed in England and in other countries to the conditions of the Southwest, and it has been many years since any of the typical range stock was kept on the Reynolds ranches. Their stock farms have become noted as breeding centers for the Hereford strain, and they have brought some of the finest speci- mens of pedigreed stock to Texas. From the Reynolds Cattle Company have proceeded some of the most active influences in raising the standards of the livestock industry of West Texas.
A tribute to Mr. Reynolds written several years ago is as true today as it was then: "It would fill a large catalogue to mention the va- rious enterprises and fortunes and vicissitudes of Mr. Reynolds in his connection with the livestock industry and other lines of enterprise in Texas. He has been through the whole schedule, has witnessed and experienced the bad years and the good, has fought Indians, has endured drought and blizzards, has herded his cattle over the vast free ranges when only the buffalo and the Indians disputed his pos- session of the territory, and has also con- ducted his operations in the presence of agri- cultural settlers and the railroads and with all the varied facilities and activities of modern civilization. The important fact is that Mr. Reynolds, by exceptional business ability and the persistent courage of the true cattle man, has always averaged a little bit above the standard of success, and for years has been one of the most influential and prosperous citizens of Texas.
"W. D. Reynolds is a man whose figure and dignified bearing would attract attention in any company. His manner is modest and un- assuming, and during his long, eventful career he has made many friends. No man stands better or has greater influence with the people of his section, and there are few more care- less of the honors that might be gained for the asking. He has no political aspirations and has never allowed his name used in connection with a public office,"
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For about twenty years Mr. Reynolds had his home at Albany, but since 1904 has lived in Fort Worth. He is still vice president of the Reynolds Cattle Company, with offices in the new Reynolds Building at the corner of Main and Ninth streets. He is one of the prominent figures of the Texas Cattle Raisers Association, and is a director of the Fort Worth National Bank. He is a Knights Templar Mason and Shriner, and a member of the River Crest Country Club of Fort Worth.
January 1, 1879, Mr. Reynolds married Miss Susie A. Matthews, daugher of J. B. Matthews, of Albany, Texas. His home life and his children have been Mr. Reynolds' greatest inspiration. His eight children were named George Eaton, Ella, William D., Jr., Joseph Matthew, Annie Merle, Watt Wendel, John and Nathan B. During the great war three of the Reynolds boys were soldiers, all of them serving as commissioned officers.
HUNTER E. GARDNER has contributed his quota to the development and upbuilding of the substantial business controlled by the Car- ter Grocer Company, one of the representative wholesale corporations in the city of Fort Worth, and he holds the office of president of this company. He was born at Homewood, Mississippi, on the 21st of December, 1868, and was the second in order of birth in a fam- ily of six children. He is a son of William H. and Hattie (Wilson) Gardner, both of whom were born in the state of Alabama and the latter of whom died when about thirty- five years of age. The father died in Granger, October 24, 1920, aged seventy-six years.
To the public schools of Forest, Mississippi, Hunter E. Gardner is indebted for his early education, and later he completed a course in a business college at Bowling Green, Ken- tucky. Thereafter he was associated with the general merchandise business at Forest, Mis- sissippi, until 1892, when he came to Texas and established his residence at Sherman. There he was connected with the wholesale grocery house of the Eubank Grocery Com- pany until 1895, when he came to Fort Worth and connected himself with the Carter-Battle Wholesale Grocer Company. When this cor- poration was succeeded by the Carter Grocer Company in 1910, Mr. Gardner became treas- urer of the new corporation, an office he con- tinued to fill until January 1, 1921, when he was elected president of the company. He is
affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, includ- ing the Knights Templar and Mystic Shrine, and also with the local lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He holds mem- bership in the Glen Garden and the River Crest Country Clubs and also in the Fort Worth Club. He and his wife are members of the Presbyterian Church.
In December, 1897, was solemnized the mar- riage of Mr. Gardner to Miss Lotta Carter, daughter of Everett H. and Belle Carter, of Fort Worth, and they have three children, Hunter E., Jr., Rosalind and Belle.
HERMAN GARTNER when a boy at Houston entered an insurance office as his first means of earning a living, rapidly acquired a knowl- edge of the business and discovered in it a profession worthy of his best energies, and for a number of years has lived in North Texas and is a member of the association, Mitchell, Gartner & Walton, one of the largest general insurance agencies in the South.
Mr. Gartner, one of Fort Worth's most highly esteemed citizens, was born at Cibolo, Guadalupe County, Texas, August 30, 1886, son of George and Mary (Vordenbaum) Gartner. His father is deceased and his mother is living at Houston. Herman Gart- ner, fourth among their seven children, was reared and educated in Houston and was first an office boy for the firm of Cravens & Kelly at Houston. He remained with that firm six years, and eventually they transferred him to North Texas as special agent and claim ad- juster, with headquarters at Dallas.
January 1. 1909, Mr. Gartner moved to Fort Worth and engaged in the general insur- ance business on his own account. He has been a member of Mitchell, Gartner & Walton since 1913. This firm has a large suite of offices at 810 Throckmorton Street, and about twenty-five people are employed for the office and outside work of the agency.
April 7, 1914, Mr. Gartner married Miss Elizabeth Reynolds, daughter of Fort Worth's well known stock man and capitalist, George W. Reynolds. Mr. Gartner offered his serv- ices to the Government at the time of the World war. He attended the Officers Train- ing School at Jacksonville, Florida, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Offi- cers Reserve Corps, but was not called to active duty before the signing of the armistice. He is a member of the Fort Worth Club and the River Crest Country Club.
SAP
Herman Partner
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FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
JOHN BAILEY CRADDOCK, secretary of the Carter Grocer Company, one of the substan- tial and important wholesale concerns lending its quota to the commercial prestige and precedence of the city of Fort Worth, was born at Houston, Virginia, on the 8th of Feb- ruary, 1866, and is a scion of an honored fam- ily early founded in the historic Old Domin- ion commonwealth, where both of his parents were born and reared. Mr. Craddock is a son of Dr. John W. and Mary (Easley) Craddock, the former of whom is deceased and the latter still maintains her home in Virginia, where Doctor Craddock was for many years engaged in the practice of his profession as one of the able physicians and surgeons of his native state. Doctor and Mrs. Craddock became the parents of ten children, all of whom attained to years of maturity, and of the number John B. was the fourth child and third son.
John Bailey Craddock is indebted to the public schools of his native place for his early educational discipline, and as a young man he became a successful traveling salesman in the commercial field. In 1894 he established his residence in Fort Worth and became a travel- ing salesman for the wholesale grocery house of the Waples-Platter Company, but in the following year became one of the organizers and stockholders of the Carter-Battle Grocer Company. When a reorganization of this com- pany was effected and the title changed to the Carter-Hunt Grocer Company, Mr. Craddock became secretary of the corporation, and when the present title of Carter Grocer Company was adopted he assumed the important execu- tive office of secretary, of which he has con- tinued the efficient and progressive incumbent to the present time, with secure place as one of the vital and representative business men of Fort Worth, his loyalty to his home city being marked by deep appreciation and great faith in its future. He is affiliated with the Fort Worth Lodge of the Benevolent and Protec- tive Order of Elks, and holds membership in the Glen Garden Country Club and the Rotary Club.
On the 24th of April, 1904, was recorded the marriage of Mr. Craddock to Miss Donna Lee Carter, daughter of Everett H. and Belle Carter, of Fort Worth, and the three children of this union are Jean, Dorothy Lee and John B. Jr.
CHARLES BERNARD SMITH, but more famil- iarly known among his friends as Barney Smith, is the particular genius whose abundant
enthusiasm, energy and technical skill have been responsible for nourishing an industry at Fort Worth, which when he came to the city in 1907 was in precarious infancy, to one of the strongest, most vigorous and prosperous industrial institutions of the state. This is the Texas Rolling Mill Company, and Fort Worth business men who appreciate the splen- did asset this industry brings the city have freely given to Barney Smith the chief credit for its wonderful growth.
C. B. Smith was born near Dayton, Ohio, in 1881, son of Adam J. and Sarah A. (Smith) Smith. His maternal grandfather, Joseph E. Smith, was the founder of Wooster, Ohio. His parents were also born in Ohio, but when Barney was four years of age they moved to a farm near Muncie, Indiana, where the boy grew up. He was educated in the grammar and high schools of Delaware County, Indiana, took the normal course at the Northern In- diana Normal University at Valparaiso and studied law in the Indiana University at Bloomington. He completed his law studies at the age of nineteen. About that time there developed pulmonary troubles which seemed a permanent bar to any confining professional career. Instead of practicing law he became a blacksmith's apprentice in a machine shop at Muncie, and with a growing fondness for the work supplemented his practical educa- tion with technical courses in drafting, ma- chinery designing, strength and testing of ma- terials and technical engineering in general through courses with the Scranton Corre- spondence Schools.
Until 1901 he was a blacksmith in the Muncie shops of the Republic Iron and Steel Company, following which as a construction engineer he had part in the construction of the plant of the Highland Iron and Steel Company at Terre Haute, one of the most important in- dustrial concerns of the city and one of the best merchant iron mills in the country. His next technical service was at St. Louis, where for fourteen months he was connected with the rolling mill department of the American Car and Foundry Company. Following that he spent a little over a year with the Western Iron Mills Company at Denver.
Barney Smith came to Fort Worth in Feb- ruary, 1907, expecting to render only a tem- porary service to the Texas Rolling Mill Company. That was a comparatively new industrial concern, the main plant had just been burned, and the stockholders and direc- tors had never been able to realize any profits
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FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
from the enterprise. The capitalization was only $75,000. As a master of almost the en- tire range of technique involved in iron plants and rolling mills, Mr. Smith supervised the re- construction of the overhead machinery and the mechanical equipment of the rolling mills. In the meantime he had become acquainted with Fort Worth, and having a vision of big things for the company he was readily per- suaded to remain with it, continuing as gen- eral foreman of the plant and from February, 1915, until November, 1920, was vice president and general manager of the company. In the meantime the company had increased its capi- tal to $250,000, and though a pioneer industry in a new field, and under the necessity of es- tablishing a market for its products in the face of great competition, it has established a se- cure position on a plane of rivalry with the great merchant iron mills of the North and East, and for a number of years every railroad in Texas has gone to this Fort Worth industry for some of its bar iron and other supplies. The company made a specialty of steel prod- ucts used in concrete construction. A still further expansion of the industry came in 1919 when a special department for the manu- facture of oil well supplies, and machinery for the manufacturing of oil, was added at a cost of $150,000. The business now employs 500 men, more than sixty per cent of whom are skilled mechanics.
Thus at the age of forty Mr. Smith has to his credit the achievement of building up one of the most distinctive industries of the South- west. A man of great enthusiasm himself, he has been associated with other enthusiastic citizens in promoting the welfare and upbuild- ing of Fort Worth, has long been an honored member of the Chamber of Commerce, is a member of the Fort Worth Club, the Rotary Club, and is a Knight Templar and Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner. Among other inter- ests he owns a cattle ranch in the state of Mississippi, the ranch being near one of the battlefields on which Captain Paddock, editor of this state history, fought during the Civil war. Mr. Smith married Miss Julia A. Tur- ner, of Terre Haute, Indiana. They have four children, Beatrice, Charles Bernard, Jr., and Anna Belle and Alma Delle, twin daughters.
ALVA ROY ELDREDGE, manager of the Union Transfer Company of Fort Worth, was a vet- eran servant of railway transportation for many years, for more than two decades having been in the service of the Texas & Pacific
Company prior to establishing his permanent home and headquarters at Fort Worth in his present business.
Mr. Eldredge was born in Shelby County, Ohio, October 26, 1865, son of Jonathan Ed- ward and Casie (Evans) Eldredge. His parents spent all their lives in Ohio, and Alva Roy was a small boy when they died. He grew up at Troy, Ohio, acquired his education in the public schools, and at an early age began working for himself. As a railroad employe he learned telegraphy, became an operator, and in 1886, at the age of twenty-one, came to Texas. His first headquarters were at Mar- shall, and for twenty-two years he was with the Texas and Pacific as operator, agent and in other capacities. He was on duty at many of the leading stations along the route, even as far West as El Paso, where he was agent until he left the service of the railroad and came to Fort Worth in 1908.
For the past twelve years has had the active management of the Union Transfer Company, and has made that one of the important assets in the city's facilities for handling and trans- porting commodities. Mr. Eldredge during his career has been an extensive traveler and is one of the best informed men on North and West Texas. He has co-operated in a public spirited manner with the progressive forces of Fort Worth during the past twelve years, and is a popular member of some of the city's best known organizations, including the Fort Worth Club, the Temple Club, Rotary Club, is a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner and a member of the Knights of Pythias.
In 1894 he married Miss Maud Capps, a sister of the well known Texas lawyer. They have three children. Lois C. is the wife of C. C. Griffin, of Breckenridge, Texas. Both sons are in their university careers, Ward C. being a student at Princeton, while Frank A. is in the University of Texas.
REECE S. ALLEN. While Reece S. Allen was one of the early operators in the Beau- mont oil fields in southeastern Texas and made a very considerable fortune there, the primary purpose of his coming to North Texas was to acquire and develop a cattle ranch, and it is almost with jealousy that he watches the encroachment of oil derricks upon his cattle pastures. Mr. Allen, whose home is at Electra and whose business offices are in Wichita Falls, is a member of the prominent syndicate Kemp-Munger-Allen Company, whose initials
ليتكر ف
கட
بخرة
Face 8. aller
٠
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FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
form the well known title, K M A, for one of the best known oil districts in North Texas.
Mr. Allen was born in Pettis County, Mis- souri, and is still a comparatively young man on the lee side of fifty. His parents were Charles and Mary (Hughes) Allen. His father came from an eastern state to Mis- souri before the Civil war and served as a Confederate soldier. Mary Hughes was a member of the Hughes family of Central Mis- souri, long distinguished for their great stock farms and the ownership of some of the most noted cattle, horses and hogs in the world. Thus through his mother's ancestry Reece S. Allen comes by his interest in stock raising very naturally.
He was reared and educated chiefly in Pet- tis County, Missouri, and as a young man in 1902 left Missouri and went to Beaumont, Texas. In 1905 he bought 40,000 acres on the Waggoner ranch property along the bluffs of Red River and Wichita County. A Central Missourian and old friend of Mr. Allen, a correspondent of the Dallas News, recently told something about Mr. Allen as a rancher and oil operator : "Much of the original ranch purchase has been resold, and is bearing oil in spots, but he has held to as inviting a ranch district as ever received the shadow of a crow in flight, and has made the dream of his youth come true. Hundreds of Polled Angus cattle browse over land where the oil drill has never touched, but he fears-and ex- presses it as such while pointing to a com- munity of derricks over by Red River and their counterparts standing on Sunshine Hill off to the Southwest, and between them the cattle graze-that the two pools may hook up."
It was in the fall of 1919 that the firm of Kemp-Munger-Allen opened up the famous K M A oil field district of Wichita County. Mr. Allen has made his home at Electra since early in 1905, coming here before the Electra field was opened. Even as a rancher he has always been engaged in oil production and oil enterprises. He is president of the Reece Allen Refining Company, operating refinery at Amarillo, and has many other business and financial interests in Northwest Texas.
Mr. Allen married Miss Jennie Ferguson, of Callaway County, Missouri. They have one son, DeCourse Allen.
REV. EDWARD F. PARK, C. M., has been a resident of Fort Worth a dozen years, and as
pastor has been largely responsible for the splendid work represented in and accomplished by the St. Mary's of the Assumption Church at Jennings Avenue and Magnolia Street. In this field of labor Father Park has gained the utmost confidence of the people, Catholic and non-Catholic, and here has rounded out and brought to fruitage much of the mature ex- perience of his career.
He was born at Donaldsonville, Louisiana, in 1874, son of John and Mary Catherine (Fitzgerald) Park. He acquired his literary education at the hands of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart College at New Orleans, gradu- ating at the age of fourteen. At the age of fifteen he was associated with his father in business. At nineteen came the resolution to devote his life to the service of God. He entered the community of the Priests of the Congregation, with whom he completed his philosophical and theological courses. In 1898, three years prior to receiving the sacrament of Holy Orders, he entered upon his first great , work of importance, having been sent to Chi- cago, where he became one of the founders and first Prefect of Discipline of the now fa- mous University of De Paul. He was or- dained to the priesthood in St. Louis, June 14, 1901. Having spent eight years in the upbuild- ing of the Catholic University at Chicago, Father Park was sent in October, 1905, to Dallas, so that he has now been identified with this state for sixteen years. He built the mag- nificent school of higher education, the pride of Dallas, known as the University of Dallas. His next assignment was to Fort Worth, and he came to this city in November, 1908.
Here again a glorious work was accom- plished for the church. Through his efforts the present beautiful edificce of St. Mary's of the Assumption was erected and completed in May, 1909, by a congregational of the faith- ful. It has grown and continued to grow un- der the tutelage and administration of Father Park, who is an indefatigable worker for the members of his congregation in his parish. What he has done both in his parish and out- side of his parochial duties has gained him a high place in the hearts of Fort Worth people. He is still in the best years of young manhood, and there is promise of a long period of fruit- ful years still before him. This church is a beautiful structure, especially in the interior, and while the congregation is young in years it has to its credit many benefits and influences exercised throughout Fort Worth.
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