USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 18
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February 9, 1871, Mr. Burnett married Ruth Lloyd, daughter of M. B. Lloyd, who for many years was president of the First National Bank of Fort Worth. By this mar- riage Mr. Burnett had two children: Thomas L., long actively associated with his father in the cattle and land business; and Annie V., deceased wife of Charles A. Johnson. In 1892 Mr. Burnett married Mrs. Claude Bar- radal, a daughter of the distinguished Parker County citizen, J. R. Couts. The one son of that union was S. B. Burnett, Jr., who died in 1916 in early manhood. The death of this son, who had received every advantage of training and possessed many of the best qual- ities of his ancestry, was the greatest sorrow to Mr. Burnett.
A few years ago an old friend, T. J. Powell, wrote a sketch of Samuel Burk Bur- nett. This sketch is such a tribute as only a great man could deserve, and such as only an old time friend could write. It tells more about the real Burk Burnett than any formal biography possibly could. However, only a few of the paragraphs can be reproduced here.
"Burnett is a remarkable man," says Mr. Powell. "His strenuous life has left few marks on him. The trials and hardships of frontier life, with its dangers, severe sickness and heavy responsibilities, incessant and ever- pressing, have left him tranquil in mind and spirit. Typically a high type of the frontiers- man, he is as open and sunny in his nature as the prairies and rugged as the hills in the strengths of his character. He hates the shams and veneer of modern social life and is at all times a natural whole-souled man of the world, generous to his friends and open in his aversion to his enemies. To know him is never to forget him, and his cheery voice and laughter will live in the memory of those who know him as long as life lasts.
"He has the rare faculty of holding his friends. Generous-minded, he is a true 'Elk,' and the faults of his friends are traced in the sand. Bitterness is foreign to his mind. He will go to great lengths to serve a friend, but will not cross the street to punish an enemy. He is too big for the small animosities of life and too busy to harbor a hatred. His friends are found in every walk of life from the humblest Indian in his wigwam on the Reservation to the President of the United States.
"When President Roosevelt visited Bur- nett to take the famous wolf hunt, he found a congenial spirit, and between the two men a firm and lasting friendship was established. They had met in a business way when Bur- nett was fighting to hold his leases in the Ter- ritory. The same strenuous, forceful strain of life is in them both. Each has an innate, ineradicable sense of justice and personal courage. Both are natural leaders of men. Burnett, assisted by his son, Tom Burnett, handled the famous wolf hunt, and since that time Roosevelt has referred to him as 'that man Burnett, whose heart is a genuine gold brick.'
"While this sketch is being written a signal honor has been conferred on him by the Sad- dle and Sirloin Club of Chicago, an exclusive organization whose membership is limited to the kings of the livestock business. This organization has requested Burnett to sit for an oil painting to be hung on the walls of the club by the side of the portraits of the late Gustav Swift, Phil D. Armour, Nelson Morris, ex-Secretary of Agriculture Wilson, and other great men who have figured largely in the livestock industry of America. He is
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the first Texan to be thus honored, and the honor is deserved.
"Burnett is a lovable man in social life and has a multitude of friends among all classes, from the Indians who met him in their wig- wams in the early days to the rich financiers in their imposing homes. There are no for- malities in his office or home. The writer doubts if there ever lived a man more thor- oughly liked and admired by his friends. He has the abandon and joyous spirits of a youth and is always the life of any crowd he is with. He never gave a man the 'worst of it' in his life or deceived a man or misrepresented a fact. One reason of this is because he always bought and sold on the open market in his own name and never speculated in uncertain business enterprises except when he would subscribe to some scheme to help a friend or his home city, and these things were incidents not calculated in his business ven- tures or as part of his business purposes. Thoughtful in his speech, generous in thought, he is an ideal friend. No ill humor can alter his views of a man or find credence with him. His sense of loyalty prevents this and he comes as near as any man to the exemplifica- tion of that old injunction 'see no evil; hear no evil ; speak no evil.' That's Burnett. His eyes, ears and mouth are closed to the faults of other men and slanders concerning them. "Burnett's contact with nature, in his life on the range and in the great open spaces, has implanted in him its rugged strength and beauty. He has the warmth of the noonday sun, the mildness of the midnight moon, the resourcefulness of the soil. Like nature, he has many aspects, and from each viewpoint he is capable, natural, sincere. Changing sea- sons of success, disappointments, joy and sor- row may shift the perspective, but he is always true to the cardinal principles of his life-honor, truth, integrity, loyalty and love of his fellow-man."
JAMES C. MYTINGER. For a man of his age James C. Mytinger has some unusually heavy business responsibilities at Wichita Falls, but this is due not only to his exceptional talents but to his continuous experience, beginning as a youth, with the group of industrial activities and other interests that have been most promi- nent in the commercial history of Wichita Falls.
Mr. Mytinger was born at Sulphur Springs, Texas, in 1889. His father, though for many years a resident of Sulphur Springs, is now a
manufacturer of machinery bearings in Phil- adelphia. James C. Mytinger was educated in the public schools of his native town, at- tended the Agricultural and Mechanical Col- lege of Texas, and with some of the technical ability inherited from his father and the train- ing afforded in school he came to Wichita Falls in 1910, at the age of twenty-one.
Almost his entire business life here has been in association with the industrial, railroad and other interests of Messrs. J. A. Kemp and Frank Kell, who have been the capitalists chiefly responsible for the upbuilding of Wich- ita Falls. These successful men found in Mr. Mytinger an able lieutenant, and he in turn attributed to them a constant source of inspiration leading him to success. For sev- eral years he was secretary in charge of de- tail work for their interests. Incidentally for some time he was assistant secretary of the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce, and for four or five months was acting secretary of that body.
From March 1, 1917, to June 1, 1921, Mr. Mytinger was general manager of the Wichita Mill & Elevator Company, of which Frank Kell is president. This is the largest flour mill in Texas, and for several years the city's leading industrial establishment. The mill was established by Mr. Kell and his asso- ciates more than twenty years ago, and it afforded a primary market for the surround- ing territory when wheat growing was in its infancy, but for many years past it has been one of the chief milling institutions of the entire Southwest. On June 1, 1921, Mr. Mytinger succeeded the James C. Hunt Grain Company, a firm that had conducted business in Wichita Falls for twenty-six years. As president of the J. C. Mytinger Grain Com- pany he does a general domestic and export grain business and also has twenty elevators throughout Northwest Texas and the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma. The capacity of the Wichita Falls elevator is 300,000 bushels.
Mr. Mytinger is also secretary and treasurer of the Wichita Falls Traction Company and of the Wichita Falls Window Glass Company, is associated with a number of other enter- prises, and is prominent in the Chamber of Commerce, being chairman of its Business Council. He was one of the organizers and is a very active spirit in the Wichita Falls Open Shop Association. Mr. Mytinger married Miss Grace Truman Porter, of Marshall, Texas, They have one son, James C., Jr.
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GEORGE F. THOMPSON, a man of broad and mature business experience and successful achievement, has been a resident of Texas only since 1918, but has entered with charac- teristic ability and enthusiasm into the romance and practical production of the celebrated oil fields of Northwest Texas, where he has be- come one of the most resourceful and in- fluential representatives of the industry in the field about Electra, Wichita County, where he maintains his home and business headquarters. In giving record of his connection with oper- ations in this field it is gratifying to be able to reproduce the following extracts from another publication, issued in April, 1920:
"Colonel George F. Thompson, manager of the Thompson Brothers Drilling Company of Electra, Texas, who has made a phenomenal record in the Electra oil fields within the last two years, came here from Minneapolis. Min- nesota, where he was formerly engaged in the carriage business, being president and gen- eral manager of the George F. Thompson & Son Buggy Company, a well known concern who were extensive manufacturers of car- riages in Minneapolis for over thirty years, up to about 1914."
Mr. Thompson was born and reared in York County, Maine, and comes of that strong New England ancestry that has been the founda- tion of the best in American character and achievement. He received his early educa- tion in the schools of his native state and was but a boy when he entered upon a practical apprenticeship to the sturdy trade of black- smith. At the age of seventeen years he gained pioneer distinction in the State of Iowa, where he established a small shop and engaged in the manufacturing of buggies and carriages, this having been perhaps the first factory of the kind west of Chicago. Some time later Mr. Thompson established a carriage factory at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, but eventually he re- moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he became the founder and executive head of the George F. Thompson Buggy Company, which eventually developed into the largest manu- facturing enterprise of the kind in the North- west, the company's buggies and carriages hav- ing found sale throughout the states to the west of the Great Lakes and those as far south as Texas. He continued his active asso- ciation with carriage manufacturing for con- siderably more than thirty years-until the in- roads of the automobile brought virtual de- cadence to the use of horse-drawn vehicles of the kind. With characteristic resource-
fulness Mr. Thompson turned his energies and powers into another field of industrial enter- prise. In 1918 he came to Electra, Texas, a vigorous town situated in the heart of one of the richest oil fields in Wichita County, and here he engaged in the drilling of oil wells. This was a branch of industry of which he had at that time not the slightest technical knowledge, but he was confident that the same energy, the same careful and honorable methods that had enabled him to develop and build up a substantial manufacturing enter- prise would prove efficacious in the new field. Accordingly he fortified himself thoroughly in all details of his new business, his mechanical skill and information proving of great value in this connection. He soon became one of the most prominent and successful well drillers in this field, besides continuing as the execu- tive representative of the Minnesota Southern Oil Syndicate, which has large holdings of oil leases and properties in this section of Texas. Mr. Thompson has forged well to the front as one of the leading oil producers and business men of the Wichita County oil fields. One of his recent and noteworthy achievements was the bringing in of the famous Bowers gusher, about fifteen miles northeast of Electra. He effected this result in June, 1920, when the well came in as a gusher. The completion of this well was effected under most discouraging circum- stances. Mr. Thompson originally became associated with the project only in the way of contracting to drill the well, with no personal interest of a financial order. The well was spudded in late in the fall of 1919. As the drilling progressed, those who were financing the project found difficulty in obtaining funds for continuing the drilling, besides which they began to lose faith in the enterprise. The sit- uation steadily grew worse in this respect, and Mr. Thompson determined to take over the work and continue the operations in an inde- pendent way. These operations were carried forward in the face of adverse conditions caused by severe weather and by muddy roads that made impossible the use of automobile trucks in bringing in the heavy supplies that were demanded. Thus such supplies had to be transported by teams, and in addition to this water interfered much with drilling operations. Under these conditions and with a large amount of money involved, it required a stout heart and resolute will to continue the enterprise. The victory was won in the bring- ing in of a gusher that more than amply re-
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paid Mr. Thompson for his work, his confi- dence and his determined spirit. The Bowers well established a new oil field in Wichita County, and it was soon surrounded by other derricks, thus adding materially to the oil production of the county.
Mr. Thompson, with characteristic loyalty and progressiveness, has proved one of the apostles of civic, industrial and material ad- vancement at Electra, and in evidence of his enterprise and public spirit stands the Thomp- son Building, which is a three-story brick busi- ness block, with offices on the upper floors. By erecting this building he has contributed much to the appearance and business facilities of Electra. Two of his sons by his first mar- riage, Karl W. and Frederick, are successful and representative young business men of Wichita County, the former having been the promoter and developer of the Southland addi- tion to this vital little city.
In February, 1920, was solemnized the mar- riage of Mr. Thompson to Mrs. Katharine O'Donnell, a talented young woman of gra- cious personality, and she is the popular chate- laine of their home. She was a resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the time of her marriage.
EDWARD SCHLAFFKE. While Electra during the past ten years has become one of the most famous towns in the Southwest, it was prac- tically an unknown and unimportant village in the midst of an agricultural district when Edward Schlaffke went there in 1910. Mr. Schlaffke was a merchant when the first big oil discoveries were made in that vicinity, de- veloped a highly profitable business in the course of the oil boom, and has matched his capital and personal enterprise with every suc- cessive development in that rich community. He has taken an active share in the oil busi- ness, is also a banker and takes the deepest interest and pride in the remarkable history of Electra.
Mr. Schlaffke was born at Horine, in Jeffer- son County, Missouri, in 1880. Jefferson County is one of the historic counties of Mis- souri, located just below St. Louis, the county seat being the old town of Hillsboro. Mr. Schlaffke's mother was born there, and her people were early pioneers in the county. His father was a boy when his parents came to this country and settled in Jefferson County.
Edward Schlaffke spent twelve years of his early youth in St. Louis, where he finished his schooling. He was a young man of thirty
when he came to Electra in 1910, and in March of the following year he invested a capital of fifteen hundred dollars to start him in the hardware business. As one of the early men on the ground he was in a position to take advantage of the subsequent rapid growth following the oil discoveries, and his enter- prise developed a business of great scope and value. When he sold it in 1919 the sale price was forty-six thousand dollars, a figure that is an interesting index to the individual achievements of Mr. Schlaffke.
He left merchandising to devote his time and energies to his other affairs. He has been a stockholder and director of the First National Bank of Electra since 1914, and in 1917 became its president. This bank is by no means one of the oldest financial insti- tutions of Northwest Texas, but in point of resources it is one of the most prosperous. Mr. Schlaffke has devoted a large amount of capital to the oil industry centered at Electra, and is a director of the Beaver-Electra Refin- ing Company and president of the Beaver- Electra Tank Line Company, which operates a system of two hundred and fifty tank cars for oil transportation.
He has in fact been in the forefront of all worthy movements to place Electra among the wealthiest and most progressive cities of its size in the state. He is president of the Grand Theater Company, which built and operates in the city a theater costing over a hundred thousand dollars, and one of the most attrac- tive playhouses in the Southwest. He is a director in the Farmers Elevator Company and the Electra Ice Company. Mr. Schlaffke is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and other business and civic organizations.
He married Miss Effie Marriott, and they have three children : Catharine, Emeline and Edward, Jr.
CHARLES C. LITTLETON, president of the Texas Cotton Seed Crushers Association, is an authority by long experience and expert knowledge on every phase of cotton oil pro- duction. He is active executive head of sev- eral large cotton oil mills over North Texas, and directs his extensive business affairs from Fort Worth, which city he has considered his home for many years and in which he is regarded as one of the most alert and pro- gressive men of affairs.
Mr. Littleton is a native of Roane County, Tennessee, but since he came to Texas at the age of ten he practically regards the Lone
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Star as his native state. His life has been a program of self effort and hard work. He was employed as a farm hand at the age of seventeen and in the meantime had limited opportunities to acquire even a common school education. For two years he was a section hand on the Texas & Pacific Railroad. From his earnings in that capacity he managed to save enough to attend school six months. The next important step in his career was his appointment as department clerk of the County Court of Parker County. He resigned from that position to take a place in the Bank of Weatherford, and had a valuable training and experience in banking for six years.
Mr. Littleton has been actively identified with the cotton oil business for the past twenty-one years. He resigned from the bank at Weatherford in December, 1899, to become associated with a group of cotton oil mill men, and continuous experience and study have made him an authority on every phase of cot- ton oil production. An important group of these industries in North Texas are directed by him in an executive capacity as president and general manager. This group includes the Mutual Cotton Oil Company of Fort Worth, and the Whitesboro Cotton Oil Com- pany, the St. Jo Cotton Oil Company, the Nocona Cotton Oil Company, the Gainesville Cotton Oil Company at the places named, and the Planters Cotton Oil Company at Weather- ford. It was an appropriate honor when Mr. Littleton was chosen president of the Texas Cotton Seed Crushers Association.
For many years he has been active in the civic and social affairs of his home city, where he is a member of the Fort Worth Club and other organizations. May 15, 1895, he married Pearl Corn. They have one daughter, Mrs. Hester Baudaux, and her son, Charles Littleton Baudaux, is named in honor of his grandfather.
Mr. Littleton has taken an active part in political affairs and is recognized as one of the leaders in the republican party in Texas. The State Republican Council, of which he is chairman, was organized in his office in 1919 and has done effective work in eliminating the "color question" from the politics of the state. He was reared a democrat, but later espoused the cause of principles of the republican party, as did also two of his brothers, Jesse M. Lit- tleton, republican mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and John J., now deceased. An- other brother, Martin W. Littleton, is the well
known democratic congressman from New York.
HENRY T. JONES has spent all his brief mature career in the various branches of petroleum production, and is one of the most highly qualified technical men in the oil re- fining processes in Wichita County.
Mr. Jones, who is manager of the Refinery at Iowa Park, was born at Danville, Illinois, some thirty odd years ago. After getting an education he became a worker in the oil fields of Kansas, and has had an uninterrupted ex- perience with the oil refining industry in Kan- sas, Oklahoma and Texas. From Oklahoma he came to Wichita Falls early in 1918 to serve with the management of the Texhoma Oil & Refining Company.
In June, 1920, he went from Wichita Falls to Iowa Park as production and refinery man- ager of the Walker Consolidated Producing & Refining Company. This company is the suc- cessor of the original Wichita Valley Refining Company, which built at Iowa Park the first oil refinery in Wichita County. The original company's plant was started with an invest- ment of about twenty-five thousand dollars and a capacity of about five hundred barrels of oil per day. The present company's invest- ment is several million dollars in plant and pipe lines, and the refinery has a capacity of over two thousand barrels per day. From the crude oil is manufactured gasoline, kerosene and various other petroleum products. The pipe line system is an extensive one, reaching nearly all the important oil fields in Wichita County. The Walker Consolidated Producing & Refining Company's interests represent one of the largest and most important industries in Wichita County. It owns many producing wells and has been especially active in devel- oping production in the Kemp-Munger-Allen field of the county.
Though a young man, Mr. Jones has an established reputation over the Southwest as a refiner and manager, and is thoroughly versed in all the intricacies of this highly spe- cialized industry. He is a prominent Mason, being a member of the Scottish Rite Consis- tory at Dallas, and Maskat Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Wichita Falls.
FELBERT A. RAY. Many wealthy men in Texas today admit that good fortune and favorable circumstances have had much to do with their present material lot. However, good fortune has been only remotely inciden-
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tal to the interesting career of achievement of a young Wichita Falls business man, Fel- bert A. Ray, owner of Ray's Sheet Metal Works. If he has achieved an important share in the great prosperity of his home city it is because he has made a productive and essential industry pay him only appropriate rewards for his enterprise and sagacity.
Mr. Ray is still under forty years of age, was born at Kosciusko, Attala County, Mis- sissippi, and was brought to Texas in 1892. With only a common school education he began as a boy to learn the trade of sheet metal worker. He learned his art in Texas and in Oklahoma. For some time he lived at Alvord in Wise County, thence removed to Oklahoma and located at Chickasha, and sub- sequently followed his trade in Oklahoma City and El Reno, whence he came again to Texas and was at Amarillo just before moving to Wichita Falls.
Mr. Ray established his home at Wichita Falls, then a small city of five thousand pop- ulation in 1908. He reached here with only six dollars and twenty-five cents, and as a working mechanic he seldom had any surplus beyond a hundred dollars for several years afterward.
Without money capital he capitalized his brains and energy and in 1912 established his present business, the Ray Sheet Metal Works. In the growth and development of this indus- try Mr. Ray acknowledges a debt to the great oil boom chiefly because as a result there was furnished a constant market for his products, most of which are used in connection with the oil well drilling industry.
Just eight years after he established his modest business, in 1920, Mr. Ray built a large exclusive plant located at the corner of Oak Street and Virginia Avenue in the south- east part of the city. This plant occupies half a block of ground and the buildings, includ- ing the new addition, are 120 by 150 feet. It is a modern industrial plant, with much atten- tion given to light, ventilation and working space and other working conditions. The new buildings and equipment required an increase in the capital stock to a hundred thousand dollars. It is significant of Mr. Ray's rapid progress that he owns nearly all this stock himself. a nominal interest being held by his uncle, William R. Gay, who is office manager.
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