USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 2
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Mr. Bryce has acquired interests in many other Fort Worth business concerns, is a di- rector of the Fort Worth National Bank, is president of the Drumm Seed and Floral Company and is vice president of the Acme Brick Company. He is a member of the Fort Worth Club and the River Crest Country Club, is active in Masonry, being a life mem- ber of the Shrine, and a life member of the Elks, and is also a member of the Knights of Pythias. In 1887 Mr. Bryce married Miss Catherine Roberts, a native of Wales. Her only son died in infancy. Mr. Bryce is an active member and trustee of the First Pres- byterian Church of Fort Worth. His offices are at 909 Throckmorton Street and his home is at Arlington Heights.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER KEMP. That a city may become great in its facilities and commer- cial service to a large scope of country all through the vitalizing energy of one man is the
conspicuous fact in the career of Joseph A. Kemp and Wichita Falls. There is hardly one of the larger institutions and enterprises of this city upon which and with which the name and influence of Mr. Kemp has not either now or at some time been impressed and associated. That a community should be what it is largely as a result of one man's life and activities is perhaps the highest tribute possible to pay to human individuality. Mr. Kemp has had a career typical of many successful Americans. He started out in life a poor boy, but pos- sessed peculiar qualities and abilities in a busi- ness way, and was hardly of age when he had become a factor in local business circles. He has been officially connected with a dozen or more successful enterprises, including rail- roads in and about Wichita Falls, and he is known all over the state of Texas for his energy and also for his modest manner. Though a man who has attained almost the summit of success, Mr. Kemp is still a loyal and every day citizen of Wichita Falls, and has no desire to leave the scene of his many suc- cesses for life in the larger metropolitan cen- ters of the world.
Joseph Alexander Kemp was born at Clif- ton in Bosque County, Texas, July 31, 1861, a son of William T. and Emma F. (Stinnett) Kemp. His father, a native of Tennessee, came to Texas when a young man before the Civil war, in 1856, locating in McClennan County, afterward moving to Clifton, where for many years he was a well known and re- spected merchant and citizen. He also served as tax assessor of Bosque County, and died at Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1891, at the age of fifty-two. During the Civil war he enlisted his services with the Confederacy and saw a long and arduous service, including many notable battles, but went through the war without wounds or capture, and at its close returned to his regular business in Bosque County. His wife, who was a native of Missouri, where her people were pioneer settlers, came to Texas when she was a girl, and from Grayson County moved to Bosque County, where she completed her education and was married. She is still living at Wichita Falls, and is a fine old lady who easily bears the weight of her seventy-nine years. She was the mother of seven children, three sons and four daugh- ters, of whom Joseph A. was the oldest.
He grew up in Bosque County and had the usual amount of schooling in the common schools of that day. In the meantime he had become more or less familiar with merchan-
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dising through his vacation periods of work in his father's establishment, and at the age of eighteen he undertook his first independent venture as a merchant, opening a stock of goods at Clifton and conducting the business successfully until at the end of two years, he accepted an excellent offer to sell. In 1883 he came to Wichita Falls, a town which was very small at the time, the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway having only recently been com- pleted, Wichita Falls being its terminus, and he thus became one of the pioneers in laying the foundations of the present city and has been very closely identified with all the work of rearing the superstructure of this city as a commercial center of North Texas. His first enterprise was the establishment of a small stock of general merchandise, and he was one of the early merchants of the village. His store was located on Ohio Street, and was one of the typical establishments of its kind, at least in general appearance, although there was probably no other business man in Wichita Falls at that time who possessed so much ambition as young Kemp. After several years of successful merchandising he sold out in 1887, and then spent several years in looking over the field preparatory to his next venture. In 1890 was established the J. A. Kemp Wholesale Grocery Company, an enterprise which had been established some time before by C. C. White. Under his control the whole- sale grocery business prospered exceedingly, and continued to flourish and develop under the presidency of Mr. Kemp until it was doing a business of more than a million dollars each year. At the same time branches were estab- lished in different parts of the western part of the state, and the success of this establish- ment has been one of the corner stones of Wichita Falls' importance in trade circles of North Texas. In the latter part of 1903 Mr. Kemp sold his controlling interest in the gro- cery company to Messrs. Coleman, Lysaght & Blair (now the Blair & Hughes Company ), but still has stock in the business and is its vice president. The grocery house has con- tinued to prosper under its present manage- ment, and now has branches in all the leading trade centers of the Southwest, including a branch house in Dallas, Texas.
Probably at the present time and in years to come the work of Mr. Kemp of greatest importance to Wichita Falls and surrounding territory will be his activity as a builder and promoter of railroads. He had become inter- ested in railroad construction before leaving
the wholesale grocery business, and since then has devoted much of his time and ability along this line. Mr. Kemp's first venture was when he promoted and builded a railroad from Hen- rietta to Wichita Falls, this being the second railroad built into Wichita Falls. He served as president of the road for many years. Un- der the management of Mr. Kemp and Mr. Kell, his associate, it was extended 430 miles, and was an enterprise of which every citizen of Wichita Falls was very proud. These lines embrace what is known as the Wichita Falls & Northwestern Railroad, extending from Wichita Falls to Forgan, Oklahoma, a distance of 303 miles, and the Wichita Falls & Welling- ton Railroad, from Altus, Oklahoma, to Wel- lington, Texas, and also a line known as the Wichita Falls & Southern, extending from Wichita Falls to Newcastle in Young County, known as the Young County Coal Fields. Mr. Kemp was president during the promotion and construction of all these lines, and remained president until 1911, at which time these prop- erties were acquired by the M. K. & T. Rail- road Company, Mr. Kemp, however, remain- ing as vice president of all these lines.
During the year 1920 Mr. Kemp, together with Mr. Kell and other associates, repur- chased the Wichita Falls & Southern Railway Company, of which road Mr. Kemp is now the president. This line is being extended from Newcastle, its present terminus, to the town of Breckenridge, a distance of forty-six miles.
In 1890 the City National Bank of Wichita Falls was organized, and in 1891 Mr. Kemp was elected president, a position which he has filled to the present time. In 1920 this bank was consolidated with the National Bank of Commerce, under the name of the City Na- tional Bank of Commerce, Mr. Kemp being elected as president of the new institution, which has capital, surplus and undivided prof- its of one and one-half million dollars, and is doubtless the strongest financial institution in North Texas. It is a model banking institu- tion, and has quarters in its own magnificent fourteen-story building.
Mr. Kemp is vice president of the Blair- Hughes Wholesale Grocery Company, of which he was the founder and for so many years active as its president. It was his suc- cess in the wholesale grocery business which gave him his first great start.
The Wichita Falls Traction Company owes its inception and construction to Mr. Kemp and Mr. Kell, who own the line, and is a first-
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FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
class electric line affording good urban trans- portation facilities and regarded as one of the best equipped properties of its kind in the state. This road was built and opened in 1910, and Mr. Kemp has been its president since it started. The main line of the system operates between Wichita Falls and the beau- tiful Lake Wichita. Along the route of this electric line is located the plant of the Wichita Falls Window Glass Factory, the Wichita Motors Company and Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company, the first two having been organized and brought to successful issue largely through the efforts of Mr. Kemp. The plants manufacture high grade of wares, em- ploy a number of expert workmen and repre- sent a large investment of capital.
Through his instrumentality has also been brought to Wichita Falls an industry which has already given this city a reputation throughout the West and in various parts of the entire country. This is the Wichita Motor Truck Company, an entirely new enterprise for Texas. The company confines its output entirely to trucks, and the Wichita Trucks have already established themselves in the favor of users all over the United States and ninety foreign countries. Mr. Kemp is chairman of the board of the company. Since the organ- ization of this company its growth has been nothing short of remarkable, and it is now one of the leading manufacturing plants in Texas.
Mr. Kemp was president of the Wichita Falls Water Company until its purchase by the city of Wichita Falls, and is now president of the Lake Wichita Irrigation & Water Com- pany, which was organized by him in 1901, and is one of the largest irrigation undertak- ings in this part of the state. Through his success in carrying out this irrigation enter- prise, he first became prominent as a pioneer in industrial affairs and larger constructive en- terprises. With regard to the project, which involved the impounding of the waters of Holliday Creek and the making of an immense artificial lake, three thousand acres in extent, Mr. Kemp had complete confidence in the mat- ter, but had to endure a great deal of suspi- cion and apathy before he could get the under- taking well under way. It was regarded as one of those visionary schemes in which a great deal of capital might be sunk and from which the material benefits would never be great. However, Mr. Kemp finally succeeded in enlisting the aid of outside capital, did much .of the preliminary work himself, and finally produced a body of water which in itself is an
attractive feature of this vicinity, and affords water privileges valued at many thousands of dollars every year to the farmers in this lo- cality. Through his success in this enterprise Mr. Kemp may properly be regarded as one of the pioneers in irrigation in North Texas, and the Lake Wichita project has without doubt influenced many similar enterprises undertaken in different sections of the semi- arid regions of the western plains region.
For more than twenty-five years Mr. Kemp has advocated and worked for a large irriga- tion project, and his work is now about to be crowned with success, as the irrigation dis- trict has been created and four and one-half millions of bonds have been voted, the pro- ceeds of which will be used to impound the flood waters of the Wichita River, which water will be made use of in the irrigation of ap- proximately one hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, as well as making available to the city of Wichita Falls an inexhaustible sup- ply of water. When this irrigation system is completed it will mean more to the city of Wichita Falls and Wichita County than any- thing which has been heretofore accomplished. It is practically entirely due to Mr. Kemp's persistence and untiring efforts that this vast irrigation project will become a reality.
Mr. Kemp was president of the Wichita Southern Life Insurance Company until the time of its consolidation with the Great South- ern Life Insurance Company, in which com- pany he is now a stockholder, and which is one of the largest insurance companies in the state, if not in the entire Southwest. He is a large stockholder in and vice president of the Texhoma O:1 & Refining Company, a six mil- lion dollar corporation. This company has had a wonderful growth, since its organiza- tion a few years ago, and is now one of the leading refineries of the state. During the years 1919 and 1920 Mr. Kemp and associates builded the Kemp Hotel, a million dollar struc- ture, which is one of the finest hotels in the entire Southwest.
Governor Hobby appointed Mr. Kemp as a member of the Board of Regents of the State University, which office he now fills.
There stands as a monument to Mr. Kemp's public-spiritedness and his love for Wichita Falls, a beautiful library building, donated by him to the city, and which bears his name.
These are the more important undertakings in which Mr. Kemp has engaged in line with his purpose to make Wichita Falls one of the leading commercial and business centers of
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Texas. It is a distinctly worthy ambition, and the more so because in his success he is work- ing not less for the city than for himself. As will readily be understood from this brief re- view of his active business career, Mr. Kemp has had little time for public affairs, and has never been in any sense a politician. However, when he was twenty-two years old he was ap- pointed to the office of county treasurer of Wichita County, and at the expiration of his appointed term was elected for two successive terms to the same office. Since then he has been too busy to accept any preferment from his party, although he is, and always has been, a loyal democrat. Fraternally his associations are with the Masonic bodies, in which he has attained to the K. C. C. H. degree, and the Shrine, and with the Knights of Pythias and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He is one of the directors in the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce. His church is the old- school Presbyterian.
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On October 18, 1882, at Clifton, Mr. Kemp married Miss Flora Anderson, a native of Texas and a daughter of Captain and Mrs. Mary Robinson ( McLennan) Anderson. Capt. Allen Anderson was a well known pioneer and Indian fighter, and did much service on the frontier during the early days in protecting life and property of the settlers. He was acci- dentally killed by a member of his own com- pany while engaged in a fight with Indians on the western border. Mrs. Kemp's mother was a daughter of the McLennan for whom Mc- Lennan County was named, and was one of the very prominent pioneers in central Texas.
The five children born to Mr. and Mrs. Kemp were Emma Sibyl, Mary Jewel, Flora Char- lotte, Bertha Mae and Joseph Anderson. The first, born in 1885, at Wichita Falls, is a grad- uate of St. Mary's College at Dallas, and also a graduate in the languages and music from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, and is now the wife of Mr. Newton Maer, of Wichita Falls. Mary Jewel was born in 1888, at Wichita Falls, and is a graduate of St. Mary's College at Dallas. She is now the wife of W. S. Langford, of Wichita Falls. Flora Charlotte, born in 1890, at Wichita Falls, died at Detroit, Michigan, in 1911, after a long illness of typhoid fever. Bertha Mae was born at Wichita Falls in 1895, and is a graduate of St. Mary's College at Dallas and also of a private school in St. Louis. She is now the wife of A. B. Booth, of Wichita Falls. Joseph Anderson Kemp, born at Wichita Falls
in 1904, is now attending the Hill School at Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Kemp and his family reside in one of the most palatial homes in Wichita Falls, which is situated in the Hill District, the most exclusive residence portion of the city.
GEORGE H. COLVIN. Not long after the first great railway line opened up the range country of Western Texas to civilization George H. Colvin explored that district and found opportunity as a ranch hand, gradu- ally accommodating himself to the circum- stances and raising his business status. It
was in the typical stockman's paradise of West Texas that he learned banking, and graduated from a bank there to come to Fort Worth about twenty years ago. As a banker Mr. Col- vin is known all over the Southwest and has the distinction of being vice president and chairman of the board of the Farmers and Mechanics National Bank, one of the largest and strongert banks in Texas, and housed in a beautiful home in the tallest building in the state.
Mr. Colvin was born in Howard County, Central Missouri, March 22, 1860. His father, Christopher Colvin, was a Kentuckian and spent his comparatively brief life as a farmer. He died at the age of forty-four. Mr. Col- vin's mother was Ann Elizabeth Amick, a native of Howard County, Missouri, and daughter of Leander Amick, of the same section of that state. George H. Colvin was the third in a family of nine children. His boyhood was passed in a rural environment in Central Missouri until he was nearly twenty years of age. He attended a cross roads school and at the age of eighteen, with such education as he had been able to acquire and with the viewpoint only of a farm boy, he became a clerk in a grocery store at Glas- gow, Missouri. The spirit of enterprise and adventure caused him to leave his work at Glasgow and in 1879 go out to Leadville, Colorado, where he worked in the mines and also did prospecting there and at Denver for three years. Returning with a very modest capital, he engaged in the grocery business at Glasgow, Missouri.
Mr. Colvin identified himself with Texas in May, 1883, and for nearly forty years he has acknowledged the Lone Star common- wealth as his home state. He did his work as a ranch hand on one of the large ranches near Colorado City. He also clerked in a store there for about a year and for eight
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years was in the livery business. In 1892 Mr. Colvin became cashier of the Colorado National Bank, and while there he also assumed many responsibilities of a public nature, serving both as alderman and mayor.
In 1898 he came to the financial metropolis of Northwest Texas, Fort Worth, and assumed his post as cashier of the American National Bank. Since then his associations have brought him steadily increasing prestige with the men of wealth in this section of Texas. In 1915 he was elected president of the American National Bank. Then, in January, 1919, was effected the consolidation of the American National and the Farmers and Mechanics Bank under the new title of the Farmers and Mechanics National Bank, which is now quartered in its home in the twenty- four story F. & M. Building. At the con- solidation Mr. Colvin became vice president and chairman of the board of directors.
The general welfare of Fort Worth is one of Mr. Colvin's primary considerations. When the city went under the commission plan of government in 1908 he was chosen one of the first board of commissioners. He has been honored with a number of other posts of trust and responsibility. Mr. Colvin is a democrat by inheritance and by practice, a member of the Fort Worth Club, the River Crest Country Club and is a Knight of Pythias and Elk. In 1887 he married Miss B. Pear- son, daughter of Dr. J. W. Pearson. They have two children: M. Pearson Colvin, now paying teller in the Farmers and Mechanics National Bank, and Georgia Elizabeth, a stu- dent in the University of Texas.
FRANK MCKNIGHT, president of the First State Bank of Arlington, is a Tarrant County pioneer, having lived here for half a century. He knew some of the earliest settlers of Fort Worth and had a share in developing the country around Arlington, where he was one of the first merchants and now for a number of years past has been active in banking.
Mr. McKnight was born in East Texas at the historic town of Nacogdoches, November 5, 1850, son of W. D. and Susan E. (Wynne) McKnight. His parents were natives of Ten- nessee and settled in Texas in 1837, the year after the winning of independence. His father took an active part in Americanizing Texas, and when the United States went to war with Mexico he joined the fighting forces and was in service from 1846 until 1848. Then when the war between the states came on he joined the
Confederate army as captain of a company, but was accidentally killed November 11, 1861, a few months after the war started. His widow survived him until December 24, 1878. They had five sons and one daughter, and the sons are still living, Frank being the oldest.
His early youth was spent on a Texas farm and he was only eleven years of age when his father died. It was on January 1, 1870, that Mr. McKnight came to Tarrant County. There was not a single railroad in the county at the time, and the principal industry of the inhabitants outside of Fort Worth was farm- ing and ranching. In 1887 Mr. McKnight removed to the present city of Arlington, and for a number of years conducted mercantile establishments that was a popular center for the trade of a large surrounding district. Later he took up banking, and for four years was active vice president of the Arlington National Bank. On November 26, 1915, he and others associated with him organized the State Bank of Arlington, and he has been president of that institution ever since.
Mr. McKnight is a member of the Masonic Order, being past master of Arlington Lodge No. 148. He married Miss Mattie Middleton on September 19, 1894. They have two sons, Alfred and Frank, Jr.
J. E. M. YATES. Few men can claim a longer continuous experience in business than Mr. Yates of Grapevine, who has been a dry goods merchant in that Tarrant County com- munity forty-four years and is also president of the Farmers National Bank of Grapevine.
Mr. Yates who came to Tarrant County be- fore the first railroad was built in this part of North Texas was born in Randolph County, Missouri, December 12, 1850. His father, John M. Yates, was born in Virginia, his birthplace being two and a half miles from the spot where General Stonewall Jackson died. The father was also a native of Vir- ginia where the family lived for several years. John M. Yates was a double cousin of Richard Yates, the famous war governor of Illinois. His life was spent as a farmer and planter in Missouri, where he died. He married Eliza- beth Terrill, a native of Kentucky, whose father was a Virginian. John M. Yates and his wife were twice married, and there were three sets of children, twenty-two in all, two by the mother's first marriage, ten by the father's first wife, and ten by the marriage of John M. Yates and Elizabeth Terrill, fifth among whom is J. E. M. Yates.
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The latter spent his boyhood days in North- eastern Missouri, and finished his education at Mount Pleasant College at Huntsville, that state. At the age of twenty-two he started out to make his own way in the world, and in 1873 reached Texas. He joined the little community of Grapevine in Tarrant County and four years later married the daughter of the pioneer merchant of that community, E. M. Jenkins. He soon became identified with the mercantile business, was for a number of years associated in the firm of Jenkins & Yates, his partner being Zeb Jenkins. He bought the business in 1896 and without a break has been selling dry goods at Grapevine for forty-four years. He developed one of the largest dry goods enterprises in any coun- try town in Texas.
In 1906 he helped organize the Farmers National Bank of Grapevine with a capital stock of $100,000. He was vice president until 1910, and since that year has been presi- dent of the institution. Mr. Yates is one of the large property owners of Tarrant County, owning several valuable farms and other in- terests.
February 21, 1877, he married Miss Kate Jenkins, daughter of E. M. Jenkins who es- tablished the first store at Grapevine in 1859. She was born and reared in Grapevine. Mr. and Mrs. Yates have four sons and one daugh- ter: Earl, associated with his father as a mer- chant ; Carl, a traveling man living at Fort Worth; Junius E. with the Reynolds Insur- ance Company of Fort Worth; John M., a traveling man; and Weechie, wife of Frank T. Estil, a farmer. Mr. Yates has always been a stanch democrat. He is a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner and member of the Baptist Church.
BURR WILSON COUCH. A former president of the Texas Cotton Seed Crushers' Associa- tion, Burr Wilson Couch is widely known over the Southwest as an expert and authority on all branches of cotton seed products manu- facture, and for the past ten years has been one of the leading business men of Fort Worth, primarily interested in cotton oil mill promotion, but also bearing a share of respon- sibility in the general forward movement that has kept the city in stride with the foremost centers of commerce in the Southwest.
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