USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 23
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Mr. and Mrs. Kendall have three children : William Addison, Marie and Robert Lewis. The youngest is still attending school at Gainesville. Marie Kendall is the wife of Edward L. Montgomery, of Cleburne, and has a son, Robert Ernest.
The soldier representative of the family in the World war was William Addison Kendall, who was born March 16, 1895, at Wichita Falls. He was educated in the common schools, attended a business course in Green- ville College, and was employed as a stenog- rapher when he volunteered for the Mexican border service. The following year he became a private in the National army, and while in training at Camp Jackson, South Carolina, was promoted to first sergeant. He went over- seas to France and was engaged in front line duty for two weeks after his arrival. He was on the firing line on the morning of the sign- ing of the armistice. Returning home in 1919, he was stationed with the camp supply office at Marfa, Texas, until discharged October 16, 1920. Sergeant Kendall married Ethel Scar-
borough, of Harper, Texas, and they have a daughter, Dorothy Francis.
JAMES FRANKLIN ELLIS. In connection with the history of the upbuilding of every community the names and careers of certain men are inseparably connected, and in the early history of Fort Worth, as well as in subsequent years, the name of James Frank- lin Ellis finds easy and graceful place. There has been some contention among early set- tlers of the city as to who was the first set- tler to locate there, and this distinction has been between "Uncle" Press Farmer, and the immediate subject of this sketch.
Mr. Ellis came to Fort Worth prior to the location of the post, and is therefore num- bered among those sturdy pioneers who braved the dangers and endured the hardships of frontier life in reclaiming the wilderness and in transforming it into the thriving metrop- olis of today. He was born at Mexico, Mis- souri, April 28, 1838. He came to Texas with his parents in 1846, locating first in Den- ton County, where both of his parents died in 1847. That same year he moved to Fort Worth, and from that time until the time of his death was actively and prominently identi- fied with the commercial, the social and the religious development of the city. On Sep- tember 12, 1860, was recorded his marriage with Delilah Jane Asbury, the daughter of Jerimiah Asbury, who lived just south of the present corporate limits of the city. To this union were born five children : William Jaspar, deceased; Henry Merrill, who died in in- fancy ; Jerry Franklin, now deceased ; James Merida Ellis and Fannie Alta, who is now the wife of L. H. DuBose, the latter two still living in Fort Worth.
James Franklin Ellis enlisted in the Con- federate Army, in Company H, Seventeenth Regiment, Texas Cavalry, on March 8, 1862, serving until the close of the war, and was honorably discharged at Galveston May 24, 1865. Returning to his home at Fort Worth, he engaged in the general merchandise busi- ness with William J. Boaz, under the firm name of Boaz & Ellis. About 1875 they closed out this business and engaged in the lumber trade, later purchasing the interest of M. B. Loyd in the California and Texas Bank, with which they remained until that institu- tion was merged with the National City Bank, when they both retired. Subsequently they joined in the formation of the Traders Na- tional Bank.
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Mr. Ellis died in Fort Worth January 23, 1899, leaving a private and business record unblemished and without reproach, and rich in the respect and esteem of his fellow men. Mrs. Ellis survived her husband but a short time, and died October 16, 1899.
LEONARD HOMER DUBOSE has been a resi- dent of Fort Worth thirty years. He came without special capital, and gained recogni- tion on the strength of his abilities and his faithful work in various capacities. Mr. Du- Bose as a result of many years of experience has built one of the important general insur- ance and real estate agencies that handle the great business in that line concentrated at Fort Worth.
He was born at Maplesville in Chilton County, Alabama, August 21, 1860, son of Homer and Mary (McGee) DuBose, the for- mer a native of Georgia and the latter of Alabama. Mr. Dubose is the youngest of six children reared by his parents, and his boy- hood days were spent in the locality of his birth. He had only the ordinary advantages of school there, and he supplied the deficien- cies of this early limitation later by attending night school and by application of all his leisure time to studies that would make him better fitted for usefulness. For several years he did farm work, also clerked in a general store, and after coming to Fort Worth on May 8, 1890, he clerked in a dry goods store and with other firms.
In 1902 Mr. DuBose entered the real estate and insurance business, and his growing knowledge of that field has brought him an increasing clientage. In 1917 he formed a partnership with Mr. Rudledge, while in De- cember, 1919, Mr. Miller came into the well known firm of DuBose, Rudledge & Miller.
Mr. DuBose is a member of the Baptist Church and the Ancient Order of United Workmen. In 1893 he married Miss Fannie Ellis, only daughter of James F. Ellis, a prominent Fort Worth citizen whose career precedes this sketch.
HARRY T. THORNBERRY, who chose a pro- fessional and commercial career and for the past ten years has been one of the leading merchants of Wichita Falls, was born on a Texas ranch, and represents one of the very prominent families of land holders, ranchers and citizens of North Texas.
The Thornberry ranch in Clay County, twelve miles northeast of Wichita Falls, on
which he was born in 1885, was for many years maintained as one of the large aggrega- tions of land and centers of livestock produc- tion. Its founder and proprietor, Amos L. Thornberry, now living retired at Wichita Falls, came to Texas forty years ago. Amos Thornberry was born in Greenup County, Kentucky, in 1845, a son of M. A. and Nancy (Rawlins) Thornberry, the former a native of Virginia and the latter of North Carolina. M. A. Thornberry was a Kentucky farmer and died in 1870. Amos Thornberry at the age of sixteen enlisted, in 1861, in Company E, Four- teenth Kentucky Infantry, for service in the Union army. He was in the struggle almost from the beginning until the end, being with the Army of the Tennessee. In 1864 his regi- ment became part of Sherman's army, he was in the Atlanta campaign and the siege of Atlanta, where he was wounded, was in the battle of Missionary Ridge, and his last impor- tant engagement was at Franklin, Tennessee. After the war he returned to Kentucky and engaged in farming and merchandising, but in 1881 came to Texas and for two years was a merchant at Henrietta. After that he was in the real estate business, and in 1886 began farming and cattle raising and undertook the accumulation of the ranch property long known as the Thornberry Ranch. On this ranch was established a small town and post- office known as Thornberry. Amos Thorn- berry had at one time several thousand acres in his ranch, and it is in one of the richest agri- cultural regions of North Texas. In recent years the land has been subdivided into small farms and much of it sold to practical farmers. The Thornberry family still have interests in that locality. Amos Thornberry is a repub- lican in politics. He was one of the chief con- tributors to the building of the handsome Methodist Episcopal Church at Thornberry. He married in Kentucky in 1870, Miss Cynthiana Thompson, whose parents were people of large means in Kentucky. She fin- ished her education in Portsmouth, Ohio. Amos Thornberry and wife had five children : Martin A., Andrew L., Thomas C., Mary Agnes and Harry T.
Harry T. Thornberry grew up on the Thornberry ranch, attended country school there, and for nearly seven years was a stu- dent in Fort Worth University. He gradu- ated .in the academic department in 1907, and in 1909 received the Ph. G. degree from the Department of Pharmacy. In the same year he came to Wichita Falls and became pharma-
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cist in Dr. Miller's drug store at the corner of Ohio Avenue and Eighth Street. In 1911 he and G. W. Shaw bought Dr. Miller's business, Mr. Shaw subsequently retiring from the firm, and since then Mr. Thornberry has been sole owner, though the business is still continued under its old name as Miller's Drug Store. It is one of the most prosperous and successful mercantile enterprises in the oil metropolis, and does a large volume of annual business.
Mr. Thornberry is a live and public spirited citizen, active in the Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations, and is a thirty- second degree Mason and Shriner and a mem- ber of the Elks. He married Miss Lydia Edith Welshimer, a native of Illinois. They have one son, Harry Fred Thornberry.
ROBERT ANDERSON LINCOLN. With all the enthusiasm and with all the inexperience of youth Robert Anderson Lincoln hurried from his home city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Beaumont at the very beginning of the oil boom in that vicinity eighteen years ago. He learned the drilling art in the fields of South- east Texas, and most of his life since then has been spent around oil rigs and in many oil districts from Texas to the Pacific Coast. Mr. Lincoln has been a driller and operator in the North Texas field for the past decade, and is also president of the Contractors Ma- chine and Supply Company of Wichita Falls, his home city.
He was born at Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1885, a son of Dr. James Hamilton and Ida Beatrice (Sharp) Lincoln. His father was a native of Buckingham County, Virginia, and descended from the same original ancestor as Abraham Lincoln. Doctor Lincoln was a den- tist by profession, and at the time of his death was the oldest member of that profession in the City of Chattanooga. He served four years as a Confederate soldier during the war between the states.
Robert A. Lincoln was reared and educated in Chattanooga. He was just seventeen when in 1902 the Spindletop well brought fame and population by the thousands to the City of Beaumont. He went to work as an oil driller in the Spindletop field. As a driller he oper- ated at Spindletop, Sour Lake, Batson, in Southeast Texas, in several fields in South- western Louisiana, and subsequently went to California and drilled in three different fields in that state. Returning to Texas in 1910, he went in to the North Texas field, locating at Petrolia, in Clay County. Some of his
drilling operations were also done at Thrall in Williamson County. He did much of the drilling in the Electra and Burkburnett fields of Wichita County, and had his home at Burk- burnett until 1919, when he came to Wichita Falls, and he and his family live in an attrac- tive and modern home at 1601 Twelfth Street.
While Mr. Lincoln still has interests in oil production in Wichita County, he organized on moving to Wichita Falls the Contractors Machine & Supply Company, and is president of that highly prosperous industry. They manufacture high grade tools and machinery for oil well drilling. The company's plant was completed in January, 1920, and there has been a steady growth of business and profitable returns to the stockholders. It is one of the sound and substantial industries of the petro- leum metropolis of North Texas.
Mr. Lincoln married Miss Eugenia Bryant Outlaw, of Austin, Texas. Their three chil- dren are Roberta, Bonnie Jean and Mary Frances.
ELBERT M. BELCHER is an insurance man of active and successful experience, and for sev- eral years past has been associated with the oldest and most prominent general insurance firm of Wichita Falls, where in addition to his business he is one of the young leaders in civic enterprise. .
Mr. Belcher was born in the Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory in 1891, a son of Rev. Arthur M. and Julia (Koontz) Belcher. His father was born in Alabama and as a min- ister and missionary of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, South, accepted the call to duty among the Indians of the Cherokee Nation and labored helpfully in that tribe for a num- ber of years. He is still active in the ministry.
The place where Elbert M. Belcher was born was in the interior of the old Cherokee Nation, forty miles from the nearest town. He spent most of his boyhood and acquired his education in the City of Muskogee. Com- ing to Texas in 1910, he lived at Dallas, where for eight years he was in the insurance business, chiefly with the Dallas headquarters of the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland.
From Dallas he was attracted to Wichita Falls in 1918, when the city was just begin- ning to realize its commercial power incident to the development of the contiguous petro- leum fields. He has won a secure place among the insurance men of the city as a member of the firm of Finch & Belcher, a business estab-
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lished a number of years ago and handling a large portion of the general insurance busi- ness of the city.
Mr. Belcher has found outlet for his en- ergy and public spirit in many of the com- munity enterprises of the oil metropolis. He was especially prominent in the movement which resulted in getting a Temple of the Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine established in Wichita Falls. For that purpose he made the trip to the General Con- clave of the Shrine at Portland, Oregon, in June, 1920. The new Shrine is named Mas- kat Temple, and was instituted with elaborate ceremonies August 30, 1920. Mr. Belcher is the Chief Rabban of the Temple. He is also a member of the Chamber of Commerce and Wichita Club.
Mr. Belcher married Miss Elizabeth Shiels, a native of Dallas but of Scotch parentage, her parents having come to Dallas from Glas- gow. Mr. and Mrs. Belcher have two chil- dren, Elbert M., Jr., and Robert Shiels Belcher.
COKE W. HARKRIDER, of Fort Worth, has had a long and influential association with Texas business affairs. In later years his name has become prominent through his ex- tensive associations and interests in the oil development of North and West Texas. He is an experienced financier and has handled and solved investment problems for many capitalists. His enterprise has also resulted in some large transactions in lands over the state, and in the development of some of the choice tracts of real estate around Fort Worth.
Mr. Harkrider is a native of Arkansas, where he was born June 5, 1871, son of Wil- liam Harrison and Martha (Coke) Hark- rider. The Harkriders were identified with the colonization period of the State of Vir- ginia, while the Cokes were an old family of Alabama. Coke W. Harkrider had only a common school education and at the age of fifteen left school and began life for himself, working at any legitimate employment and having a varied experience that well qualified him for the successful career which followed his majority.
He was twenty-one years of age when he began field work for the New York Life In- surance Company. He had a long and suc- cessful experience in life insurance. After several years of field work he was called to the New York office, and was assigned to duty and responsibility in developing the company's
business in the west half of the State of Texas as agency director. He was in that position for eight years. The passing of the Robin- son insurance laws of 1907 caused the New York Life to withdraw from Texas, and Mr. Harkrider was then transferred to Colorado and made agency director of that state and New Mexico. He had acquired a deep and lasting love for Texas state and Texas peo- ple, and after a year in Colorado he resigned from the New York Life and, locating at Fort Worth, entered the land and investment busi- ness. In this new field Mr. Harkrider has been a factor in developing several large tracts throughout the state. He assisted in the or- ganization and was a director of the Capps Land Company, which opened several hun- dred acres on the south side of Fort Worth, now improved with some of the best homes of the city.
For the past several years he has also been an oil operator, and his name is associated with some of the big developments in the North and West Texas oil country. He has done some independent work in this line, though chiefly has been associated with finan- ciers of Fort Worth, Dallas, Wichita Falls, Ranger, and Ardmore and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Mr. Harkrider is a democrat, is a thirty- second degree Scottish Rite Mason, and for many years has been a member of the Dallas Consistory. He was also affiliated with Hella Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Dallas, but assisted in organizing Moslah Temple at Fort Worth and since has had his membership there. He and twelve other Fort Worth citi- zens organized the Rotary Club of Fort Worth. He is a member of the Glen Garden Club and during the World war gave much of his time as well as his means to war relief and other patriotic measures.
Mr. Harkrider married Carrie Rebecca Rol- lins, of Abilene, Texas. Her father, E. B. Rollins, was widely known among the West Texas pioneers and for many years was a mer- chant at Abilene. Mr. and Mrs. Harkrider have three children: William Bean, Jack Webster and Carolyne.
ERNEST T. WESTMORELAND grew up in Western Texas, has the spirit of enterprise of the Texas business man, and during the past two or three years has shared liberally in some of the most successful oil develop- ments of Wichita County. Mr. Westmore- land was for several years a machinist in rail- way shops, knows machinery from the stand-
Grew Harkrider
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point of an expert, and it was that experience and interest no doubt that caused him a year or so ago to establish at Wichita Falls a home factory for the production of oil field ma- chinery and equipment. This is the W-R-B Machine & Tool Company, an industry whose output has a merited appreciation among all the practical oil men of Northern Texas.
Mr. Westmoreland was born in Wilbarger County, Texas, in 1885, a son of W. J. and Fashion (Martin) Westmoreland. He is de- scended from the Westmoreland family of England, a branch of which was established in Virginia during the 1600s. The County of Westmoreland in that commonwealth was named for them. Later descendants of the family moved to the Carolinas, Georgia, Ala- bama and Tennessee. W. J. Westmoreland was born at Pulaski, Tennessee, and was a West Texas pioneer. During the early '70s he went into Jack County. By profession he was a surveyor and civil engineer. He used his profession in the survey of a num- ber of West Texas counties as far out as the South Plains. In frontier times, before rail- roads, he also equipped and maintained a freighting outfit, with headquarters at De- catur, transporting goods to Fort Worth and West from Decatur to the foot of the plains. He was a man of many talents and accom- plishments, and at one time taught school at Henrietta, where he was married. For sev- eral years in the '80s he lived in Wilbarger County, but in 1888 moved to Childress. He died in 1909.
Ernest T. Westmoreland grew up in Child- ress, Texas, attended school there, and in the shops of the Fort Worth & Denver City Rail- way learned the trade of machinist and was an employe of the shops for several years. For about six years he was in the grocery business at Childress.
In August, 1918, soon after the beginning of the oil boom in the Burkburnett field of Wichita County, Mr. Westmoreland moved to Wichita Falls for the purpose of taking an active part in the oil business. He has been uniformly successful in handling oil leases, not as a broker but in the selling of his own leases. His operations have contributed di- rectly to some of the remarkable successes in oil development in the Burkburnett and other fields of Wichita County.
It was in June, 1919, that he founded the W-R-B Machine & Tool Company. The shops were built just north of the river bridge on Wichita Street on the Burkburnett Road.
The costly and special equipment was rapidly installed, and within less than a year the plant was operating at full capacity. The business has specialized in the manufacture of oil field equipment, and the product is now widely known as the W-R-B Quality Brand, including tool joints, bits of all kinds and drill collars. Most of the product is manu- factured complete from bar iron and steel. The forge shop has two furnaces, the ma- chine shop has four lathes, and the personnel includes men of the skill and ingenuity to handle in record breaking time practically any job or custom work demanded by oil opera- tors. The three men chiefly interested in the ownership and management of the business are E. T. Westmoreland, Henry Hobbs and C. S. Bennett.
Mr. Westmoreland is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and thoroughly inter- ested in all those enterprises which are con- tributing to the growth and development of the city. He is a member of the Order of Elks. In the spring of 1920 he married Miss Dorothy Belt, a native of Missouri.
CHARLES I. FRANCIS is a member of the representative law firm of Weeks, Morrow and Francis, of Wichita Falls, and is essen- tially one of the prominent younger members of the bar of Wichita County. Mr. Francis was born at Denton, the judicial center of the Texas county of the same name, and the date of his nativity was September 1, 1893. He is a son of William B. and Martha Elizabeth (Melugin) Francis, the former of whom is deceased and the latter still resides at Den- ton, she being a daughter of the late Rev. Schuyler C. Melugin, D. D., who was one of the pioneer clergymen of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Texas. William B. Fran- cis was born at Leesburg, Loudoun County, Virginia, and came with his older brothers to Texas shortly after the close of the Civil war, in which his brothers had served as gal- lant young soldiers of the Confederacy. He eventually became one of the leading mer- chants at Denton, and later became a travel- ing salesman for the wholesale house of Sanger Brothers, of Dallas, with which he continued as one of its best known and most popular commercial representatives for fully a quarter of a century.
After his graduation in the high school of his native town Charles I. Francis entered the University of Texas, and in this institu- tion he was graduated in 1915, with the degree
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of Bachelor of Arts. Thus fortified in aca- demic education he entered the law department of the university, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1917 and from which he received the degrees of Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws with virtually coin- cident admission to the bar of his native state. During the summer of 1916 he pursued a special course of study in the great Uni- versity of Michigan. In the year of 1917 he served his professional novitiate by a few months' association with the well known Fort Worth law firm of Thompson, Barwise & Wharton, general attorneys for the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad, but he subordi- nated his professional ambition to the call of patriotism when the nation became involved in the great World war. He volunteered for service in the United States Army and en- tered the First Officers' Training Camp at Camp Travis, San Antonio, Texas, in the summer of 1917. He was, however, rejected on account of physical disabilities, but his loyalty was shown by a determined spirit to overcome this difficulty, which he did, by submitting to a surgical operation, and about seven months later he re-enlisted as a private. This enlistment took him to the field artillery training camp at Camp Zachary Taylor, Louis- ville, Kentucky, where he was soon afterward recommended for admission to the Officers' Training Camp, in which he was later grad- uated, with attendant commission as a second lieutenant in the field artillery of the United States Army. He was then assigned to serv- ice as instructor in the Officers' Training School for Riding and Driving, in which serv- ice he continued until the war came to a close, with the signing of the historic armistice, his honorable discharge having been granted on the 15th of December, 1918. While he was recuperating from the effects of the operation mentioned above Mr. Francis went to Austin and became a civilian instructor in the school of military aeronautics, and there also, at the same time, in 1917, he was an instructor in military law and the preparation of army papers, besides which he there assisted in the organization of the Second Regiment of the National Guard of Texas, in which he held the rank of captain. It was from this rank that he resigned to enlist as a private, as noted above. When he was graduated at Camp Zachary Taylor he had the distinction of being ranking man in his battery grades.
In January, 1919, Mr. Francis resumed the interrupted practice of his profession by es-
tablishing his residence in Wichita Falls, where he has met with unqualified success and is a member of a firm whose law business is per- haps second in volume to that of no other law firm in Texas. He has proved his ability as a vigorous and resourceful trial lawyer and well fortified counsellor, and is one of the representative younger members of the bar of the vigorous oil metropolis of Northwestern Texas. His older brother, William H., is a resident of Dallas and is general attorney for the Magnolia Oil Company.
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