USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 32
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Marshall Speants
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and statesmanlike views, and he did much to influence Texas ideas in politics and public affairs. He was president of the Texas Bar Association in 1900-01, for several years was president of the Fort Worth City Council and acting mayor during the term of Mayor Pad- dock. He was president of the Fort Worth Public Library when the Carnegie Building was completed. In 1879 he married Miss Josephine Puett, a native of Texas.
Their son, Marshall Spoonts, was born at Buffalo Gap in Taylor County, December 18, 1879. At that time Buffalo Gap was a rendez- vous and outfitting center for the great cattle outfits in Western Texas, was one of the few centers of settlement between Fort Worth and El Paso, and hundreds of miles from the near- est railroad. Marshall Spoonts began his schooling in Abilene and was ten years of age when his father moved to Fort Worth. There he attended public schools and the Fort Worth University, and acquired a large part of both his literary and legal education in the office of his father. He was admitted to the Fort Worth bar February 20, 1903, and for five years remained in practice with his father. Mr. Spoonts also learned telegraphy and was a telegraph operator from 1897 to 1900. From 1900 to 1903 his chief interest was in dramatic lines and he was an actor with several com- panies. For five years he was a member of' the well known law firm of Bryan & Spoonts. He was elected county attorney in 1914, and was one of the ablest lawyers who ever held that office in Fort Worth. He was prosecutor in some noted cases that came before the county court during his term. He secured the conviction of James Miller, alias Jo Jo, murderer of James Listen, Sr., also secured a just penalty for C. A. Myers for the murder of the superintendent of the Texas & Pacific Railroad, and Rufus Coates was convicted for the murder of Zella Falk. Mr. Spoonts has been attorney for the Houston & Texas Cen- tral Railroad and for a number of insurance companies. For the last year he has been engaged in the business of an oil producer.
He is a democrat and has been a delegate to the various state conventions since he be- gan the practice of law. He was a member of the Resolutions Committee in a state conven- tion at Houston. Mr. Spoonts is a member of the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association and is interested in a cattle ranch in Southern Texas. He is . a Mason and Shriner, a Knight of Pythias and Elk, and belongs to the Fort Worth Club and River Crest Country Club.
July 9, 1907, he married Miss Lorine Jones, daughter of William W. Jones, of Corpus Christi, Texas.
ROBERT D. LINCOLN. When Robert D. Lin- coln added himself to the citizenship of Ranger in 1918 he brought with him an exceptionally wide and varied equipment as a business man, with a competent experience as an elec- trical and sanitary engineer gained through years of travel and work in independent busi- ness in nearly all parts of the world. Mr. Lin- coln supplied the marvelously growing city of Ranger with one of its most important busi- ness services, a plumbing establishment, re- garded as the largest and most complete orga- nization of its kind between Fort Worth and El Paso. He also had been honored with the post of city commissioner.
Mr. Lincoln was born at Yazoo City, Missis- sippi, 1880. His father was a native of Missis- sippi of Virginia ancestry and a man of wealth and business enterprise, owning an extensive plantation in the famous Yazoo Delta. In early years he also owned and operated steam- boats on both the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers.
Robert D. Lincoln grew up and acquired a good education on his father's plantation. A spirit of adventure and independent enter- prise prompted him early into a life of action away from home. When he was seventeen years of age his father commissioned him to buy cattle and horses, and with that commis- sion he traveled over nearly all the western cattle ranges of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and other western states, and also old Mex- ico. He has never lacked self reliance and self dependence and has been at ease in all the circumstances of a most varied and inter- esting business career. A remarkable degree of success has attended practically all his ventures. His ambition to travel and see the world carried him when a young man be- yond the borders of his own country and old Mexico to Europe and China. He studied electrical engineering in Paris. Wherever he went he was usually earning his own way and improving his knowledge at the same time. In Chicago he also studied electrical engineer- ing and plumbing.
In 1901 Mr. Lincoln had some important responsibilities in constructing the street car line at El Paso, Texas. From there he went to Kansas City, was manager in charge of the cables for the Telephone Company about three years, and was then transferred to Wisconsin, where he continued in the telephone business.
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From Wisconsin he removed to Chicago, and for several years conducted a large plumbing business in the heart of the city, on Van Buren Street. He also manufactured a line of auto- mobile supplies and accessories, selling these products to some of the largest automobile houses in Chicago. From Chicago Mr. Lin- coln returned to El Paso, and was in business in that city until he went to Ranger.
He found Ranger in 1918 in the midst of its great oil boom. Previously the community had hardly justified the residence and work of a single plumber. With the rapid growth and building expansion Mr. Lincoln found an important service awaiting him and invested a large amount of capital in his plumbing supply store and plumbing organization and had all the facilities for such work that could be found in the largest cities of the country. He is now located in Graham in the same business.
He worked with other public spirited citi- zens in solving the great problems presented by the rapid growth of the Ranger community. In August 1, 1920, he was called to a post on the Board of City Commissioners under the commission form of government. He was as- signed to duties for which technical knowledge and experience well qualify him, as commis- sioner of sanitation.
Mr. Lincoln was one of the builders of the Majestic Theatre at Ranger, costing $160,000. He is a member of the Retail Merchants' Association at Ranger, the Chamber of Commerce of the same place and fraternally is affiliated with the Masons and Elks.
LEONARD ALMER HIGHTOWER. Hightower is a pioneer name both in Stephens and East- land counties, and appeared in the annals of that section of West Texas nearly half a cen- tury ago. For many years the home of the family has been at Eastland, where Leonard Almer Hightower is owner of a large amount of valuable property and is interested in banks and other affairs.
His father was L. A. Hightower, a native of Union County, Arkansas, who in 1871, before Indian warfare had ceased in the coun- try west of Fort Worth, moved into Stephens County and was one of the first white men to make a permanent home at Wayland in the southern part of that county. The only industry at that time and for some years following was stock raising, and he became a prominent associate of some of the cattle men of that district. Later he was a merchant,
and in 1895 moved with his family to East- land, where he compiled a set of abstract books and developed a most important service of that kind in the county. It was a business which he successfully carried on until his death in 1910. His wife was Callie Alford.
Their son, Leonard Almer Hightower, was born at Wayland in Stephens County, Novem- ber 18, 1885, and has lived at Eastland since he was ten years of age. He finished his education at Eastland and was only a boy when he entered his father's abstract office. He succeeded to the business on the death of his father, and was its pro- prietor and owner until 1918, when he retired to devote his attention to a large amount of property interests that had accumulated and had in the meantime become of great value and required his active supervision. Besides look- ing after these interests Mr. Hightower is a director of the American National Bank of Eastland.
He is a member of the Baptist Church and affiliated with the Masonic and Woodmen orders. He married Miss Irene Andrews, and their two sons are Elmore and Elvis.
FRED D. BOSTAPH is the son of a Penn- sylvania oil operator, practically grew up in the atmosphere of the industry, is familiar with every important oil district in the United States, and for about two years has had his home and business headquarters in Ranger, the magic oil city of central west Texas, where he is purchasing agent for the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company.
He was born in Clarion County, Pennsyl- vania, son of Samuel and Hannah (Shoup) Bostaph. His ancestry is Pennsylvania Dutch, their original seat being in Berks County. Mr. Bostaph's great-grandfather acquired land in Clarion County from the government in 1801. On that farm Samuel Bostaph is still living. Samuel Bostaph was a pioneer in the oil in- dustry of Pennsylvania, beginning almost with the original discoveries of petroleum. The Bostaph homestead in Clarion County is a short distance from the town of St. Peters- burg.
Fred D. Bostaph grew up there, but for ten years after leaving home was with the Car- negie Steel Company at Homestead. He en- tered that industry in 1891, but in 1901 went with the Frick-Reid Supply Company of Pitts- burgh. This is one of the largest concerns in the country handling oil well supplies. It maintains branch houses in practically every
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oil field in the United States, and during his Interstate Commerce Commission and before experience with the company Mr. Bostaph had duties that took him to the branch houses and agencies of the firm in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Alabama, Oklahoma, Michigan, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, California and Colorado. It was a business experience of nearly twenty years, and only ended in 1919, when he came to Ranger, Texas, to become purchasing agent for the Texas Pacific Coal & Oil Company pany, whose operating headquarters are at Ranger.
The Texas Pacific Coal & Oil Company is the concern that opened the famous Ranger oil fields. After years of drilling and mak- ing tests in this region, at a cost of literally millions of dollars, the company brought in its first well, the McCleskey well, in October, 1917. The corporation has gone steadily ahead in development work in this section and is now one of the largest producers of oil and gas in the entire Southwest, with many millions of dollars of capital invested. The Ranger head- quarters of the company comprise an extensive group of buildings on the outskirts of the city, in fact a community of itself, consisting of modern buildings for both business and resi- dential purposes. It is a little industrial com- munity whose units are models of their kind for convenience and comfort.
Mr. Bostaph at once identified himself with groups of public spirited citizens working for the advancement of Ranger including the Ranger Chamber of Commerce. He is also chairman of the oil and gas committee of the West Texas Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Bos- taph is a Knight Templar Mason. He married Miss Elsie Petty, of Barnesville, Ohio.
SAMUEL HOUSTON COWAN. There is hardly a better known public man and distinguished lawyer in the entire country than Sam Cowan, and he takes pride in the fact that everybody knows him by his given name. He has lived in Fort Worth twenty-eight years and in Texas forty-two years. As district attorney in Western Texas during his residence at Big Springs from 1883 to 1893 he became inti- mately associated with the livestock growers of the West. His efficiency in that office led to his being retained as counsel for the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas in 1893, having resigned to accept the position. Ultimately this led to his controversy with the railroads over rates and regulations, wherein he achieved much fame and success before the
Congress in the enactment of the Hepburn Bill, due to his efforts more than to any other man, and through his able and constant work became, it may be said, and now is, the lead- ing railroad rate lawyer of the country, and known as such everywhere.
It is the good fortune of this publication to be able to present a sketch largely in the nature of an autobiography showing something of his career and the interests that have engaged his attention, indicative, too, of the plain and simple statements that have been his best asset. Many of these incidents are humorous, all of them interesting, and his brief review of them is an important contribution to Texas history.
"I was born," says Mr. Cowan, "in Tennes- see, December 15, 1858, at the time that Sam Houston's name was a household word in that state, and accordingly I was named for him. My great-grandfather was an Irishman. I have heard of a number of my name in the . North of Ireland. Some of them came to America to be Americans and to help populate the country. The family name and distant relationships of that name extend throughout various parts of Tennessee, Alabama and Mis- sissippi, and there are quite a number of my name in Texas and various other places, all tracing their genealogy back to the same source. I have maintained the distinction which many of them were unable to maintain -of always being poor and fairly well fed. With the single exception of myself they were hard working men. I am opposed to it."
Judge Cowan's father and mother came to Texas in 1878, and for thirty years lived at Roanoke, twenty miles North of Fort Worth, and his mother is still living there in good health at the age of eighty-nine. His father died at seventy-five and is buried at Roanoke. Sam Cowan lived in his native country of Marion, Tennessee, until he was eighteen years old, and one of the indelible recollec- tions of his childhood was seeing Grant's army as it marched from Bridgeport up Sequatchee Valley and crossed Chattanooga. He came to Texas with the family and lived four years in Tarrant County before going to West Texas.
Of his early experiences here Mr. Cowan writes: "One of the industries in which I em- barked was to cut cord wood from the post oaks near Grapevine, and I could stack a cord of wood so that a jack rabbit could jump through. There is skill in all trades. I did not cut wood and maul rails because Abra-
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ham Lincoln had done that, but I did it for fifty cents a cord to get money to buy some- thing to eat, but now I pay fifteen dollars a cord for wood then worth two dollars-what a difference! I raised cotton, but I found that I had to diversify, and I taught school to get out of debt.
"There was only one railroad at Fort Worth in 1878, and it had a little depot at the end of the road leading south from the court house. It was quite a usual thing to see a wagon bogged in the black mud in trying to navigate Main Street and the side streets to get to the Public Square where Tuck Boaz was buying cotton. One of the leading hotels was the Battle House, opposite the Court House Square, and every morning at six o'clock a man with a voice like a politician marched along the sidewalks with the call to arms : 'Hot biscuits and sausages for breakfast at the Battle House.'
"The wagon yard was a great resort for farmers and travelers. Where the Gulf Re- . fining Company's plant now is, hundreds of wagons were parked there handling western freight, while the ox teams grazed upon the prairie. This was the last of the Buffalo days, beginning with that great movement of popu- lation of the west. Cotton was worth eight
cents a pound, corn twenty-five cents a bushel, and a good yearling was worth about five dol- lars. The great prairie to the north had but few pastures. The trail herds were drawn along the present route of the Santa Fe with cattle going to Kansas or the Indian Territory.
"The standard price of a meal was twenty- five cents at ordinary places and only fifty cents at the swell El Paso Hotel, where now the Westbrook serves ham and eggs for a dollar. We then had a real newspaper, the Fort Worth Democrat, and if I mistake not the name of the editor was Paddock. None other than Captain Paddock, the soul of good cheer for the generations of his time and an honor- able example of a true and tried friend of the people and of men. He knew everything about everybody, and the local paragraphs were publicity columns of their doings.
"I went west when Fort Griffin was in its heyday of popularity as a resort for the 'Wild and Woolly West,' and saw there the tree where seven men had recently been hung. I have heard that George T. Reynolds and W. D. Reynolds were among those present. I guess the charge against the deceased was stealing horses. I did not camp long under that tree. I went there uninvited and left
wholly unknown. The Buffalo hunters and real cowboys and adventurers from every part of the west collected there together with army officers with pearl handled and silver plated six-shooters or 'hogs legs' as part of a man's dress, and it was not an inviting resting place for a tenderfoot. I had stopped at the town of Breckenridge and the stage stand at Caddo, not realizing that we were driving over land of fabulous wealth in oil, which then sold for one dollar an acre, and where now is the greatest storehouse of wealth on the conti- nent. That was my chance to get rich, but I didn't have the knowledge or the dollar per acre.
"When the Texas & Pacific Railroad built west and was completed to El Paso I heard the call of the wild and I quit teaching school and went to Sweetwater and lived there for a year in the bloody days of that town. It was no unusual thing to watch a shooting bout on the tall hat of anyone who had the misfortune to wear one, as Henry Furman, a pioneer law- yer of Fort Worth, happened to do when he landed in Sweetwater to represent Summerville in a county seat contest before the commission- ers' court at Sweetwater. The county judge being thereunto advised by local lawyers, re- fused to permit Mr. Furman to participate and admonished him that he would put him in jail if he persisted. The jail was a mesquite tree to which prisoners were chained over night while the sheriff looked after affairs around the va- rious saloons and gaming resorts in the neigh- borhood. I might remark that the judge's bench consisted of a mesquite stump and the Court House was a tent.
"About that time Giles (G. H.) and Wilson (W. E.) Connell had a general merchandise store where those who desired to stay all night in safety in Sweetwater were accommodated with the hospitality of Connell Brothers, who furnished them blankets to sleep on behind sacks of flour in the back of the store, the sacks of flour being used as a barricade so that stray bullets would not disturb their slumber.
"I moved to Big Springs in 1883 and lived there for ten years. I think my office had on it, 'Law, Insurance, Land and Surveying ; Business Solicited.' I saw sheep which had been driven from California sell for from five dollars to eight dollars a head. It was not many years until they sold for seventy-five cents. I am now reminded that we have re- turned to this last estate, while two years ago a lamb was worth ten dollars.
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"The bone business was one of the greatest industries. For several years after the Texas and Pacific Railroad was built through that western country one of the greatest industries was hauling buffalo bones. I have seen them stacked at sidings like cord wood. Many peo- ple, who afterwards grew to affluencee made their start hauling bones, and some of them are bankers, others capitalists and others are still boneheads. Some of both have located * in Fort Worth. The familiarity with bones may have had a decided hereditary influence on the great crop of ivory gracing the topmost end of many men, as it exposes unsightly stilts between the bottom of short skirts and shoe tops along the street.
"I surveyed the lines for the first great pas- tures built in the west, and so naturally I be- came well acquainted with the cattle business from the grass roots. I have found that pov- erty is a great blessing ; it keeps you at work and makes you move about and your appetite is great ; you don't have need for any doctors. No seaside resort is necessary in the summer, no need of taking sleeping powders as long as you can keep poor, and I star in doing that. But unless some other untoward events pre- vent it I can at least cajole myself that a camel can more easily go through the eye of a needle than a rich man can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. There is always room on top.
"I wrote a contract for the Earl of Ayles- ford (a real Lord) in the purchase of a ranch near Big Springs, or rather I represented the seller, and when it came time to sign the con- tract he proceeded with English custom to sign Aylesford, but I balked on that and insisted that in America we had no titles and that the Constitution of the United States forbade, so I demanded that he sign his name. He signed it "Hineage Finch." He was a chum of the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward V. "One of the distinguishing things for How- ard County (Big Springs, county seat) which ought not to be lost sight of in history is the first entry in the minutes of the County Com- missioners' Court which reads as follows: 'It is ordered by the County Commissioners' Court of Howard County that the Constitu- tion of the United States and of the State of Texas shall be in full force and effect in How- ard County, except as to scholastic ages, which shall extend from six to twenty-one.'
"There is another incident certainly worth recalling in connection with Sweetwater. In the early days of that county there were two political parties, the populist, or peoples'
party, and the democratic party. The candi- date for Congress of the peoples' party was making a speech in which he was attempting to show that the populists were the truest demo- crats, and quoted from Thomas Jefferson's message to Congress when he was President of the United States to prove it. Thereupon the chairman of the democratic committee, in making reply to the speech of the populist candidate for Congress, informed the people of Nolan County that they were being de- ceived by a stranger in whom they could place no confidence because it was known to every democrat in Nolan County that Thomas Jef- ferson was never president of the United States but was secretary of state. They hooted the populist candidate out of town, (another exhibition of the bone). But some of the citi- zens insisted that the democrats were simply in ignorance of the history of the country, and finally one of them suggested that they find a history of the United States so as to settle the matter. But after diligent search of the town no history of the United States could be found, so they wrote to Austin to find out the facts, and it developed that Thomas Jefferson was president of the United States, to the sat- isfaction of all, and the next convention reaf- firmed the principles of the democratic party and expressed full confidence in its honesty and intelligence and in the principles of President Thomas Jefferson the founder of the party.
"I had much to do with land matters and sale of school lands, and had no happier days in my life than when I was on the great and boundless prairies of Western Texas. I found the people the strongest, most generous and best people in the world. It is nothing less than a calamity to this great state that so many of them from year to year have been passing away without a record of their experiences for future generations to read. They were not educated in books, but by their life work and their environment the best educated men in the world. Such were our pioneers.
"I filled the office of district attorney for two terms, and during the second term was employed by the Cattle Raisers Association of Texas and moved to Fort Worth in July, 1893, and remained with the Cattle Raisers Associa- tion more than twenty-three years. During that period the regulation of transportation rates became paramount. This necessarily re- quired the enactment by Congress of laws that would give to the Interstate Commerce Com- mission power to make rates and otherwise regulate the transportation; such legislation
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had always been opposed by the railroads, but the Cattle Raisers Association, deciding that its members should have a tribunal before which could be tried the reasonableness of rates and the rules and regulations and prac- tices pertaining to transportation, set about to secure the co-operation of all the states in the west to that end. Livestock organizations in the west were called together by a call sent out by Hon. W. W. Turney, then president of the Association, and who again after these many years is president. The meeting was held in Denver in 1905. That was after the bills had been introduced in Congress and ef- forts were being made to secure their enact- ment but without success. The American Cat- tle Growers Association for the purpose of this work was formed at Denver in May of that year, and subsequently took over and was amalgamated with the National Association and became the American Live Stock Associa- tion. I was appointed its attorney and have remained in that position ever since.
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