USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 4
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In 1880 he married Lu Smith Halsell. They are the parents of five children: Alice, wife of H. C. Walker of Fort Worth; Frances E., wife of E. B. Spiller of Fort Worth; Harriet S., wife of Joe M. Callens of Fort Worth ; Lucien H., who was in the Headquarters Company of the One Hundred and Eleventh
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Aviation Train and saw service in France ; and William Sebree, who attended the Stu- dents Amy Training Camp and was in train- ing at Camp Taylor, Louisville, when the armistice was signed. This son is now a student of law at the University of Texas.
JOHN E. QUARLES has been in the lumber business almost since he came to Texas, and in former years was closely associated with a group of pioneer business men whom Fort Worth has long honored. Mr. Quarles is a well known man of affairs, though his chief interests are in the Quarles Lumber Company.
He was born in Obion County, Tennessee, March 13, 1875, son of John R. and Eliza- beth (Emmerson) Quarles, the former a native of Virginia and the latter of Tennes- see. His mother died at the age of fifty years and his father is still living at the advanced age of eighty-six. All their eight children lived to mature years, John E. being the fifth child and third son.
His boyhood days were passed quietly and uneventfully in Tennessee, and he made the best possible use of the schools of the dis- trict in which he grew up. He was only a boy when he came to Texas, and for several years lived at Decatur, in Wise County, and in other sections of North Texas. In 1894 he became identified as manager of the Conway and Leeper Lumber Company at Midlothian, Texas, and in 1899 at Cleburne, in Johnson County, but since 1901 his home has been at Fort Worth. Here he became associated with Paul Waples, N. Harding and W. Scott Wil- son, all now deceased. He organized with them a lumber business known as the John E. Quarles Company, and of this corporation Mr. Quarles is president. It is one of the leading lumber companies in North Texas, and operates a chain of seven outside yards.
Mr. Quarles is a member of the Fort Worth Club. On March 14, 1919, he married Mae Wilson, a daughter of the late W. Scott Wilson.
ELBERT L. LAVENDER. Through that con- centration of effort which is the keystone of success Elbert L. Lavender has made his way to a prominent position in Fort Worth business affairs as secretary and manager of the Crouch Hardware Company.
Mr. Lavender belongs to the very earliest families who were in the original settlement of the Upper Trinity Valley of Texas. His grandfather, A. M. Lavender, on coming to
Texas in 1846, about the time the old Peters Colony was established as the nucleus of Dallas, located in what is now Lancaster in Dallas County. The maternal grandfather of the Fort Worth business man was James H. Holloway, who came from Illinois in 1849 and established a home in the same community. These men were spendid types of the pioneers in North Texas. Grandfather Lavender had nine children and grandfather Holloway had eight, all born in Texas. Elbert L. Lavender was born at Lancaster January 8, 1874, being the only son of C. E. and M. F. (Holloway) Lavender, both of whom were born in Dallas County. They had two daughters.
Elbert Lavender was reared in his home community and lived there until March, 1904, when he came to Fort Worth and began his connection with the Crouch Hardware Com- pany as bookkeeper. Since 1915 he has enjoyed the responsibilities of manager of that widely known establishment.
In 1903 Mr. Lavender married Minnie Willi of Mineral Wells, Texas. They have three children : Elbert, Jr., born in 1909; Thelma born in 1911, and 'Marvin, born in 1915 Mr. Lavender is associated with the progres- sive young business and civic element at Fort Worth, is a member of the Lions Club, the Kiwanis Club, the Knights of Pythias, and is an active member and deacon of the First Christian Church.
WILLIAM JOSEPH HEFLEY has been an active factor in Fort Worth commercial enterprise for the past fifteen years, and is president of the W. J. Hefley Coal Company and president of the Artesian Bottling & Ice Cream Com- pany.
He was born in Anderson County, Texas, December 13, 1864, son of George W. and Elizabeth (Bradberry) Hefley. His father was a native of South Carolina and his mother of Jackson, Tennessee. The family came to Texas in 1864, locating in the Town of Ten- nessee in Anderson County. When W. J. Hefley was about a year old his parents moved to Belton, Texas, where he was reared and educated, finishing his education in the high school. At Belton he learned the drug busi- ness, and subsequently for about five years lived in New York City, where he was con- nected with the New York Cotton Exchange. On returning to Texas he located in Waco, where he was a manufacturer. About 1905 he came to Fort Worth and became interested in the cotton seed oil industry and the coal
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business. His chief attention at present is given to the Artesian Bottling Works & Ice Cream Factory, a business that has rapidly grown and requires most of his time and man- agement. He is one of the city's successful business men and has a number of interests in the locality.
In 1897 he married Mary Dalzell, of Brownsville, Texas. They have three chil- dren: Mary E., wife of David S. Googans, of Fort Worth; Robert D., and William, who was born in 1915. Mr. Hefley is a member of the Fort Worth Club, the River Crest Coun- try Club and of other civic and social organ- izations. He is a Mason and Shriner.
MAX BERGMAN, president of the Bergman Produce Company of Fort Worth, has been an interesting and progressive figure in the commercial affairs of that city from a time when its population was such that he practi- cally knew everyone claiming Fort Worth as a home.
Mr. Bergman has spent all his life since early boyhood in Fort Worth. He attended the public schools, and may be said to have started his business career as a newsboy employe of the old Fort Worth Gazette, when that journal was edited and published by Capt. B. B. Paddock. Subsequently he be- came clerk in a retail grocery store, learned the business, and for seventeen years was a grocery merchant.
On February 1, 1909, Mr. Bergman entered the wholesale produce and grocer's sundries business, organizing the Bergman Produce Company that year. He has since been its president, and has made this one of the lead- ing firms of the kind in Northern Texas. His business associates are J. W. Bondurant, vice president, W. S. Hooper, secretary and treas- urer, while his brother, G. A. Bergman, is also financially interested in the firm. Besides the headquarters at Fort Worth a branch estab- lishment is maintained at Quanah, Texas. The business has grown to one of large volume and employs about forty persons, including eleven traveling salesmen. Mr. Bergman is also interested as a stockholder in various other enterprises at Fort Worth.
In 1894 he married Miss Daisy Watson, of Tamaroa, Illinois. They have two children, Lloyd H. and Mary Louise. Mr. Bergman is a member of the Glen Garden Club, is a thirty-second degree and Knight Templar Mason and Shriner, and a member of the Elks Lodge. He has ever been an advocate
and a willing supporter of all movements tend- ing toward civic betterment, and contributes liberally of his time and effort in their sup- port. He is a member of the executive com- mittee of the Boy Scout movement ; a member of the junior board of the Chamber of Com- merce; a member of the executive board of the Fort Worth Relief Association; an active member of the Kiwanis Club; and a steward in the First Methodist Church of Fort Worth.
JUDGE SAM J. HUNTER. More than half a century has passed since Judge Hunter of Fort Worth prepared his first brief as a lawyer. He came to Texas about the close of the period of reconstruction, from Louis- ville, Kentucky, and is one of the compara- tively few men still living who personally par- ticipated in the work which restored demo- cratic rule in the state. He has been honored with some of the highest judicial offices, and is one of the oldest members of the Fort Worth bar.
He was born in Cumberland County, Ken- tucky, October 31, 1845. His father was a first cousin of R. M. T. Hunter, who served as secretary of state in the Confederate Gov- ernment. His father, Dr. Andrew Jackson Hunter, was born in Virginia in 1816, but was reared in Kentucky and educated as a physician in that state. He was a man of adventurous impulse, and while he made a great deal of money he was never satisfied with a long residence in one locality until he reached the frontier country of the North- west. For a time he was a railroad physician in Illinois, also practiced in Missouri, but in 1864 started for Montana territory and was one of the first settlers in the Yellowstone Valley. While in this valley he discovered the famous Hot Springs, still a prominent resort and known as Hunter's Hot Springs. However, he could not occupy that location on account of Indian hostilities for a num- ber of years. He engaged in mining, in the practice of medicine, was a Government phy- sician at forts and Indian reservations, also served as probate judge, and spent his last years at Bozeman, Montana, where he died April 19, 1894. His career is claimed as con- spicuously belonging to the history of Mon- tana.
Judge Hunter was the oldest of his father's children by his marriage to Lucy Ann Phil- pott, a native of Kentucky. Her mother, Sid- ney B. Monroe, was a niece of President Monroe.
Sam &. Hunles.
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Judge Hunter, only survivor of his brothers and sisters, acquired a common school educa- tion in Kentucky. After his father went West he remained at home working on the farm, and from the age of ten years was practically dependent on his own resources and energies. He worked out as a farm hand at ten dollars a month and, nevertheless, managed to edu- cate himself through books borrowed. At the age of eighteen he taught school. During the Civil war he became a drummer boy in a regiment of Home Guards, and served with a Union command until he was captured at Stone River, Tennessee, just before the great battle. He was paroled and sent home. At the age of twenty-one he was clerking in a dry goods store at Glasgow, Kentucky, where he cast his first vote, supporting the demo- cratic ticket. While in the store at Glasgow he kept many books in a back room and employed all his leisure time and many of his night hours in studying literature, mathemat- ics and such sciences as geology, astronomy and chemistry. At Tompkinsville, Kentucky, he also studied law with John R. Leslie, a brother of Preston H. Leslie, who served two terms as governor of Kentucky. While at Tompkinsville he married Miss Mary E. Ray, daughter of John Ray, a wealthy resident of that section. .
Judge Hunter was licensed to practice law in Kentucky April 8, 1868, and remained at Tompkinsville four years. His wife's father had moved to Louisville in 1870 and Judge Hunter went to that city in 1872 and pursued the regular course of the Law School of the University of Louisville, graduating with the legal degree of L.L. B. February 26, 1873. On the first of May of that year he arrived in Texas and located in Sulphur Springs, where he became associated in the law firm of Gen. Sam Bell Maxey and W. H. Lightfoot, until General Maxey was elected to the United States Senate in 1876. In November, 1873, Senator Coke was elected governor of Texas, but Mr. Hunter was unable to vote in this election since he had not been in the state as a resident a year. However, he used his influ- ence in the campaign to support the champion of Democracy. When Governor-elect Coke went to Austin to take his seat early the fol- lowing year, the military governor, E. J. Davis, refused to vacate, and in the historic proceed- ings that followed Judge Hunter participated to the extent of purchasing a Winchester rifle and two hundred rounds of cartridges and
accompanied a body of determined men who started for Austin for the purpose of seeing that the will of the people as expressed in the election was carried out. However, when President Grant refused the aid of the Reg- ular Army to support Governor Davis' con- tentions the controversy abruptly ended with- out bloodshed. Judge Hunter practiced law at Sulphur Springs until the election of O. M. Roberts as governor. At that time a new judicial district was created from half a dozen counties in northeastern Texas, and the gov- ernor appointed Mr. Hunter district attorney, but he refused to accept the appointment until a meeting of the bar was held, represented by the lawyers of the district, and formal resolutions passed - urging Mr. Hunter to accept the office. He gave a vigorous admin- istration in that office for fifteen months, and in that time secured the conviction of thirty- five men to penitentiary sentences and the hanging of two criminals.
June 8, 1884, Judge Hunter removed to Fort Worth and opened his office in this then bustling small city and the metropolis of the great west Texas cattle country. The first friends Judge Hunter made in Fort Worth were B. B. Paddock and J. Peter Smith. Judge Hunter was soon handling a large pri- vate practice and continued to devote his ener- gies to the law. until 1894, when the legislature created the three courts of Civil Appeals. He was then appointed by the Fort Worth bar to represent the interests and claims of Fort Worth as the location for Court No. 2, and proceeded with characteristic energy and enthusiasm and after a notable campaign brought about the favorable decision by which Fort Worth became the seat of the Court of Appeals. The first three judges of the Court were B. D. Tarlton, chief justice, H. O. Head and I. W. Stephens. With the resignation of Judge Head in the fall of 1895 Governor C. A. Culberson appointed Judge Hunter to fill the vacancy, and his appointment was subsequently confirmed by election for a full term of six years. He was succeeded by
Judge Eric Speer. Upon the election of Judge Speer Judge Hunter retired from the bench and resumed his law practice in part- nership with W. W. Flood. Three years later, upon the death of Mr. Flood, Judge Hunter took in as his partner his son Ray. Ray Hunter was a young man of brilliant attain- ments in the law, and his death, September 26, 1916, was greatly lameted. Since then
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Judge Hunter has continued in practice and is head of the firm of Hunter & Hunter, com- posed of six members of the Fort Worth bar, retaining his son's name as a matter of sen- timent.
Judge Hunter served as a member of the Legislature in 1913-14. He is a Royal Arch Mason, and both as a lawyer and citizen is one of Fort Worth's grand old men. Judge Hunter was three times married. His sec- ond wife was Kate Rice Burnett, widow of Bruce Burnett. His third wife was Miss Anna E. Schober. He has one living son, Horace, a merchant at Oklahoma City.
Judge Hunter's dissenting opinion in the famous case of Chicago, R. I. & T. Ry. Co. vs. Rosa Langston, 47 S. W. Rep. on page 1030 et seq., bespeaks the character of the man and of the judge more certainly and graphically than would a whole volume of biography. And we, for that reason, copy it in full, and for the further useful purpose that he there declares the law of the personal security of an American citizen more clearly and emphatically than was ever declared by a Texas Court before, and cites both State and National authorities to support his opinion.
The case went to the Supreme Court of Texas on the dissent, and that Court sustained the majority opinion of the Court of Civil Appeals, overruling Judge Hunter's dissenting opinion and the judgment was reversed and remanded for a new trial. See Opinion of Justice Stephens, 47 S. W. Rep. 1027.
The case was never retried but the rail- way company succeeded in compromising the claim for $12,500.00-just half the sum the jury had awarded her.
Just five years later the precise question came before the same court again when Jus- tice Brown who had participated in the deci- . sion overruling Judge Hunter's dissenting opinion above quoted, rendered the opinion of the Court in the case of Austin & N. W. R. Co. vs. Cluck, 77 S. W. Rep. 403, 97 Tex. 172, holding just the reverse of their decision in the Langston case when they overruled Judge Hunter's opinion, and settled the law of personal security in Texas as Judge Hunter had declared it in his dissening opinion.
Dissenting Opinion of Judge Hunter (Nov. 29, 1898.)
Hunter, J. (dissenting). I regret that I cannot agree with my brothers on the opinion they present in this case. I think that the
ruling of the learned district judge in refusing to require the plaintiff to unwrap and expose her wounded limbs to the company's doctors was exactly correct. It appears from the bill of exceptions that they were "surgeons of defendant and in defendant's regular employ- ment"; that the plaintiff's counsel had previ- ously refused to allow them to examine her upon this ground, offering, however, at the same time, "to have plaintiff examined by any number of physicians the court might see proper to appoint, on defendant's application, who were not in any way connected with plaintiff or defendant." Defendant then made application to the court, and upon this applica- tion the court appointed Doctor Stinson to make the examination, refusing to appoint the company's doctors, or either of them, stating that Stinson could act or not, as the parties themselves desired. At this juncture, it seems, defendant's counsel placed two of the com- pany's doctors on the stand and requested them then and there "to examine the plaintiff and her injuries," and I infer that the afore- said doctors were then and there about to seize the plaintiff's limbs, and examine them, nolens volens, when her counsel came to her rescue, again objecting to the assault upon her by these corporation doctors, placing their objections upon the grounds (1) that they were in the employment of defendant, and were partisan, and not impartial; (2) that they had not been appointed by the court to make such examination; and (3) that defend- ant had no right to have such examination without the plaintiff's consent, agreeing at the same time to submit herself to such exami- nation at the hands of any other doctors con- sidered by the court to be impartial and competent, and not in the employment of de- fendant.
In order to have a clear understanding of the question as it stood for decision in the district court, at least upon the motion for a new trial, and as it stands in this court, I think it is proper to state here that the rec- ord shows that defendant accepted the order appointing Dr. Stinson to make the examina- tion, and acted upon it; because the undis- puted evidence is that, after he was appointed, defendant's counsel took him to Mrs. Langs- ton and caused him to examine her, and then failed to put him on the witness stand, when the plaintiff herself called him as a witness, and he testified fully as to the condition of her injuries, and whether she would be able
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to wear artificial limbs or not, his evidence agreeing in the main with that of Doctor Poin- dexter. It is important to note, furthermore, that this effort to force an examination was not made until after the plaintiff had been twice upon the witness' stand, and had testi- fied fully, and exhibited her limbs to the court and jury, and her .cross-examinations, partly referring to the condition of her limbs and ability to wear artificial limbs, cover 10 pages of typewritten matter in the record; that it nowhere appears in the record that the com- pany's doctors were not present during her entire examination as a witness, and had every opportunity to view and examine the injured limbs and question her fully concerning the same; that it occurred after she had closed her evidence in chief. It also appears that Doctor Poindexter had examined her limbs on the day the trial began, and it nowhere appears, nor does defendant's counsel con- tend, that Doctor Poindexter and Doctor Stinson were incompetent, or had not made a thorough examination, or were interested in behalf of the plaintiff, or in any manner par- tial to her, or prejudiced against the com- pany, but they stand here as graduated, competent, and experienced physicians and surgeons, with long years of practice, with- out a breath of complaint against them of any character, and it does not appear that the company's doctors did not hear them testify, fully describing the injuries and their condi- tion and appearance. I think that, under this view of the case, the court did not err in refusing to appoint the company's doctors to examine her limbs out of court. Her coun- sel had refused to consent to the appointment, and the court, in the absence of a statute, had no power to enforce such an order against her will. We held this, in effect, in the Pendery case, cited by the majority, and the Supreme Court refused a writ of error therein. 36 S. W. Rep. 793.
Nor did the court err in refusing to compel her to submit to an examination of the com- pany's doctors in open court on the trial. Our Supreme Court has intimated this view on several occasions, and I think has, in effect, so decided. Ry. Co. v. Norfleet, 78 Tex. 323, 14 S. W. 703; Railway Co. v. Johnson, 72 Tex. 101, 10 S. W. 325; Railway Co. v. Underwood, 64 Tex. 466.
In the Norfleet case, supra, Chief Justice Stayton said for the court: "Such an order should never be made, unless in a case in
which the ends of justice imperatively demand it, and in no case should such an order be made when the party is willing to be exam- ined by competent and disinterested men with- out such order. If, however, a court should refuse to make such an order under a state of facts that would justify it, this would not be ground for reversal, if it appeared that during the trial opportunity for such exam- ination was given. On the trial of this case plaintiff submitted his injured limb for exam- ination, it was examined, and there is no rea- son to believe that any physician or surgeon brought by appellant would have been refused an opportunity to make a full examination."
Our present Chief Justice Gaines, in the Johnson case, supra, speaking for the court, said: "If this power should be exercised at all it should be by the appointment by the court of one or more disinterested experts, either of its own selection or such as may be agreed upon by both parties." Our brothers of the Fifth district, it seems, take the same view of the question (Railway Co. v. Nelson, 5 Tex. Civ. App. 387, 24 S. W. 589) ; and so it has been ruled in the first (Railway Co. v. Berling, 14 Tex. Civ. App. 544, 37 S. W. 1083) ; and our Supreme Court refused a writ of error in the latter case.
The court of appeals of Kentucky hold "that such examination may be required in the exercise of a sound discretion on the part of the trial court, and when it fairly appears that, the ends of justice require it, and that knowledge of necessary and material facts can only be brought to light by such examina- tion"; and that court affirmed a judgment, where the lower court had refused to make such an order, because "eighteen months had elapsed from the time of the accident to the date of the trial, and it was apparent to all that the appellee was a cripple. It was an undisputed fact that he had suffered extreme and excruciating pain. His right thigh mashed, and his body otherwise bruised and injured. An examination by the company's expert physicians, or by a commission of learned doctors, might have informed the jury of the exact nature of the trouble under which the appellee labored, and have clothed their information in the usual technical nomen- clature of the profession, but the patent fact that the man had thus suffered and was a cripple could not have been explained away. In the courts where the power to compel a submission to such an examination is upheld
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-and it is denied in many-it is not held that a defendant has an absolute right to demand such an order, but, as we have said, the mo- tion therefor is addressed to the sound dis- cretion of the court." Distilling Co. v. Riggs (Ky.) 45 S. W. 99.
In Railway Co. v. Rice, 144 Ill. 227, 33 N. E. 953, the Supreme Court of Illinois say : "The extent to which courts have gone, sus- taining the power to compel such examina- tions, is that such orders may be made in the sound legal discretion of the trial court when it appears that such an examination is rea- sonably necessary to the attainment of justice. * * But the ruling in this case was placed upon the broad ground that the court had no power to grant the motion, and this court is committed to that doctrine." Parker v. Enslow, 102 Ill. 272; Loyd v. Railway Co., 53 Mo. 515.
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