USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 45
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counties. Peter Harmonson spent his last years in Arlington, Texas, where he died and is buried, having survived his wife, who died and is buried at Elizabethtown. Among their children were Mrs. Missouri Cox, who died in Arkansas, where her husband was killed by bushwhackers during the war ; Zerril Jack- son ; Mrs. Robinson; Mrs. Charlotte Howard of Arkansas; William P., who died in Colo- rado, his family being represented in Denton and Wise counties and also in Oklahoma.
Zerril Jackson Harmonson, father of John A. Harmonson, was born in Indiana March 3, 1822. His youthful years were spent with the family in frontier localities and conse- quently his opportunities for education were limited. After coming to Texas he married Miss Harper, who died without children. During the war between the states he was in the ranging service at Fort Murray and in that vicinity. Toward the close of the war he started with a party for New Mexico, but was overtaken before the completion of the journey and notified that the war was over. He then resumed his active connection with the cattle business. Prior to the war he had reached a position where he was one of the leading cattlemen in North and Northwest Texas, but his property was scattered and largely destroyed by the conditions prevailing during the war For a number of years there- after he farmed and ranched near old Eliz- abethtown, where he died December 1, 1891. His second wife was Miss Ruth Duncan, a native of Alabama, whose father was a Texas pioneer. She died in 1881, mother of the following children: William P. of Archer County ; Peter C., who died near Justin, leav- ing a son, Sam J .; Zerril J. of Glenrose, Texas; Zenada, wife of W. C. Walker, living in the Rio Grande Valley near El Paso; and John A.
John A. Harmonson, youngest of his father's family, was born at old Elizabeth- town February 20, 1876. He was reared in Denton County and after the death of his father his older brother Peter C. was ap- pointed his guardian, and while on his brother's ranch he learned the cattle business. He at- tended the common schools and spent two years in college at Jacksboro and Weatherford. From school he entered business for himself on the home ranch, and ranching was his permanent business until recent years when he disposed of most of his property and now enjoys the comforts of a retired home at Justin.
Mr. Harmonson was reared a democrat and cast his first vote for Mr. Bryan. In a public way much of his interest has gone in the direc- tion of better schools, and he was one of the Board of Education of Denton County with trustees Ball, Laney, Harpool and Jones. In 1912 he was appointed a county commissioner to succeed Jack Christal, serving out an un- expired term. S. H. Hoskins was then county judge and his fellow commissioners were Gary, Sellman and Sparks. The bond issue of the Lewisville district was a matter before the board. In the program of laying out new roads Mr. Harmonson was a leader in demand- ing wider roads, and refused to consider a petition for the ordinary thirty-foot road.
In Denton County in 1899 Mr. Harmonson married Miss Emma Hamlin, a native of De- catur County, Michigan, and daughter of Morris Hamlin. They are the parents of three sons, Louis H., Jack A. and Lloyd M.
HENRY CLAY WALKER. Fort Worth had two or three railroads built or in process of building when Henry Clay Walker added his citizenship to the community thirty-three years ago. However, Fort Worth was still largely a market town, a center of more wholesale trade than widely diversified industry and commerce. Mr. Walker helped build up the prestige of Fort Worth as a distributing cen- ter for agricultural machinery, and has been substantially allied with its growth and de- velopment ever since. He is now head of an important local industry of his own, the Walker Bread Company, a wholesale bakery constituting one of the largest plants of its kind in the Southwest.
He was born at Louisville, Kentucky, Janu- ary 29, 1866, a son of William H. and Mary D. (Kaye) Walker. His mother was also born in Louisville, while his father was a Virginian. Mr. Walker was next to the youngest of the nine children that grew to mature years in his parents' home at Louisville. He was educated in his native city and was just about twenty- one years of age when he arrived at Fort Worth on November 29, 1887.
For eighteen consecutive years he was with B. F. Avery & Sons, plow manufacturers of Louisville, Kentucky, five years of which time he was connected with the Fort Worth branch, and in that capacity helped distribute imple- ments over many of the most promising agri- cultural areas of Texas and Oklahoma and other states. He was also for about a year
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subsequently connected with the Rock Island Plow Company.
Mr. Walker in 1911 bought the Worth Bread Company, changing the name to the Walker Bread Company. He is sole pro- prietor of this model establishment, which operates a splendidly equipped and sanitary baking establishment, located since Septem- ber, 1918, in a new building 90 by 140 feet, a two-story brick, with every facility known to the modern baking art and with a capacity of 60,000 loaves of bread a day. About sixty people are employed in the business, and the product is shipped and distributed over a remarkably large territory, going as far as 250 miles from Fort Worth. Mr. Walker is also vice president of the Hyde Park Land Company. He is a member of the Rotary Club and is one of the enthusiastic members of the Fort Worth Club. With its predecessor, the old Fort Worth Commercial Club, he was identified for eight years as secretary and knew all the prominent citizens who fre- quented the club rooms in that time.
In 1907 he married Sarah Alice Wright. They have one son, Howard Wright.
LEWIS H. HARRELL. An epitome of the development in wealth and resources of North Texas is found in the personal career of Lewis H. Harrell of Grandview. He came to John- son County in 1873, the famous panic year, before Texas had recovered from reconstruc- tion rule, and when there was not a single mile of railroad in Johnson County. He had no capital to start with, several years farmed with a plow and a pair of old horses, and has raised himself by the sure but gradual process of persistent hard work to the position of one of the wealthy and foremost citizens of in- fluence of Johnson County.
He was born in Scott County, Mississippi, September 27, 1853. His father, William R. Harrell, was a native of North Carolina and as a young man moved to Mississippi, where he married Miss Minerva Moore of Alabama, daughter of Alfred Moore. William R. Har- rell also came to Texas and was a business man at Cleburne. Before the war he was in good circumstances and owned a few slaves, which he lost during that struggle, and after- wards continued farming and merchandising with a fair degree of success and died in 1901 at the age of seventy-seven. His wife died at the age of forty-four. She was the mother of eight sons, and those to grow up were: Thomas Alfred, deceased ; John A. of Bishop,
Texas; Lewis H .; James A. of Bishop; and Lee, who died leaving a family at Itasca, Texas.
Lewis H. Harrell grew up on a farm within a mile of the town of Lake, Mississippi. The Civil war interfered with the father's program and provisions for the education of his chil- dren and he had few school advantages. He started life with no capital whatever. As a boy he did odd jobs, but made his first real money raising cotton and had a general expe- rience in the labor and work of a farm when he came to Texas.
In Crawford County, Arkansas, August 28, 1873, at the age of twenty, he married, and he and his bride came to Texas in a wagon, cross- ing the Red River at Denison and on reaching Johnson County did not possess even a horse, since he had driven his father's team into the county. Mr. Harrell earned his first dollar in Texas picking cotton near Grandview. Then for several months he worked as a clerk in the store of Brown & Harrell at Cle- burne, his father being a member of that firm. Next he became a tenant farmer on a place between Cleburne and Grandview. His team comprised two old ponies, and having bought a plow he began raising cotton and corn. The first season's crop enabled him to buy a wagon and later he bought a mule team. For two years he made his crops on rented land and then contracted to pay for a small farm on installments. The price of the land was fif- teen dollars an acre and the farm had a box house. He paid out on this place, and during the nine years he remained in that locality he bought some other land. Having sold out these holdings he next purchased a farm near Parker, and remained there and did actual farming for nine years growing corn and cot- ton, and also erecting a cotton gin which he operated. During these eighteen years he had enjoyed a steady increase in prosperity, and when he left the Parker locality he sold part of his possessions and moved to Grandview, where, in the meantime, he had acquired the cotton gin. He operated that as his chief business. He had farmed in a semi-circle around this thrifty and growing town for some twenty-five years and had acquired some valuable semi-commercial experience as a gin man. His energy and business integrity had also won the confidence of the neighbors and friends among whom he had worked. Be- sides operating the gin at Grandview, he also became a merchant, and for some twelve or fifteen years was a member of the firm, Har-
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rell & Walker, Hutchins Brothers & Walker, Hayden & Harrell. He is now a member of the firm O'Harra-Harrell Company. While a business man in town, Mr. Harrell has never altogether retired from farming. For a time ยท he was financially interested in the Grandview Light & Ice Company, Inc., and was a partner in the Head Telephone Company, operating the Exchange at Grandview. In 1901 he was in the stock business in Roberts and Gray counties, closing out in 1907 at the outbreak of the panic of that year.
His connection with banking began the year of the Roosevelt panic of 1907, at which time he was made president of the First National Bank of Grandview. He had been a stock- holder prior to that date. The bank was char- tered in 1890, being promoted by the T. E. Pittman interests. Mr. Pittman was its first president. The capital is still maintained at its original figure of forty thousand dollars and the combined capital and undivided profits now aggregate over a hundred thousand dol- lars. The other officers are C. P. Lane, vice president ; Oscar M. Harrell, cashier ; Evans Jones, assistant cashier.
Mr. Harrell has shown his progressive spirit in the matter of town building, having erected several of the brick business houses of the little city. Three of these were destroyed by fire but he restored them at once. He served Grandview a number of years ago on its board of alderman and was a member of the school board. During the World war he contributed liberally to all auxiliary movements and to the purchase of bonds and war savings stamps. Mr. Harrell is justly credited with an impor- tant share in promoting and perfecting the splendid system of highways, just completed in Johnson County. He was one of the ad- visory committee to the Board of County Commissioners in spending the large fund voted for good roads.
Julia Ann Wright, who became the bride of Mr. Harrell on August 28, 1873, was a daughter of James Monroe Wright, who spent his last years in the Harrell home at Grand- view. Mr. and Mrs. Harrell have six chil- dren. Their only son Oscar died at the age of sixteen. Of the five daughters the oldest is Lillie, wife of C. P. Lane, vice president of the First National Bank, and a resident of Dallas. She has two daughters, Vivian, now Mrs. C. P. Lane, and Julia Margaret. Jennie, the second daughter, is the wife of William B. White of Grandview and has a daughter, Mar- tha White. Nettie is the wife of A. A. Hay-
den of Dallas and her two children are Violet and Howard. Lenore is the wife of Steele Covington of Grandview. The youngest is Mrs. Rosa Ingle of Grandview.
ED BALL, cashier of the Guaranty State Bank of Rio Vista, has spent practically all his life in this section of Texas, having been born a few miles away, just over the line in Hill County. His career has been that of a farmer, merchant and banker, and one whose time and means have been liberally bestowed upon the development of the town and civic community of which he is a part.
Mr. Ball was born in Hill County, five miles south of Rio Vista, September 10, 1878. He represents an old Missouri family. His grandfather, Hampton Ball, was a Confeder- ate soldier and lived out his life in Missouri. His children were Daniel A., Enoch, Thomas, Will, and Lizzie, wife of Tom Van Studdi- ford. Another child by a second marriage was Walter Ball. Of these children the only one to come to Texas was Daniel Augustus Ball, who was born in Jonesburg, Missouri, in 1853, and was too young for soldier service in the war. About 1870 he came to Texas and settled along the north line of Hill County and for many years was a successful mer- chant. He located the postoffice at Derden, agreeing to carry the mail from Covington free as an inducement to the Government to give postal facilities to his community. He carried the mail for two years. He opened a stock of goods at Derden soon after locating there and for about twenty years was the lead- ing merchant of the community. Finally finan- cial misfortune overtook him and he closed out his business and returned to his native locality in Missouri, where he died in 1911. Daniel A. Ball married Annie Blanche Thomas, a native of Arkansas, but reared as an orphan girl in Missouri. She died in 1889. Her children were: Warner, who died as a young man, leaving a wife and child; Nannie, wife of James Gage of Cleburne, Texas; Ed and Edna, twins, the latter the wife of N. W. Smith of Cleburne; and Stella, wife of G. C. Hart of Cleburne.
Ed Ball was reared at Derden, acquired his common school education there, and gave his assistance to his father until he reached his majority. Then followed a period of serv- ice as a farm hand. The highest wage he ever received was sixteen dollars a month. Even then he proved his talents as a financier by saving something from his earnings. From
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farm hand he became a farm renter, and after making four crops continued his progress to Rio Vista, having moved half way to that com- munity from his birthplace while a renter. At Rio Vista Mr. Ball began with modest capital as a trader in cattle, buying and shipping to the Fort Worth market. After two years he opened a meat market, and was in this line of business until his establishment was burned in 1914. Following that he was a grocery merchant and on January 1, 1921, became identified with the Guaranty State Bank. This bank was organized in October, 1920, and opened its doors for business the first of the following year. The promoters were E. L. Etier of Fort Worth ; C. H. Coffman, Ed Ball and Doug Wade of Rio Vista. The first offi- cers were Mr. Coffman, president, Mr. Wade, vice president ; Mr. Ball, cashier, and the other directors are J. L. Higginbotham and E. L. Etier.
During his thirteen years of residence Mr. Ball has contributed more than his share as an individual to the developing facilities of the village of Rio Vista. The greatest calamity in the history of Rio Vista was a fire in 1914 which destroyed property to the value of ninety thousand dollars. It was a severe calamity upon all business men, Mr. Ball included, but he took the lead in rebuilding and was responsible for the erection of the brick block in which the Guaranty State Bank is housed and an adjoining building occupied by Ball & Pyeatt, merchants, of which Mr. Ball is the senior partner.
Mr. Ball comes of a democratic family and has cast his vote consistently for that party, supporting Mr. Bryan in 1900. He helped sell Government securities during the war and was otherwise active in patriotic affairs. Mr. Ball is a York Rite Mason and a member of Moslah Temple at Fort Worth.
At Cleburne he married Miss Jessie Hart, who was born at Rio Vista in February, 1881, a daughter of I. H. Hart and granddaughter of Meredith Hart. Meredith Hart was a pio- neer of Texas, coming here a number of years before the war and driving his stock of cattle overland, while his wife rode on a pony with a child in her arms. They first located in Red River County, in Fannin County, then Hunt County, and as the Indian frontier gradually moved west Meredith Hart set his livestock feeding on new ranges. He was a prominent cattle man of his day. He had his herds in old Navarro County and also in Erath County just before the Civil war. Be-
fore the war he also opened a ranch in Co- manche County, and about that time branded fifteen hundred calves. He suffered consid- erable loss from Indian incursions. He mar- keted his first cattle at Fort Belknap to the Indian agent, Charlie Bernard. Afterwards he drove his stock to Shreveport, shipping down the river to New Orleans. Meredith Hart for many years had his home at Rio Vista. His house was a large two-story frame, the stud- ding being made of postoak timber hewn down to the heart and put together with wooden pins. The lumber was hauled from East Texas mills and dressed by hand, and the hardware from Houston. All this material was assembled by ox teams. The cost of the house was ten thousand dollars. Mr. Hart bought the two sections of land on which the home stood from Colonel Chambers at two dollars and a half an acre. He was attracted to the land because it possessed an abundant supply of living water, though other land adja- cent could have been secured practically with- out price. The old Hart homestead is still standing. In that house Meredith Hart died in 1863, followed by his widow five years later. His first wife was Miss Riley and her children were Jack, Lafayette, Nancy, who became the wife of Tom Pollard, and Iredelle. The second wife of Meredith Hart was Casan- dra Wilkins, who became the mother of two sons, Miles and Meredith.
Mrs. Ed Ball is the youngest of four living children in her parents' family, the others being A. J. Hart of Mangum, Oklahoma ; Mrs. Ada Cooper of Rio Vista, and J. C. Hart, also of Rio Vista. Mrs. Ball was educated in the public schools. She and Mr. Ball have four children : Doyle, Weldon, Maida Vance and Nell. Doyle graduated from the Rio Vista High School in 1921.
ROBERT A. POOLE. Future generations of the posterity of Robert A. Poole and many of his friends and acquaintances will be grateful for the information contained in the following paragraphs concerning his good and useful life and citizenship. He spent more than fifty years of this life in Johnson County, lived in Texas through its life as a republic, helped in its defense under the banner of the Confederacy and was a factor in its rehabili- tation and restoration as a sister common- wealth of the American Union.
Robert Addington Poole was born near Clinton, Louisiana, November 16, 1835, son of Orlando L. and Elizabeth W. Poole. His
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parents, in the fall of 1836, moved to Texas, whose star as a republic had only recently risen, and settled near New Boston, Bowie County, where Robert and the other children grew up on the frontier and among the duties of farming and planting. The Pooles kept their home in Bowie County until after the close of the Civil war, when Robert A. brought his family to Johnson County and was subsequently followed by his parents, who spent the rest of their days here and are buried in the cemetery at Cleburne. Among their children were Robert A .; Ozella, widow of David D. Lennox of Texarkana; Octavia, who was killed while a soldier in the Con- federate army; Oscar, also a Confederate soldier, who died unmarried soon after the war; Nazara L., who died in Cleburne in 1905; Dudley L. and Hiram R., of Cleburne ; and Nannie, wife of T. J. Honea of Cleburne.
Robert A. Poole missed the opportunity for a good education because of the frontier en- vironment in which he grew up. He came to manhood with little knowledge beyond read- ing, writing and ciphering, though experience had taught him how to work and mingle with men. At the age of seventeen his father placed him in a dry goods store in Bowie County. There he learned the principles essential to successful merchandising, and subsequently spent thirty years as a trades- man. Four years of this time he owned and conducted a store at Doaksville, Indian Terri- tory. From there he returned to Texas in 1861 and after putting his affairs in order enlisted in the Confederate army in April, 1862, joining Company H under Capt. Wil- liam E. Estes at New Boston. This company was attached to the First Texas Battalion under Major Phil Crump of Jefferson, Texas, and when assigned to the Tennessee Depart- ment became a part of the 32d Regiment under the command of Col. J. A. Andrews with Captain Estes as major. The regiment was in General Ector's Brigade, General French's Division, and with that command Mr. Poole served until the end of the war. He was discharged at Meridian, Mississippi, and reached home in Bowie County May 25, 1865.
During the next year he tried farming with free labor, and on September 25, 1866, estab- lished his home on Nolan River in Johnson County, known as Wardville. The following spring he returned to his old calling as a mer- chant at Plano in Collin County, where he remained three years, and on returning to
Johnson County engaged in business at Cle- burne, where he rounded out thirty years of active commercial pursuits. He and his busi- ness partner, Sol Lockett, erected the first brick building on the townsite of Cleburne, which is still standing, now occupied by a saddlery and shoe shop and a barber shop. Other matters engaged his attention from time to time and proved him a vigorous type of citizen as well as business man. President Cleveland appointed him postmaster of Cle- burne and he began his duties in June, 1893, and served nearly five years until his successor was appointed under the Mckinley adminis- tration. On leaving the postoffice he was in the grain and feed business, but several years later retired, and lived without special cares or anxiety until his death October 14, 1919, at the age of eighty-four.
The official service briefly noted indicates his somewhat active participation in the dem- ocratic party. He joined the Missionary Baptist Church in 1876 and thereafter walked in the fear of his Maker and by his example made his religion a positive influence on the lives of others. He was a right-living Mason from the time he joined the order while a soldier in Mississippi in 1863.
December 25, 1861, shortly before he en- tered the army, he married Miss Caroline S. Hays, five years his junior, and now living at Cleburne. Her parents were William J. and Mary A. Hays. Mr. and Mrs. Poole had the following children : Ola and Ora, twins, the former wife of R. P. Keith and the latter wife of J. P. Jacobs, both of Dallas; Ina ; Mrs. A. C. White of Cleburne ; Ella, who died at Cleburne, wife of N. F. Higgins; Oscar E., a partner in the furniture house of C. M. Pitts at Cleburne ; Oatis H. Poole, president and general manager of the Review Publishing Company of Cleburne; Edy, wife of J. E. Pitts of Fort Worth; Mrs. Mal Gray of Cle- burne; and Effa, wife of E. M. Cline, living at Cleburne.
Oatis H. Poole is a native of Johnson County and one of Texas' very successful and able newspaper men. He was born Feb- ruary 6, 1874, at the first postoffice of the county, old Wardville, four and a half miles west of Cleburne. Most of his childhood was spent in Cleburne, where he acquired a pub- lic school education. After school he worked two years in a drug store and four years in a grocery store, and for four years was assist- ant postmaster under his father during the Cleveland second administration,
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For a quarter of a century his time and talents have been identified with the news- paper business. He joined the Enterprise Publishing Company as solicitor and was with the business department of that company nine years, seven months. He resigned in October, 1904, and, with J. E. Pitts and H. D. McCoy, organized the Review Publishing Company. At the first directors' meeting he was chosen general manager, and later was made presi- dent and general manager of the company.
The Review Publishing Company is an un- usually successful journalistic publication. It is a corporation chartered with a capital of seventy-five hundred dollars, but the business and plant represents today a valuation of fifty to sixty thousand dollars. Mr. Poole has gradually acquired all the stock of the com- pany except one share of a hundred dollars owned by each of the five members of the board of directors. The nominal capital of the company has never been increased, but the profits have been reinvested in the business and allowed to accumulate. The Review Company issues the Daily Review and the Johnson County Review, the latter a weekly. Each is a seven-column, eight-page issue, with eight to twenty pages in Sunday issues, and special editions running as high as fifty-six pages. The Review is a strictly democratic paper and for years has directed a large and important influence in city, county and state politics. It is the present city official organ of Cleburne.
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