USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 54
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69
WALTER STEPHENSON. The story of the development of Cooke County as revealed in these pages makes several references to the Stephenson family, which has been a factor in the breaking of the virgin soil and the build- ing of homes and the extension of sound methods of agriculture for over forty years.
Elsewhere it is told how George Stephenson with his family came to Cooke County in 1877. He was an Englishman of old Yorkshire, spent his early life as gardener on an English estate, and therefore had considerable experi- ence in rural work. He was always a man of industry, but his fortune was limited to his accumulations às a wage worker when he came to the United States. After living in Illinois for a number of years he came to Texas.
With the family at the time of its settlement in Cooke County in 1877 was Walter Stephen- son, then fourteen years of age. He has been one of the busy men of affairs in the rural community of Precinct No. 3 of Cooke County for over thirty years. He was the sixth child of his parents and was born in York- shire, England, May 14, 1864. He was too young to remember any of the events of the voyage across the Atlantic, and his early boy- hood was spent at Towanda and in McLean County, Illinois. His father appreciated the advantages of schools, but it seemed that every member of the family as soon as old enough had to do some work to contribute to supporting the home, and Walter Stephen- son, therefore, never received an education by continuous process of attending school. Practically all his schooling was acquired in Illinois. After coming to Texas he was not in school except for a few nights of attend- ance at a writing school, where he learned to write a fair hand. He remained with his parents, helping them on the homestead, to the age of twenty-three, when he married and started tenant farming.
His first home was a box shack with a shed on one side. He had practically no capital, though he was free of debt, having bought teams and tools from the proceeds of the crops his father let him make on the home place. After three years of renting he bought ninety acres, comprised in his present home- stead. It was unimproved, not an acre hav- ing been cultivated. His first home consisted of one room, into which he moved his wife and two children. That original structure is now the kitchen of his substantial seven-room country house. Mr. Stephenson has devoted his time to mixed farming, always strongly featuring grain growing. In twenty-nine years of residence on his present farm he has created a valuable place with substantial im- provements and with more than a hundred acres under cultivation. While he shared the benefit of some of the extraordinary high prices of recent years, he had achieved inde- pendence as a farmer in an era of low prices. One of the best wheat crops he ever raised he sold at 40 cents a bushel. Some of his cotton went to market at 4 cents a pound. He sold cattle and hogs at prices that hardly re- paid the cost of their care. At one time he sold a good sow with six pigs for $12. Mr. · Stephenson besides the ownership of the farm
283
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
and country home is a stockholder and one of the charter members of the State Bank of Valley View.
He has tried to do his share as a community builder, promoting church and school. He is an active member of the Christian Church at Era, and has served four terms as one of the trustees of Bermuda District No. 46. His grandchildren are now acquiring their pri- mary education in this school. He cast his first presidential vote for Mr. Cleveland, and all the family are democrats.
In Cooke County, December 24, 1888, Mr. Stephenson married Miss Fleda Piper. She was born in Johnson County, Missouri, June 16, 1868. Her mother died in Missouri and her father brought his daughter to Texas when she was fifteen years of age. Mrs. Stephenson acquired a liberal education, and was well fitted for the duties and responsibili- ties of home making and also giving good counsel to her husband after their marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Stephenson have two children, John L. and Grace. John, a farmer near the old homestead, married Miss Texas Skinner and has two children, John L., Jr., and Willa Jean. Grace is the wife of Ed McCreary, of Memphis, Texas, and they have a son, W. B. McCreary.
EWALD W. OBUCH. Cooke County was a raw and unimproved region when the Obuch family settled there fifty years ago. This name has enjoyed a high place in the Valley View community during all these years. The name is associated with good citizenship, good influence in the social and moral development, substantial industry and a high degree of skill in the mechanical arts.
The head of the family when it came to Texas was the late William Ewald Alfred Obuch, who died January 20, 1901. He was a man of more than ordinary learning and of accomplishments that made him valuable in the frontier district. He was born at Salt- feld in East Prussia, Germany, December 17, 1832, and his father occupied a judicial posi- tion in that German province. William Obuch grew up in a good social position, acquired a liberal education, and especially excelled in mathematics. He acquired a practical knowl- edge of surveying, and also learned the trade of carpenter in his native land. Before his majority, in order to escape the enforced mili- tary duty of Germany, he left that country, and after some wandering experiences in
America settled in Cooper County, Missouri. As a skilled carpenter his services were in great demand at a time when that section of Missouri was beginning the permanent im- provement of farms and roads. He helped build many barns and heavy wooden bridges in Cooper and Johnson counties. The Civil war was fought while he lived there, and he served three months in the enrolled militia. He became a naturalized American in Mis- souri and thereafter identified himself with the democratic party.
In the fall of 1869 he and his family joined five or six others to make the journey over- land from Johnson County, Missouri, to Texas. The Obuchs remained at Sherman until spring, when they came to the commu- nity that is now Valley View and joined their neighbors. Perhaps the most prominent of this early colony was Captain L. W. Lee, whose widow still survives and who was founder of the town of Valley View. William Obuch settled three and a half miles south- east of Valley View, where he opened a farm, but turned its work over to his children, while his time was chiefly occupied at his trade. He did some of the early surveying around Valley View soon after reaching Texas. As a carpenter and builder his time was chiefly spent until he retired, and his last days were spent in Valley View. At one time he was associated with Captain Lee as a land agent, promoting settlements in Cooke County. William Ewald Obuch is remembered as a man of investigating and inventive turn of mind, was a wide reader of current events and a student of his profession and trade. He invented and secured a patent for a rotary engine. He was a splendid penman, had per- fect command of the English as well as the German languages, and his influence as a citi- zen was always for good, though he would never accept offers of public office. He was not connected with any church, though his wife was reared a Lutheran and held to that faith through life.
William Obuch married Bettie Johanna Augusta Lucy Kahle, who was born in Han- over, Germany, in 1842, and was a girl when her parents came to the United States land- ing in New Orleans and going up -he Missis- sippi River by boat to St. Louis and event- ually settling in Cooper County, Missouri. Her father was a weaver by trade. ' Mrs. William Obuch died in 1907. Their children were : Ewald W .; Robert, of Pendleton,
284
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
Oregon; Arthur, who died at Enid, Okla- homa, in 1917, leaving a wife and two chil- dren; Clara, wife of James McWhorter, of Dallas; and Tutt, of Lewiston, Idaho.
Ewald W. Obuch was born in Cooper County, Missouri, February 23, 1861, and was about nine years of age when the family settled in Valley View. Most of his educa- tion was acquired in Texas, and he was a pupil in the first school taught at Valley View, his teacher being the mother of Dr. Johnson of Gainesville. He inherited a mechanical taste from his father, picked up the trade of carpenter, though his chief working interests until he was thirty was as a farmer. For ten years he was an engineer for threshing outfits and cotton gins. He left that to take up car- pentry as a regular occupation, and that has been his work for many years. Mr. Obuch established his home at Valley View in 1892, improved property in the town, and for a time was interested in the Farmers Alliance Store there.
Mr. Obuch has been a valued member of his community but has been in politics merely as a voter. He cast his first presidential vote for Mr. Cleveland in 1884. He is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and is an elder of the Presbyterian Church of Valley View As a boy he attended the Union Church built to serve the entire popula- tion of Valley View and community. Later, when the Presbyterians became strong enough t.o erect a building of their own, Mr Obuch joined this church.
In Valley View, April 11, 1914, he married Mrs. Isabel Ferguson. She came to Texas from Tennessee in 1882 as the wife of Jacob R. Ferguson, and they first settled on a farm in Dallas County, but two years later moved to Cooke County and located near Valley View. Mrs. Obuch's only surviving child is Mrs. Cora Wooton, of Waggoner, Oklahoma. She also has four grandchildren, Edith, Floyd, Ruth and Alvin Wooton.
JAMES STEPHENSON. A family of most substantial worth and activities and with many interesting experiences both here and else- where is that represented by James Stephen- son, now retired from his farm and living at Valley View. The Stephensons came to Cooke County in North Texas more than forty years ago, and as a family they repre- sent the traditions of old England.
Mr. Stephenson's grandfather was John
Stephenson, and his ancestry has been identi- fied with Yorkshire, England, as far back as history goes. John Stephenson and three brothers were soldiers under the Duke of Wellington in the Napoleonic wars and were in service ten years, all of that time away from England. None of them received any serious injury in battle until the great struggle at Waterloo, where two of the brothers were killed, and John was three times wounded. John Stephenson was a relative of the famous George Stephenson who perfected the first steam engine. John Stephenson owned a coasting vessel, and his surviving brother took command of it and used it for conveying coal from Newcastle up the river Humber to Hull. On a stormy night off the coast the vessel foundered in trying to make the mouth of the Humber, and the brother and his family and all on board were lost, the only living thing to escape the wreck being a pet dog. This disaster deprived John of his capital, and he then went to work as a farm laborer. He and his wife are buried in the cemetery surrounding the Arksey Church in Yorkshire. Their children were: Thomas, who died in England, leaving no surviving children; Rob- ert, who followed his brother George to the United States, located at Towanda, Illinois, later moved to Kansas, but at his death he was laid beside his wife at Towanda; George; and Annie, who died unmarried.
George Stephenson was a native of York- shire and grew up in a home of simple com- forts where industry was the rule. He was a brick, tile and roof maker, and finally be- came superintendent of his master's brick yard at Arksey House. His employer was Mr. Chadwick, and George Stephenson sub- sequently was for seven years gardener on the Chadwick estate. Through these long continued labors he had saved some capital, and when he made up his mind to leave Eng- land he planned to emigrate to Canada. A butler of his wealthy employer who had been in the United States gave him such encourag- ing reports that he determined to make a home and rear his children under the Stars and Stripes. The family sailed on the City of New York of the Inman Line, being fourteen days on the sea, two days late on account of a heavy storm encountered just out of Queenstown. Landing was made at Castle Garden, and during the inspection of the bag- gage the customs officers found too much cutlery right from the Sheffield factory. This
285
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
incident delayed the family a week 'while set- tlement of the duty and fine was made. George Stephenson was induced to put this cutlery aboard and endeavor to smuggle it in through the advice of his friend, the butler, who planned to sell it himself and reap a harvest from the high prices in the United States. The innocent victim of this plan therefore came into an embarrassing position with the Government of the United States even before he landed. This difficulty out of the way, he moved on west to Towanda, Illinois, where he went to work on a farm.
After renting a few years George Stephen- son bought a lot in Towanda, erected a home, and during the eleven years of his residence in Illinois his time and energies were chiefly taken up with farm labor. He then decided to make another move, and this time acted on the favorable reports of his son James, who had prospected in the Lone Star state. George Stephenson brought his modest cap- ital to North Texas, bought a farm on Duck Creek, not far west of Valley View, and settled on the open prairie. He started from the grass roots, and his first house was a story and a half, three-room structure, which served until prosperity enabled him to provide a more pretentious home. Soon after his house was completed he died. It seemed to be the fate of the family to lose a member of it every time a new house was built. George Stephen- son died free of debt and left a good estate for his day. He had acquired American citizen- ship in Illinois, voted as a republican there, but in order to participate in local affairs in Texas he became a democrat. He and his wife were members of the Christian Church. George Stephenson married Elizabeth Farmer, of Austerfield, Yorkshire, who was born in 1833 and died in Texas in 1916. Both parents are buried in the Spring Creek Cemetery. Of their children the first is James, of Valley View ; Mary Ann is the wife of Asa Allen of Los Angeles; John was a miner and died in old Mexico; Elizabeth is the wife of George McLaughlin, of Cooke County; Walter is a Duck Creek farmer ; Ada is the wife of J. W. Roberson, one of the prominent farmers of the Duck Creek community ; Rose is Mrs. L. A. Fleener, of Gainesville; Fred was killed accidentally while sawing wood behind a power machine; Thomas is a resident of Geary, Oklahoma ; Mrs. Beda Servis died at her home on Duck Creek; Lena, who died in Texas, first married Frank Kerns and then
Dan McCraney ; Lula is the wife of Harvey Wright, of Fort Worth; Alice was married to Steve McKee, of Wheeler County, Texas. Of these children seven were born in Eng- land.
James Stephenson was born at Arksey, Yorkshire, England, October 2, 1855, and his experiences until after he passed his majority were chiefly of those of the family as previ- ously noted. He was about twelve years of age when the Stephensons came to the United States, and he grew up in McLean County, Illinois, acquiring his education partly in Eng- land and partly in America. Soon after he reached manhood he left Illinois and started for California overland. Discouraged by the lack of wagon roads across the plains, and having reached Texas, he decided to remain in the state. He arrived in Texas November 2, 1877, and his first purchase of land was on Duck Creek, for which he paid $4 an acre. On this land he built a frame house, ceiled and weatherboarded it, a story and a half, two rooms, and borrowed the $300 for its con- struction. That was before his marriage. His bride to be was a teacher of experience, and she volunteered to teach through the winter and used her wages to build a house in the spring. Mr. Stephenson refused to delay the marriage, and borrowed the money instead of allowing Mrs. Stephenson to earn it by teach- ing. This house was improved and enlarged later by the erection of a seven-room dwell- ing, affording all the accommodations required for his family. Then again family fate was repeated, and Mrs. Stephenson lived to see the new home completed and then passed away, and they buried her in Spring Creek Cemetery at the age of forty-eight.
In the meantime Mr. Stephenson had been making progress as a practical farmer. For his second tract of land he paid $15 an acre, and the final purchase was made at $50. By that time he had acquired a well proportioned farm of 241 acres, and being satisfied with these possessions and what he had achieved through his labors on the soil he moved to Valley View to educate his children.
Mrs. Stephenson was formerly Mary N. Piper. She was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, daughter of Archimedes Piper, and acquired a liberal education and was a teacher before she came to Texas. Her mother died in Missouri, and she accompanied her father to this state, and he was buried in the old ceme- tery at Valley View. Of the children born to
286
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
Mr. and Mrs. Stephenson, Frank Alonzo is a farmer on Duck Creek and married a Miss McCollum. Roy Edward lives at Bakersfield, California, and married Miss Fulton. William Wallace, who died at Valley View, married another member of the McCollum family. Burt Fred, now farming on Duck Creek, was overseas as a member of the 330th Remount Squadron, was employed in taking horses from the coast to the front, and returned home after the signing of the armistice. Thomas Sterling was the second soldier son, saw active fighting at the front as a member of Company G, Fifty-eighth Infantry, Fourth Division, was in England, France and Ger- many, and his was the last division to leave Coblenz, Germany. Bessie Stella is the wife of Claude Harris, a farmer east of Valley View. The youngest of the family is Miss Mamie, a graduate of the Valley View High School. Mr. Stephenson has done his part as a good Texas citizen, developing a farm and rearing a splendid family of children. In poli- tics he has been satisfied to cast his vote and has never been a candidate for office.
ANDREW G. PETERSON. During the year 1873 there came to Denton County a young man only recently arrived in America from Sweden, and whose subsequent forty-eight years in the Elizabethtown community have marked him as a man of remarkable indus- try, of good judgment and a toiler whose efforts have brought about substantial and enduring results, reflected in the many im- provements credited to his hand in the rural community which holds him in such high esteem.
Andrew. G. Peterson was born at the town of Wisby on the Island of Gothland, Sweden, July 25, 1850, a son of John and Christine (Olson) Peterson. His parents eventually followed their children to America and owned and lived on a farm near Justin, Texas, where John died at the age of seventy-one and his wife a few years later. Their chil- dren were : Oloff P., who died at Justin, leav- ing three children; Nels F., a farmer of the Elizabethtown community ; Andrew G .; Lena, wife of L. E. Olson, of the Elizabethtown vicinity ; Hannah, who is Mrs. Magnus Peter- son and lives in Oklahoma ; and August, who died near Justin, leaving a daughter.
The first of the family to come to America was Nels F. Peterson. Two years later An- drew G. and his brother Oloff P. crossed the
Atlantic to New York City. Andrew G. Peter- son was then about twenty years of age, had acquired a common school education in Swe- den and had learned farming on his father's little estate there. He possessed about ten dollars in gold when he came to America. He and his brother sought out their brother Nels at Sedalia, Missouri, and all applied their efforts to common labor during the construc- tion of the grade from Sedalia to Boonville of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway. When this work was finished the company sent them to Parsons, Kansas, where they helped grade a switch and thence to the end of the line as then constructed at McAlester, Oklahoma. Gradually they continued until the road reached Denison, and for a time they were employed in the grading of the Transcontinental Division between Paris and Honey Grove. This work kept them busy for about two years, and out of the proceeds and savings of their labor they provided them- selves with a freighting outfit.
Mr. Peterson and his brothers had some interesting experiences as freighters during what was still a pioneer epoch and before railroads had secured most of the traffic. They freighted from Denison and Sherman to Jacksboro and Henrietta and other western points, running three wagons and hauling gro- ceries and feed. Most of the feed supplies they carried to the old Government post, Fort Richardson, at Jacksboro. At intervals they continued to do railroad work, and also put up hay for sale. Andrew G. Peterson did his first farm work in Denton County, making a crop on land he owned and which he still owns. Gradually the interest of the brothers concentrated on farm land and the farm in- dustry in the Elizabethtown community. It was about 1876 that Andrew G. Peterson established himself permanently as a farmer there. He owned in partnership with his brothers 220 acres of wild and unimproved land, and on this land he broke the first fur- row. The habitation of the brothers was a four-room house made out of lumber which Andrew G. Peterson took out of the native forest in Upshur County. He hauled the pine logs and shipped them from Gladewater to Fort Worth, and then hauled them out to Denton Creek. The brothers kept bachelor's hall until the coming of their sister, Mrs. Olson, who is still an esteemed resident of the community. Agriculturally their efforts were directed to the growing of grain and their methods were such as to insure gradual prog-
1
-
AG Peterson
287
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
ress in spite of all the ordinary discourage- ments and setbacks that prevailed in that region during the years of the seventies and eighties. Out of their surplus they bought more land, and after ten years of partnership divided their portions, and each went for him- self with 200 acres.
Andrew G. Peterson began his new home on the spot where he is living today, north- west of Elizabethtown. This old town was once the county seat. The high tide of its prosperity was reached in the era before the building of railroads, when Elizabethtown was on the line of the stage route between Fort Worth, Denton and Gainesville. Mr. Peterson saw the town in its prime and has witnessed it gradually disappear until the only reminder of its former prestige is the school- house and church. On his home place Mr. Peterson occupied a pioneer cabin which had been built by Mr. Hendricks. Here he lived with his brothers for ten years, doing the house- work as well as discharging his responsibilities outside on the ranch. He continued grain raising and his efforts have yearly yielded prosperity to him in his independent career as in the years of his partnership with his brothers. Mr. Peterson is known as one of the largest individual land holders in Denton County. He has twenty-five hundred acres, eighteen hundred acres under cultivation. More noteworthy still are the improvements on the ranch, which really sustains a numer- ous population. He has ten tenant houses to accommodate the families helping him carry on his extensive work, and there are three more pretentious homes as well. To insure an abundance of pure water at conve- nient points on the farm and ranch he has had drilled nine deep wells to an average depth of 331 feet. But this does not completely measure his accumulations as a land holder, since he set aside for his sons approximately 970 acres, so that he has owned altogether 3,500 acres, all gained through his active man- agement and the many years of industry he expended in this region. While chiefly a grain grower, he has dealt in cattle and has mar- keted and shipped his stock to Chicago and Fort Worth markets.
A number of years ago Mr. Peterson erected a house of eleven rooms, one of the most complete and homelike in that section of Denton County. In this home his. family grew up and have gone out to make homes for themselves, emulating the pioneer and efficient example of their father. Mr. Peter-
son's first wife was Emma Bennett, and by that union he had three children: Omas A., on a farm in the home neighborhood, who married Margaret Francisco; Benjamin, also on a nearby farm, who married Bertha Fran- cisco; and Lydia, wife of Howard Cole, of Wise County, Texas. Mr. Peterson subse- quently married Lula Lotspeich, daughter of Lawson Lotspeich. Their three children are Lawson, Geneva and Margaret.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.