USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 56
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a leader in the Baptist Church and Sunday School at Hebron, his work reflecting a heart filled with love for humanity and for his Mas- ter's cause. He entered with enthusiasm upon the work assigned him whatever it was. He was the youngest master of White Rock Lodge of Masons and the only master of that Lodge to die while in the chair. He was fourteen years consul commander of the Woodmen of the World at Hebron, and that office too he filled until his death. It was an ill wind that blew for the Hebron community when that young and robust man surrendered to the fever which attacked him. His strong physique matched his vigorous mind and his ambitious nature, and he was just where in the drama of life a good man is most missed when he is taken away.
WILLIAM WALLACE JOHNSTON. The older portion of Cisco is practically submerged in the modern developments that have been in- stituted and carried out during the past five years. The business center is largely new, and credit for the erection of many of the most distinctive buildings in the business dis- trict belongs to the well known contractor and builder, William Wallace Johnston. Mr. John~ ston has for many years been in the building industry, both in Texas and in other states.
He was born in the town of Vienna, In- diana, in 1861, son of Carrollton and Jane (McConnell) Johnston. His father was a contractor and from him William W. John- ston learned the carpenter's trade after com- pleting a common school education. When he was twenty-one he went to Missouri, and at Marshall was employed as a journeyman and gradually developed a business as a contrac- tor. He was a man of achievement in that field when he came to Texas in 1907, estab- lishing his home at Temple, though for sev- eral years his business was largely in San Angelo. At San Angelo he built the first fireproof office building, also the six-story Trust building, and other prominent struc- tures in the city. There is also a large list of buildings in Temple to his credit, chiefly office buildings.
Mr. Johnston removed to Cisco in 1917, and with the tremendous impetus given to that community with increasing years he was on the ground and well prepared to meet the demands for the larger building contracts. He erected the bank and office building of the Cisco Banking Company, the Gude Hotel, ice
plant, gas and electric plant, the Webster Wholesale House and a number of others.
Mr. Johnston married Miss Alma Land, of Marshall, Missouri, and their four children are Aden M., Earl E., Wallace and Carl.
JAMES R. STEVENS has lived more than thirty-five years in the Valley View commu- nity of Cooke County. He came here with the mature experience of an Eastern Indiana farmer. His career has been one of well ordered and continuous industry, a conscien- tious performance of the duties that lie within reach of every human being, and out of the successive years he has achieved a satis- faction based on material results and also the esteem of his neighbors and friends.
Mr. Stevens was born in Wayne County, Indiana, August 20, 1844. Wayne County in Eastern Indiana was largely settled by people from the Carolinas, a large part of them Quakers in religious faith. His father, Spen- cer Stevens, was born in North Carolina April 10, 1801, and was eleven years of age when the family in 1812 migrated to Indiana. Spencer Stevens was old enough to take part in the heavy work of developing a farm from the woods. , He was not a Quaker, his church connections being the Primitive Baptist. He acquired only such school advantages as were within the reach of frontier children, but his life was one of considerable influence. He was a reader of newspapers, but so far as known never made a public speech. He always voted as a democrat and was past military age at the time of the Civil war. He died in 1878. Spencer Stevens married Sallie Carter, a native of Virginia. Her father was Charles Carter. She became the mother of the following children: Nancy, who mar- ried Patrick Crook and spent most of her years in Cass County, Indiana; Elizabeth lived in Rush County, Indiana, and married Adam Plessinger; Margaret became Mrs. Joseph Brumfield and spent her life at Rich- mond, Indiana ; Mary was the wife of Marion Brumfield and died in Wayne County ; Martha married Frank Stinson, of Union County, Indiana; Naomi is the wife of John Plankenhorn and lives in Wayne County ; Armistead is also in Wayne County; James R. is the only resident of the family in Texas ; and Sampson lives at the old home in Wayne County.
James R. Stevens attended some of the "pay schools" in Indiana state. Largely from
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a sense of filial responsibility to his parents he remained at home and assisted in the work of the farm until past his majority. At the age of thirty he married Elizabeth Woodyard, and they established their first home on a farm in Indiana. Mrs. Stevens' father was a Virginia man and lived in Illinois before he settled in Wayne County, Indiana, and was a miller by trade. Mrs. Stevens' brothers and sisters were John, Gilbert, Lottie and Lura, twins, the former the wife of Dr. John- son and the latter Mrs. Moses Mitchell, while Elmer W. Woodyard, the youngest of the family, is a farmer in Alabama.
Mr. and Mrs. Stevens started for Texas in the spring of 1884. They traveled by rail- road to Gainesville, and Mr. Stevens' first experience in the county was as a day laborer on a farm. At that farm, needless to say, farm labor did not command wages of $4 a day. For a few years he also worked for half of the crop he tended on the land of Charles Beck, one of his old Indiana neigh- bors. After being able to provide himself with teams and implements he began farming on the Flint farm south of Gainesville, raised grain there as he had done in Indiana, and his efforts were even more productive than in the north, though the markets were not always sufficient to reward him. He sold wheat at 55 cents a bushel. Mr. Stevens while a farmer used largely the methods which he had learned in Indiana and never went in for cotton raising.
He had been in Cooke County eight or ten years before he bought land, and his first purchase was acquired on time. It was a piece of unimproved soil two miles west of Valley View, and on it he built a four-room dwelling, to which he added later and made a more commodious home. Before he left that country district he had supplemented the residence with two good barns, granaries and sheds, for stock, and had brought under culti- vation 200 acres.
Mr. Stevens has been satisfied to do his duty as a farmer and has never been in poli- tics. He and his wife are members of the Methodist Church at Valley View, and he has served on the official board of the congrega- tion. They bought bonds, did Red Cross work, and were otherwise interested in the prosecution of the World war. Some of Mr. Stevens' relatives were soldiers. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens have had no children of their own. They reared and educated a young girl, who
is now Mrs. Bessie Woodward, in a home of her own in Alabama, where she has a son, Murray, and a daughter, Mary Catherine.
SIDNEY VERNER WHITE. In the develop- ment of the immense oil fields of Texas and of other states in which the precious petro- leum deposits have been found great personal fortunes may daily be made or lost, but out- side of that feature the business must be as- siduously continued in order to provide for the prosperity of innumerable world-wide in- dustries, as well as of minor concerns that affect everyday life and contribute greatly to domestic comfort and convenience. In early days the business was conducted in an entirely different way from the methods now pre- vailing. Science has been called in and has not only minimized risk and disappointment but, through the employment of expert petro- leum geologists, has made oil diagnosis so accurate that early theories are no longer in- telligently entertained, the question of "chance" being practically eliminated. One of the prominent oil men in Wichita County, Texas, is Sidney Verner White, oil operator and petroleum geologist.
Sidney Verner White was born at Rosston, Nevada County, Arkansas, in 1894, son of William Henry and Julia (May) White. His early environment was fortunate for an am- bitious youth, and his educational advantages, a college course at Arkadelphia, followed by careful training in the University of Arkan- sas, served to quicken a determination to seek still wider knowledge in the science of geol- ogy, to which he had felt attracted from boy- hood. In 1913 he went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to study petroleum geology, and remained in the oil fields in that vicinity for three and a half years, then continued his studies at El- dorado, Kansas, in the Osage Nation and afterward at other points in the oil fields of Southern Kansas and Northern Oklahoma.
In 1916, at the beginning of the great oil boom in Wichita County, Mr. White came to Wichita Falls as a geologist, and has taken an active and prominent part in the develop- ment of new oil fields in this district, and as a geologist has been associated with many im- portant discoveries. Early in 1920 he became an oil producer himself. In connection with his partner, H. H. Temple, early in May, 1920, he brought in a producing well on a 3,000-acre lease on the Matty Parker lands, four miles south of Iowa Park. This new dis-
H. F. WAKEFIELD
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covery producing well, drilled by Temple & White, opened up an entirely new field and gave an impetus to further development in that vicinity. The drilling was done from the start with a standard rig, all modern regu- lations and cautions being in force. In this development, as in others, Mr. White's enter- prise and expert professional knowledge have been necessary factors, and owners of prop- erty in this new territory opened have had great reason to feel satisfied.
Mr. White married Miss Pansia Neely, who was born at Throckmorton, Texas, and they have one daughter, Gwendolyn. Although notably concerned in local civic affairs, Mr. White has never been particularly active in general politics. He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and is a Mason, Elk and Knight of Pythias.
CHARLES F. WAKEFIELD. In the develop- ment of the Ponder business and agricultural community in Denton County probably no family has played a more conspicuous part than that of Wakefield, one of whose repre- sentatives is Charles F. Wakefield, a practical farmer and also a business man in the village.
His father, Henry Franklin Wakefield, came to Denton County in 1852, when seven years of age, from Tennessee. His father, Simpson Wakefield, established his home about twelve miles southeast of Denton and about half that far from the old county seat of Alton. Simp- son Wakefield and wife both died before their son Henry Franklin reached manhood. They also left a daughter, who married and died in Denton County, the mother of several children.
Henry Franklin Wakefield inherited the old home with about forty acres of land, and that was the object of his best endeavors from early manhood. He finished his schooling in Chinn's Chapel, and his parents were both buried in the Chapel cemetery. After his marriage he continued to be identified with the old Wakefield locality for some years, and then moved out to an open and practically un- inhabited region where is now the thriving village of Ponder and a broad landscape of well developed farms. He had spent several years as a merchant at Waketon, a place named in honor of his father, and while there laid the foundation for his future success and obtained the capital which he invested in lands at Ponder. His first purchase comprised 1,700 acres, without a single mark to in- dicate the enterprise of man. He built his
home on an eminence overlooking the vil- . lage, on the same site where his son Charles now lives. For several years his whole atten- tion was given to his business as a farmer, and he then resumed merchandising, also con- ducted the first gin in the locality, and for ten years kept a general store, erected a brick busi- ness house and a building for the bank, and was the leading factor in the promotion of the Ponder State Bank. He has been president of that organization from the beginning. As a farm developer he erected many homes for his tenants, and after bringing his varied labors to a successful and prosperous status he divided his several thousand acres of land among his children and then retired to Min- eral Wells. During his residence in Denton County he was a staunch friend of popular edu- cation, a trustee of the Ponder school, and also gave liberally to encourage church building and religious worship, and himself joined the church late in life. He voted as a Democrat, but had no ambition for public office.
Henry Franklin Wakefield married Miss Alice Cowan. Her father, Matthew Cowan, was a pioneer of Denton County and also came from Tennessee. He was a Confederate sol- dier, and Henry F. Wakefield was also in the army during the war, but all his service was confined to the state of Texas. Mrs. Henry Franklin Wakefield died in 1897. Her chil- dren were: Lillian, Mrs. J. P. Crawford, of Plainview, Texas; Charles F. and Clara, twins, the latter Mrs. D. T. Robinson, of Ponder; Jane, wife of Frank Tarpning, of Gooding, Idaho; Bess, wife of L. M. Cobb, of Ponder ; Ray S., a farmer in the Ponder local- ity ; Bert, of Fort Worth; Earl P., a farmer at Ponder. Henry Franklin Wakefield by his first marriage, to Nannie Donald, has a daughter, Nannie, wife of George Owen, of Ponder.
Charles F. Wakefield was born at the old home at Waketon, near Chinn Chapel, January 15, 1881. He acquired a common school edu- cation, also attended school at Denton, and took a business course in Southwestern Uni- versity of Georgetown, Texas. After leaving school he took up farming interests, and to agriculture and livestock has been given the energies of his mature years. He has also become interested in the grain business at Ponder, and is a partner in the first drug store established in that village.
On October 26, 1911, in Denton County, Mr. Wakefield married Miss Ora E. Blair. She
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ยท was born in Denton County November 22, 1884, daughter of George W. and Elizabeth (McReynolds) Blair. Her father was a pioneer of Denton County, was a Confederate soldier, and spent his active career as a farmer at Argyle. His wife died in 1886, the mother of Mark D., a railway postal clerk at Fort Worth; John E., a farmer at Justin; Mary, wife of H. C. Breaker, of Houston, Texas; Mrs. Wakefield and Frank S. Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield have two daughters, Dorothy and Mary.
KIRK D. HOLLAND. A Fort Worth boy and man, now successfully established in business in the City of Chicago, Kirk D. Holland has played the game of life with a determination to win, and his old friends have the greater admiration for him because of an uphill struggle he made after losing one con- siderable fortune.
He was born at Pittsburgh, Texas, Novem- ber 18, 1874, son of Hugh P. and Mary Ann (Davis) Holland. He was three years of age when his mother died in 1877, leaving a younger brother, William W. In 1880 his father married Miss Mary Ada Curlee, of Reagan, Texas. The three children of this union are all daughters. Hugh P. Holland moved to Fort Worth in 1886, and was for over thirty years engaged in the retail drug business. He sold out in 1919 and has since been a grocery merchant on College Avenue. The family has had their home continuously for thirty-five years at 715 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Kirk D. Holland was reared from the age of twelve in Fort Worth, graduated from the public schools in June, 1896, and during 1896-97 attended Fort Worth University. More than twenty years later, during 1917-18, he took a scientific course in automobile engi- neering in the Armour Institute of Technol- ogy at Chicago. After leaving university Mr. Holland took charge of a small stock of drugs and entered the drug business in the Glenwood Addition to Fort Worth. He had grown up in this business atmosphere, and his experience and persistence were rewarded with a growing business until he owned three retail stores. He sold out in 1902 to engage in the wholesale drug business, and in 1908 sold his well established and growing concern as a wholesale druggist to O. T. Maxwell. At that time he purchased the O. T. Maxwell ranch six miles north of Cisco, moved his home to Ranger and spent every available
ounce of his energy and put all his capital into this new line of business. While at Ranger he also took the Government contract to deliver the mail to Caddo, Breckenridge and several small towns surrounding Brecken- ridge. In fact he established a general ex- press, mail and freight service, employing six automobile trucks for that purpose, and also a fleet of five automobiles for passengers and mail. It was the first enterprise of the kind in Texas west of Fort Worth, and the trucks naturally attracted a great deal of attention. There were a number of factors combined to make the venture unprofitable. Bad roads and heavy sand proved serious obstacles for the automobiles of that date to overcome. Moreover the mail contract was a losing one, since just at this time the Government added parcel post business to its other mail con- tracts but did not increase the compensation of the contractors who were operating under a flat agreement to carry all the mail for a cer- tain amount.
In the cattle business and mail contract- ing Mr. Holland rapidly lost all the accumula- tions of the preceding fifteen years. In 1914 he sold out his four thousand acre ranch west of Ranger for several thousand dollars less than he paid for it. He has been informed that since the discovery of oil at Ranger a portion of the land he sold for six dollars an acre brought as high as six thousand dollars an acre. When he left Ranger and returned to Fort Worth Mr. Holland had three dol- lars and a half in cash and was heavily in debt. This debt was paid off in 1916, the creditors being kind enough not to make even a demand for the interest up to that time.
Since 1915 Mr. Holland has had a growing and increasingly profitable interest in automo- bile specialty manufacture. In 1915 he and R. C. Lewis made a contract with C. H. Miles for the double seal piston ring. In 1916 they sold 30 per cent of their contract to Judge O. S. Lattimore for six thousand dollars. In December, 1916, C. R. Keith purchased a tenth interest in the partnership for two thou- sand dollars, later securing 4 per cent more. In January, 1920, Mr. Holland and Mr. Lewis bought Mr. Keith's interest in the partnership for twenty-six thousand dollars, these figures indicating the rapid growth of the business and its interest values. Mr. Holland took six- sevenths and Mr. Lewis one-seventh of Mr. Keith's 14 per cent and they are now associ- ated in the distribution of their products with
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headquarters in "Automobile Row" on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
Mr. Holland was reared a democrat and along with supporting the political party of his choice he has been a staunch advocate of pro- hibition. He is a thirty-second degree Mason, being a member of Oriental Consistory, Valley of Chicago. He is also a member of the Wood- men and he and his family are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Englewood, Chicago. At Fort Worth, December 12, 1899, he married Mise Dora Walkup, daughter of Rev. J. A. Walkup. Mrs. Holland is a grad- uate of Polytechnic College of Fort Worth. She was a teacher of voice in Mary Keene College in Mexico City in 1897-98. Return- ing to Fort Worth on a visit in 1898, Mr. Holland persuaded her not to go back to her former duties. To their marriage have been born two sons: James Hugh Holland, who died in Chicago October 26, 1918, at the age of fourteen; and Kirk D., Jr., born in 1909. i
JOHN W. HARTMAN. It is appropriate to include in this publication of prominent Tex- ans a brief sketch of the career of a town builder, merchant, and a citizen whose name will long be identified with the growing for- tunes of the City of Cisco.
John W. Hartman spent thirty-seven years of his life at Cisco. He was born at Jones- boro, the first capital of Tennessee, in Wash- ington County, in 1860. While the Hartmans were an East Tennessee family they were Southern sympathizers and two of the older brothers of John W. Hartman were enrolled as Confederate soldiers. These brothers, Arch R. and J. A. Hartman, both of whom became residents of Texas in 1867, brought with them their seven-year-old brother John W. Their home was at Rockwall, county seat of Rockwall County, where A. R. Hartman was afterwards county judge.
John W. Hartman secured his education in East Texas, and it was as a young man of twenty-three that he joined the little commu- nity of Cisco in 1883. Not long afterward he became a local business man, and in subse- quent years developed a large and successful mercantile establishment. He continued active in its management until a short time before his death, which occurred February 23, 1920.
He was one of the real builders of Cisco, in the constructive material sense as well as in other ways. The Hartman Hotel is one of his monuments. There are other prominent business buildings, and altogether his record
as a builder stands out distinctive above that of any other citizen. His business career was built on a sound basis of integrity. His prac- tical achievements were notable and the influ- ences of his character were hardly less impor- tant in the community that learned to esteem him as one of its noblest and best. He was the type of citizen who is the very foundation rocks of any good American town or city.
Mr. Hartman married Miss Mary Garden- heim, who survives him. She was born in Texas, of Tennessee ancestry. Her three chil- dren are Charles H. Hartman, Mrs. W. A. McCall and Mrs. John Irvin.
OLIE D. DILLINGHAM, a resident of Texas for over a quarter of a century, and of Ranger since that became one of the prominent centers of the oil industry, has for many years given his chief energy and attention to ice manufac- ture and besides the operation of a large and complete plant at Ranger has other interests in the same business elsewhere.
Mr. Dillingham was born in Adair County, Kentucky, in 1886, a son of Thomas B. and Mary E. (Willis) Dillingham. His parents moved to Texas in 1894, when he was eight years of age, locating in Hill County. Olie Dillingham grew up in that county, being reared on a farm, and acquired his education at Hillsboro.
He moved out to West Texas in Runnells County in 1907, and soon afterward became identified with the management and operation of an ice manufacturing plant at Winters in that county. His home has been at Ranger since early in 1918. Here he took charge of the output of the Ranger Ice Company. The plant is owned by the Southern Ice Utilities Company at Dallas. The plant at Ranger is the largest ice factory between Fort Worth and El Paso, with a capacity of ninety tons per day. Great credit is due Mr. Dillingham for the organization of one of the best and most efficient delivery systems for this output, a model system that has been highly com- mended by experts in the distribution of public utility products. Mr. Dillingham has charge of the sale of the entire output of the Ranger plant. In partnership with Mr. Alexander at Dallas he also owns and operates a plant at Fort Worth under the firm name of Diling- ham & Alexander, and the same firm owns a new ice plant and an ice cream plant com- pleted in the spring of 1921 at Breckenridge.
Mr. Dillingham is one of the enterprising and public spirited young business men of
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Ranger and has appreciated every opportunity to assist in making the new oil metropolis one of the best cities in western Texas. He is a member of the Ranger Chamber of Com- merce. He married Miss Ada Clampitt, a native Texan. Their four children are Mar- garet, Elizabeth, Pauline and O. D., Jr. Fra- ternally Mr. Dillingham is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and Shriner and a member of Hella Temple, Dallas, Texas.
HENRY FRANKLIN LONG. A busy, stren- uous and useful life has been that of Henry Franklin Long, of the Godley community of Johnson County. Mr. Long has had an inti- mate part in the life of the great West from the wild and woolly days of the seventies down to the present. It is not difficult to understand the source of the general esteem in which he is held. He has been a man among men, has done his work in the presence of danger and hardship, has accepted without complaining the varying fortunes of the years, has helped others, has shared burdens, and through all has maintained a bluff heartiness and cheerfulness that makes his presence an inspiration as well as an example for all who may read.
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