USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 68
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The oldest of the children. Emmett R. Con- ner, was born in Galveston, January 31, 1870, and has lived in Fort Worth since he was seven years of age. He acquired a good edu- cation in the local public schools and attended Washington and Lee University at Lexington, Virginia. From college he returned home to become associated with his father in the sta- tionery business, and after his father's death he took over the active management and has since conducted and expanded his business. located at 1011 Houston street, under the title E. R. Conner & Company.
Mr. Conner is a Knight Templar Mason, is a member of Moslah Temple of the Mystic Shrine, belongs to the Glen Garden Country Club, is a Democrat, and an active member
of the First Methodist Church. He was mar- ried January 14, 1919, and has a daughter, Laura Ruth Conner, born October 27, 1919.
HON. GEORGE L. DAVENPORT, judge of the Ninety-first District Court of Eastland County, has been one of the prominent lawyers of West Texas over twenty years, and both as a man and lawyer has attained the highest character. His abilities long ago gave him a most creditable position at the bar, and his qualifications have received recognition again and again in public posts of honor and re- sponsibility.
Judge Davenport was born in Coryell County, Texas, in 1873. His father, Captain O. F. Davenport, was a native of Georgia, and on coming to Texas in 1855 settled on the' frontier of Coryell County. He had to defend his home and property against the aggressions of the Indians, and for years sustained an almost constant combat with the vicissitudes of the new country. A few years after coming to Texas he enlisted and served all the four years of the war between the states in the Con- federate army. He was captain of his com- pany. His principal business for many years was the cattle industry. Captain Davenport subsequently removed with his family to East- land County, and after a brief residence at Eastland located at Ranger, where he lived, until his death, in 1903. He was one of the substantial citizens of the county, highly hon- ored in all his relationships, and he repre- sented the county in the thirteenth session of the Legislature.
George L. Davenport was sixteen years of age when brought to Eastland County, and he grew to manhood and received most of his education in Texas schools and colleges. He studied law in the office of Scott & Brelsford at Eastland, was admitted to the bar in 1898, and did his first practice at Ranger. In No- vember, 1899, he was elected county attorney, and on taking charge of that office moved to the county seat of Eastland. He was county attorney four years, and soon after retiring from office moved to Stamford in 1905, and was one of the able members of the bar of that city until 1918. In that year he returned to Ranger and resumed his law practice.
In the meantime, in October, 1917, the great oil boom had struck Ranger and had rapidly transformed the town into a modern oil me- tropolis, one of the marvels of the period of oil discovery in Texas. Judge Davenport had
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an interesting experience as city recorder of Ranger during the boom times.
As a consequence of the great increase of population, wealth and industry following the petroleum era the Legislature in the spring of 1920 created a new judicial district for Eastland County. To fill the new post of district judge until the next regular election Governor Hobby appointed Mr. Davenport on June 20, 1920. In the following July Judge Davenport's appointment to the bench was ratified in the democratic primaries, and he was chosen for the full term as district judge in November.
Judge Davenport married Miss Martha Rawls, of Eastland County. They have one daughter, Mrs. Fay Lindquist, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
JONAS L. JOHNSON, M. D. By reason of continuous service the dean of the medical profession in Eastland, Dr. Johnson has the abilities, the record of consecrated service and the character to give real dignity and worth to his long standing in the point of time.
Dr. Johnson has spent most of his life in Eastland County. He is a son of C. R. and Sarah Ann (Bedford) Johnson, now de- deceased. His father was a native of Georgia, as a child went with the family to Alabama, and while there enlisted in the Forty-eighth Alabama Regiment, and served in the Confed- erate army all through the war. Coming to Texas in 1875, he located in Eastland Coun- ty, two and a half miles northeast of Eastland, where as a pioneer citizen, a farmer and rancher he made himself one of the important factors in that community.
Dr. Johnson grew up on his father's farm, attended the schools at Eastland, and acquired his medical education in Tulane University at New Orleans. He was graduated with the class of 1897, and in the same year began practice at Eastland, a practice that has con- tinued uninterrupted and a source of the finest service to the community. He served as president of the County Medical Society, is a member of the State and American Medi- cal associations, and has given his time and influence to the benefit of many civic move- ments in his home city.
Dr. Johnson married Miss Beulah Ladd, and their four children are Verna, Joyce, Doris and Virginia Dean.
CLYDE L. GARRETT. After years devoted to the banking business Clyde L. Garrett, active
vice president of the First State Bank of Eastland, enjoys a widespread reputation as a financier of high repute and acknowledged sagacity. At the same time he has been very active in other channels, and in all his under- takings has made his name stand for fearless support of what is right, thorough-going hon- esty and uprightness of purpose. His advent in Eastland antedates the oil boom, and his interest in the community has deep roots which have struck downward during the years he has been identified with its best element.
Clyde L. Garrett was born in Eastland County, Texas, in 1885, a son of W. V. and Sallie (Ferguson) Garrett, the former of whom is now deceased, but the latter survives. W. V. Garrett was born in Mississippi, amid environments which naturally led him to espouse the cause of the South when friction arose between the two sections, and he served for four years in the Confederate army. With the close of the war he returned to his native state, but left it in 1879, and, coming to Texas, located in the old Jewell community, about fifteen miles south of Eastland in the extreme southern part of the county, and there estab- lished his homestead, on which Clyde L. Gar- rett was born. In later years he moved to Gorman, where he died in 1917, and where his widow is still residing. He was one of the most prominent and widely-known men of the southern part of Eastland County, and for twenty years served as a county commis- sioner and for several years as a justice of the peace. He and his wife were the parents of eleven children, all but one of whom are living.
Clyde L. Garrett was reared in and near Gorman, where he attended the local schools and Hankins Normal College, and then for one year he taught school, but his was not a nature to be contented with the narrow con- fines of a schoolroom, and so sought different opportunities, finding them in the banking field, which he entered as cashier of the City National Bank after a period of service as tax collector of Eastland County. From 1906 to 1910 Mr. Garrett maintained his connections with the City National Bank, and then, in the latter year, was elected county clerk, and was elected to succeed himself, so that he held this office until 1918, at the expiration of which term he refused to again become a candidate to succeed himself. He then entered the Guaranty State Bank of Eastland as cashier. and was also one of its active vice presidents. This was one of the sound and dependable
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financial institutions of Central West Texas, and Mr. Garrett's connection with it gave it added prestige. On April 20, 1921, this insti- tution was consolidated with the First State Bank of Eastland, of which he is vice presi- dent. He has other interests at Eastland and in its vicinity. and is one of the owners of the Lone Star Motor Company, which handles the Dodge Cars for this region, and he is also a member of the Eastland County Ab- stract Company.
In 1912 Mr. Garrett was married to Miss Sallie Day, a daughter of Sam Day, one of the pioneer settlers of Eastland County. Mr. and Mrs. Garrett have three children, namely : Carl, Clyde, Jr., and Mary Catherine. Mr. Garrett is one of the prominent Masons of West Texas, being both a York and thirty-sec- ond degree Scottish-Rite Mason. He also be- longs to the Mystic Shrine, being a member of Moslah Temple of Fort Worth. He also be- longs to the Eastern Star, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias and Modern Woodmen of America. One of the most active of the young business men of Eastland, he co-operates with the best element, especially through the medium of his member- ship in the Eastland Chamber of Commerce, and has long been thoroughly identified with all civic and welfare movements. Sincere and unselfish, patriotic and courageous, he has always evinced such ability as to influence contemporaries. While diligently working to augment his own resources he has never failed to take into account the rights of others and has aided many to improve their fortunes. His personality, general ability and working knowledge of human nature are of inestimable value to him in his present pursuits, and in every relation of life he can be depended to do his full duty and live up to every obliga- tion, no matter how onerous it may be.
T. BEN CORLEY has been one of the hard working business men of Fort Worth for a number of years. At one time he sold life insurance, was in the automobile business, but he achieved most of his fortune as one of the organizers and owners of a profitable oil com- pany handling a lease in the Desdemona field of Western Texas. He conducts a successful real estate, loan and insurance business at Fort Worth.
Mr. Corley was born on a farm twelve miles south of Fort Worth September 17, 1896, son of J. B. and Daisy Bell ( Stone) Corley. His father was also born in Texas. and he and his
wife now live at Riverside, near Fort Worth. Their three children are T. Ben; Esther, wife of Clinton Nail, of Fort Worth; and Wilbur Allen, of Fort Worth.
T. Ben Corley spent his boyhood days in Fort Worth, attended public school and a busi- ness college, and for a short time was office boy with the house of James McCord Com- pany. His experience in the insurance busi- ness was gained with the Tennessee National Insurance Company, and for about two years he solicited insurance. Following that for an- other similar period he was a salesman for the Hudson Motor Car Company, and was still in the automobile business when he became in- terested as an oil operator.
Late in 1919 he was one of twelve Fort Worth business men who bought forty acres adjoining the A. M. Anderson lease of Skelly & Sankey in the northeast Desdemona field for $12,000. Each member of the syndicate sub- scribed a thousand dollars to pay for this lease. They organized the Italian-Duke Oil Company, and when their offering of stock failed of pub- lic response the owners sold half of their lease for $32,000 and negotiated with a drilling com- pany to develop the remaining acreage. Dur- ing 1920 the Italian-Duke Company brought in its first well, a 1,500 barrel gusher, one of the notable strikes in the Desdemona District.
On September 17, 1920, Mr. Corley engaged in business in general insurance, loans and real estate, with offices on the third floor of the WV. T. Waggoner Building. In May, 1921. he purchased the Atelier Building on West Eighth Street, which will be his business home in the future. He is recognized as one of the suc- cessful business men of the younger generation in the city. He is a member of the Fort Worth Club and is affiliated with Fort Worth Lodge No. 124 of the Elks. On May 11, 1915, Mr. Corley married Sadie Agnes Graffeo, of Fort Worth, daughter of George Graffeo. They have one son, Thomas Ben, Jr.
JAMES MILTON WILLIAMSON is one of the oldest residents and business men of the city of Cisco, having resided there for more than thirty years. His main distinction, however, rests not so much upon his creditable business career as a constructive part he has played in the promotion and upbuilding of the city dur- ing the six years he has been its mayor. The office of mayor in the average city is merely an opportunity for service depending upon the willingness, zeal and energy of the incumbent. Mayor Williamson has realized and utilized
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practically all the opportunities of his official tenure, and his service is one deserving of all commendation and worthy of study as a strik- ing object lesson of municipal administration.
Mr. Williamson was born in Benton County, Arkansas, in 1867, while his parents, F. and Mary (Richards) Williamson, were both natives of Eastern Tennessee. He grew up in Northwestern Arkansas, and acquired a good education in the public schools and acad- emies, particularly in the Bloomfield Academy in Benton County.
He was just twenty-one when in 1888 he located at Cisco in Eastland County. This was a small village depending for its pros- perity on the surrounding agricultural and ranching territory. Mr. Williamson has grown up with and taken a leading part in the development of the town and country ever since. His first role was that of principal of the Cisco High School. He was head of the high school until 1893, and then entered energetically upon a business career. For ten years he conducted a drug store, under the firm name of J. M. Williamson & Com- pany, on the site now occupied by the Guar- anty State Bank. Following that he was in the cotton business seven or eight years, and since then has confined his attention to insurance, real estate and investments.
By successive elections Mr. Williamson has served as mayor of Cisco continuously since 1915. Throughout this has been a period of unprecedented progress and improvement of municipal resources. It is significant that the era of constructive improvement began while Mr. Williamson was still new in office, and at least two years before the great oil boom struck that section of the state in October, 1917. Consequently Cisco was one of the few towns in Texas oil regions with a reason- able degree of preparedness for the unex- ampled increase of population and wealth. In fact it had a system of public utilities well under way and fairly adequate to meet the demands of such growth and prosperity.
The present City Hall is a substantial two- story brick structure and was erected in 1915, in the very earliest part of Mr. Williamson's first term. During his first year as mayor he led the way to start other needed improve- ments, particularly a system of modern streets. Under his supervision was laid the first permanent pavement, curbing and side- walks, and each successive year has witnessed a great extension of this work. In October, 1916, Mr. Williamson inaugurated the present
modern sewerage system. Up to that time the city had no sewerage system worthy of the name. By 1920 the system was completed and it gives Cisco as complete and modernly equipped sewerage facilities as any city of the country regardless of size.
The crowning achievement of his adminis- tration has been the building of a new water supply system. The source of supply is a large lake two miles from the city, made by the construction of two large dams. These dams impound sufficient water to permit the use of a million and a half gallons per day. Auxiliary to the reservoirs are two . complete filtration plants. Two standpipes furnish storage and pressure for more than 300,000 gallons of water, and more than forty miles of water mains are connected with the plant. This impovement alone cost considerably more than a million dollars, and the entire system was completed in 1921. An adequate supply of pure water is the first essential of a growing community, and it has been due to the enter- prise, public spirit and resourcefulness of Mayor Williamson and his associates of the City Commission that Cisco has so success- fully solved the problem.
Mr. Williamson is a trustee and member of the board of stewards of the First Methodist Church of Cisco. In 1920 a magnificent new church building was completed, costing over $100,000.
Mr. Williamson married Miss Lou Love- lady, a native of Louisiana. Their five chil- dren are Mrs. Lena May Sikes, M. Chapman Williamson, Helen, Ruth and Henson Wil- liamson. The son Chapman served two and a half years in the army. He was in the First Officers Training School at Camp Stan- ley, Leon Springs, Texas, early in 1917, and was commissioned a first lieutenant of the Sixth Texas Cavalry. After the Sixth Texas was taken into the National Army he was de- tailed for special duties as an instructor of cavalry.
ERNEST H. WEBB. With an enormous in- crease of wealth and population following the oil discoveries of 1917 Eastland County has required a great deal of public service from some of its old and substantial families, those who have been identified with the county from pioneer times. One instance of this well justified confidence in an old time citizen is the continued service through three terms as county commissioner by Ernest H. Webb.
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Mr. Webb has lived in Eastland County since early childhood. He was born near Ab- erdeen, Monroe County, Mississippi, in 1877, son of Jasper and Caroline ( Butler ) Webb, the former deceased, while the latter makes her home with her son Ernest H. Six years after his birth, in 1883, the family moved to Texas and continued their journey until they reached almost the ultimate frontier in the northeast part of Eastland County, four miles southwest of Ranger and near the old county seat town of Merrimon. Jasper Webb fought in the Confederate army with a Mississippi regiment, was a farmer by training, and in Western Texas continued farming, though with principal emphasis upon cattle raising.
It was on the home ranch that Ernest H. Webb grew to mature years. He was ac- corded the advantages of the local schools of his time, and almost grew up in the saddle and was well qualified for the responsibilities of farmer and stockman and he assumed those duties on the old homestead on reach- ing his majority. Mr. Webb continued as a substantial factor in the growing of crops and raising of livestock in his home locality until 1918, since which year his home has been at Eastland.
He was first elected a county commissioner in 1916, being sent from Precinct No. 1, the Ranger District, which includes the cities of Eastland and Ranger. He was re-elected in 1918 and again in 1920, the duties and respon- sibilities of his office having been tremen- dously increased during the past two terms. He has been especially interested in the wise ex- penditure of the funds for the building of a good roads system in Eastland County. The county has appropriated four and a half mil- lion dollars for this construction up to the present time.
Mr. Webb married Miss Mollie Helm, a native of Tarrant County, Texas. Their four sons are named Gerald, Guy, Marvin and Buford.
JOHN T. LEONARD is one of the most widely known editors and most influential citizens of North Texas, being editor and proprietor of the Gainesville Register. He has lived in Cooke County, Texas, since September, 1886, and throughout his presence has been a source of stimulating influence for good and progress in his community.
Mr. Leonard was born at Shepardsville, Bullitt County, Kentucky September 30, 1848. His paternal ancestors came from Wales soon
after the American Revolution and established themselves in Virginia. His paternal grand- father was a native of Virginia and an early day farmer in Eastern Kentucky. His mother was a niece of General George Rogers Clark, the distinguished American explorer and .
maker of history in the western country dur- ing and following the American Revolution.
Franklin B. Leonard, father of the Gaines- ville editor, was a native Kentuckian, acquired a fair education in Bullitt County, was a man of good personality and a successful farmer. He spent his last years near Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where he died when past eighty. Late in life he became an active churchman of the Methodist denomination. He was an ardent state's rights democrat. He married Anna Allen, a native of Meade County, Ken- tucky. Her father, William Allen, was a farmer in Meade County, and also noted as a hunter and rifle shot who claimed many tri- umphs as a bear hunter and Indian fighter. Anna Leonard was a year younger than her husband and died a year before him. They reared the following children : John T., Philip Cassius, William F., George C., Tresa, Allie and Sallie. Mrs. Tresa Buchanan died in Palestine, Texas. Allie became the wife of Benjamin Harrison of Mystic, Kentucky, and Sallie is the wife of a farmer near where she grew up in Kentucky. John T. Leonard was the only one of the sons whose career has been professional, his brothers being farmers near Pine Grove, Kentucky.
John T. Leonard left Hardin County, Ken- tucky, for Illinois at the age of sixteen. Up to that time he had attended a subscription school only three months, and consequently he took with him hardly the faintest knowl- edge of the fundamentals of learning. For several years he worked on a farm in Shelby County, and was nearly twenty-one before he applied himself seriously to the task of gaining an education. At that time he did not know the difference between grammar and arithmetic or between geography or history. He felt that his opportunity had gone to re- enter school. While on the farm his associ- ation with the local country teacher proved a vital influence in his life. This teacher dis- covered the mine of undeveloped talent in the young man and prevailed upon him to attend school. While continuing to do chores for a wealthy farmer for his board, Mr. Leonard enrolled as a pupil. As he looks back upon it he feels that his first day in school was per- haps the bravest act of his life. He was a man
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in stature, and when he entered the school- room with books under his arm he was a picture calculated to arouse the ridicule and special curiosity of the younger pupils. The teacher was sympathetic and had the tact to spare him as much humiliation as possible, and allowed him to recite in private. The old Good- rich history and the Pinneo grammar and the other books which he carried to school that first morning are still part of his library, and are regarded as indispensable to his literary pur- suits. Soon overcoming his initial timidity he progressed rapidly in the accumulation of knowledge, and at the close of the term a few months later he was well advanced in all branches, having mastered Ray's Arithmetic, Third Part. The next winter he attended a better school, studying philosophy and other higher branches, and his enthusiasm for ac- quiring an education was unabated thereafter. Within two years after entering the school- room for his first lesson he slipped away to the county seat to take an examination for a teacher's license. He wanted no one to know in case he should fail at the examina- tion, but much to his own surprise he passed the ordeal so creditably as to win a first grade certificate. An honor he has always appreci- ated is the fact that he was employed to teach in the same school which he entered as a stu- dent an object of ridicule. Among the chil- dren in that little country school in Illinois was the pupil who is now Mrs. Leonard.
With his experience as a teacher Mr. Leon- ard attend the Hillsboro Academy for a time, later attended a higher school at Shelbyville, teaching during the winter terms to earn funds to finish his college work. In 1875 he gradu- ated from the Normal University at Bloom- ington, Illinois and by this time his reputa- tion and success as a teacher were so well established that he could exercise selection among the offers of schools.
In the meantime Mr. Leonard studied edu- cation under the noted Professor S. S. Ham- mil in the Illinois Wesleyan University at Bloomington. He achieved more than a local reputation for his efficiency in the rendition of Will Carleton's works. He also took up the study of law, expecting to enter the pro- fession in time, and pursued the subject far enough to be admitted to the bar in Illinois in 1882. While a law student he practiced or, as he expresses it, "pettifogged," and also had a law partnership in Shelbyville, Illinois, after his admission. Although he liked the law and anticipated it would be his life work,
he was diverted from the profession by an offer to do newspaper work at Janesville, this removing a successful teacher from the edu- cational field and cheating the bar of Cooke County of the opportunity to develop a strong and successful practitioner.
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