USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume III > Part 7
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R. S. Phillips was the oldest child and was fourteen years of age when his parents moved to Wise County. He grew up on the farm and ranch, made the best of his advantages in the common schools, and for his professional edu- cation attended Cumberland Law School at Lebanon, Tennessee. He was admitted to the bar June 29, 1897, and at once began practice at Cleburne, Texas. He served four years as city attorney at Cleburne. During the Span- ish-American war he was a private in the volunteer forces. Mr. Phillips came to Fort Worth in 1914, and for a time was associated with Marshall Spoonts, then district attorney, and for two years was a member of the legal department of the city of Fort Worth. Since then he has given his time exclusively to his private practice.
June 1, 1904, Mr. Phillips married Maud Stewart, of Cleburne. They have one daugh- ter, Vola May. Mr. Phillips is a member of the Fort Worth Club and is a Royal Arch Mason and Knight of Pythias.
NORMAN W. SELF is a Texas business man of many years experience, chiefly as a whole- sale merchant, but more recently has become an important factor in the oil industry at Electra, where he is manager of the Beaver- Electra Refining Company.
Mr. Self was born at Wilsonville, Alabama, in 1877, and was reared and educated in his native town to the age of sixteen. The family
then moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he remained about four years.
Mr. Self has been in Texas since 1898. His home was at Cleburne for a number of years, and in 1910 he came to Wichita Falls. He was identified with the wholesale business at Wichita Falls until in the spring of 1919 he moved to Electra. 1157723
The plant of the Beaver-Electra Refining Company was established in March, 1919, and is one of the largest and most successful refining establishments in Wichita County, and an industry that contributes largely to the wealth of the county. The business has been under the personal management of Mr. Self from the first operation of the plant. The company manufactures gasoline, kerosene and fuel oil, the capacity of the Electra plant being about 2,000 barrels per day. Mr. Self is also vice president of the Electra Tank Line Company, owning 150 tank cars.
He has always worked with those progres- sive interests endeavoring to secure the advancement of Wichita County in propor- tion to its wonderful resources. He is a mem- ber of the Chamber of Commerce of Electra, and fraternally is a Mason and Knight of Pythias. Mr. Self married Miss Cary A. Leach, of Cleburne, Texas. They have one daughter, Mary Helen.
W. T. LADD, a resident of Fort Worth for thirty years, has built up a highly prosperous mercantile enterprise. A successful business man he has given generously of his time and means to the promotion of some of the city's leading welfare activities and has long been prominent in connection with the Fort Worth Young Men's Christian Association.
Mr. Ladd was born in Highland County, Ohio, March 8, 1869, son of J. W. and Marga- ret (Wright) Ladd. His parents were natives of the same Ohio county, and his father is now living at Fort Worth at the age of seventy-five. His mother died at the age of forty. W. T. Ladd is the oldest of three chil- dren. His brother, J. A. Ladd, and his sister, Mrs. J. P. Mathews, both live at Fort Worth.
W. T. Ladd acquired his education in Ohio, and was twenty-one years of age when he came to Fort Worth in 1890. For several years he was interested in the livestock and dairy business in Tarrant County, but in 1898 began in a modest way the furniture business. and as a retail dealer is president of the Ladd Furniture Company, carrying one of the most
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complete stocks of that kind in North Texas. A number of years ago Mr. Ladd became interested in the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation movement in his home city, and is president of the association at this time. He is also one of the directors of the Young Women's Christian Association, and is a direc- tor of the Welfare Association and the Boy Scouts. He is a steward and active member of the First Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1894 Mr. Ladd married Mary Houlihan, of Fort Worth. They have one son, Homer W., now associated with his father in business. -
ANDREW JACKSON POWER made his early reputation as a lawyer in Stephens County, where he served as county attorney and county judge, and came to the larger city of Fort Worth some years before his home county became the center of a great oil field. Mr. Power is one of the able men in his pro- fession and is a member of one of the prin- cipal firms of lawyers in the Fort Worth bar. He was born in Stephens County August 18, 1878, son of Thomas J: and Elizabeth (Arnold) Power. On both sides he is of pioneer Texas stock. His grandfather, James Power, was a native of Kentucky and came to Texas about 1835, having an active part in the movement for independence from Mexico. Later this Texas pioneer moved to Northern Texas and settled in Tarrant County, where Thomas J. Power was born. Thomas J. Power was a member of the Texas Rangers during the Civil war, and was in the service with a detachment of the Rangers when their camp was at the present site of the town of Ranger in Western Texas. Thomas J. Power after the war became prominent in the cattle indus- try in Stephens County, where he died when about fifty-five years of age. His wife, Eliza- beth Arnold, was born in Virginia, and is still living at Fort Worth. She was about five years of age when her father moved to Texas and located in Stephens County. At that time there were hardly half a dozen families in that entire district. Thomas J. Power and wife had four children, three of whom are still living : D. E. Power, of Breckenridge, Texas; Stokley, of Graham, Texas ; and Andrew J.
Andrew J. Power grew up in the country around Breckenridge, attended school there, but acquired his legal education in Washing- ton and Lee University at Lexington, Vir- ginia, where he graduated in 1900. He at once returned to Texas and was admitted to the bar in Stephens County, and at that time
was serving as deputy district clerk. He began practice at Breckenridge, and filled the office of county attorney from 1902 to 1904 and as county judge from 1904 to 1908. Mr. Power has been in practice at Fort Worth from 1909, and is now a member of the firm of Power, Dryden & Rawlings, with offices . in the Stripling Building.
In 1902 Mr. Power married Miss Annie Riddel, of Ranger, Texas, daughter of O. R. Riddel. They have two children: Theresa Evelyn and Truman. Mr. Power is a Royal Arch Mason and a member of the Baptist Church.
EDWARD DORMAN RUTLEDGE has been a prominent factor in building up one of the leading general insurance agencies of Fort Worth. Prior to taking up the insurance busi- ness he traveled for many years in the railway postal service, part of the time with head- quarters at Fort Worth, where he acquired an extensive acquaintance.
Mr. Rutledge is a native of Texas, born in Karnes County April 24, 1870. He is the oldest of five children, all still living, of E. E. and Mattie (Malone) Rutledge. His mother, who is living at San Antonio, at the age of seventy-two, is the oldest of eleven children and all of them are living. The father was born in Alabama and died in April, 1919, at the age of seventy-two.
Edward Dorman Rutledge was educated in the common schools and most of his boyhood was spent on a ranch in Southern Texas. He entered the railway postal service at the age of twenty as a clerk, and continuously for twenty-one years performed the arduous routine required of this branch of the postal department. The last eight years of his serv- ice was on a run between Fort Worth and Little Rock.
When he resigned he took charge of a loan company at Fort Worth, and in 1916 engaged in the insurance business on his own account. In 1917 he formed a partnership with L. H. DuBose, and in January, 1920, they admitted M. J. Miller to the firm. This firm is now DuBose, Rutledge & Miller, general insurance agency, with offices in the F. & M. Bank Building.
Mr. Rutledge is prominent in Masonry, being a Knight Templar, York Rite and Shriner, and is also a member of the Elks. In 1892 he married Bessie Conoly. They have one daughter, Norma, wife of R. N. Grammer, of Fort Worth. Mr. Rutledge and
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family are members of the First Methodist Church.
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BEN H. MARTIN, vice president of the Farm- ers & Mechanics National Bank of Fort Worth, is one of the men who have set a worthy precedent which the present genera- tion will do well to follow and added to the history of Texas a chapter that must prove a positive incentive to their associates. He has and is connected with interests of moment, and has made his banking institution a syno- nym for sound finance, square dealing and unquestioned standing. The judgment which Mr. Martin exercises has made his name as a backer of other works of like character desirable.
Mr. Martin was born in Warren County, Tennessee, January 4, 1870, a son of George W. and Henrietta (Hill) Martin, both of whom were born in Tennessee. The paternal grandfather was a native of North Carolina, from which state he moved at an early day to Middle Tennessee. The family is of Scotch- Irish origin, although long established in America.
The youngest in a large family of children, Mr. Martin grew up on his father's farm, and after attending the common schools took a business course at the Lexington Business College at Lexington, Kentucky. In 1889 he came to Fort Worth, Texas, being attracted here by the conviction that there was a great future ahead of the place, and his original connection with the business life here was as a clerk in a grocery store, but he did not long remain in that position, for he secured one as a bookkeeper, and as such so proved his ability that in 1893 he was offered a posi- tion with the Farmers & Mechanics National Bank as assistant bookkeeper. From then on he has remained with this institution, rising through various positions to his present one as active vice president. He is also a stock- holder in several country banks, and is treas- urer of the Fort Worth Club and of the Mu- tual Home Association. He is treasurer and a director of the Retail Merchants Association, and is on the board of directors of several banking institutions, as well as of the Farmers & Mechanics National Bank, and is a member of the finance and building committees of the latter. The bank is now erecting a new twenty-four story building at Seventh and Main streets, and he is taking an active part in this work.
In 1904 Mr. Martin was united in marriage with Katherine. Boland, of Fort Worth, a niece of Mrs. H. W. Williams, Sr., this city. Mr. and Mrs. Martin have one daughter, Margaret. Mr. Martin was one of the organ- izers of both the Fort Worth and the River Crest Country clubs, and is serving both of these institutions in an official capacity. Ever since he first came to Fort Worth he has had the good of the community at heart, and while expanding his private interests he has not hesitated to give freely and generously of his time and money to aid in the advance- ment of the city, and is rightly numbered among its most representative men and pub- lic-spirited citizens.
MARS NEARING BAKER, of Dallas, has been a prominent figure in some of the important developments in West Texas during recent years, having been president of the Oil Belt Power Company, which completed in the fall of 1920 the large unit of an electric power plant on the Leon River, near Eastland, Texas. One conspicuous feature of this enterprise involved the construction of a large dam on the river. The utility furnishes electric power and lighting current to a number of cities in Central West Texas, but the plant was de- signed primarily as a source of electric power for the many great oil industries in that region. Colonel Baker's younger business associate and engineer in charge of construction and present manager of the Oil Belt Power Company is J. E. Lewis.
Mars Nearing Baker has had almost a life- time of experience with public utility corpora- tions. He was born at Medina, New York, March 19, 1854, son of Lyman A. and Eunice (Nearing) Baker. He was educated in the high school of Geneva, New York, and Vos- burges Academy at Rochester, and in 1874 began his business career as cashier in the office of the Street Railway System of Toledo, Ohio. Subsequently he was teller of the First National Bank of Toledo.
Colonel Baker, as he is generally known, has been a resident of Texas since 1882. For a number of years he operated an extensive cattle ranch in Hamilton County. He was a rancher and cattleman until 1898, and since 1899 his home has been in Dallas, though his projects and business enterprises have affected many communities outside of that city. He has been engaged in the land business, in the oil industry, and is a director of the American Exchange National Bank of Dallas.
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Colonel Baker is one of the fathers of the public park system of Dallas. He became particularly interested in the parks in 1905, when he was made vice president of the Board of Park Commissioners, and held that post continuously until 1917. For several years he devoted much of his time, at a loss to his private business, to improving and completing a splendid system of parks for his home city. In 1917 Colonel Baker was appointed the first supervisor of the Public Utilities Com- mission of Dallas and held that post two years. He has given vigorous support to every move- ment having civic welfare for its object. He is a member of the Dallas Club and the Dallas Country Club.
D. ELLIOTT CHIPPS, president of the D. E. Chipps Lumber Company, of Fort Worth, is one of the thoroughly practical lumber men and lumber manufacturers in the state. He has been through every phase of the industry from the mills and timber to business offices. Mr. Chipps established one of the first hard- wood lumber mills in Texas.
One of Fort Worth's prominent business men and esteemed citizens, Mr. Chipps was born in Bedford County, Virginia, Septem- ber 22, 1876, son of John Thomas and Sarah Maria (Riggs) Chipps. His parents were also natives of Virginia, and they died in West Virginia. The boyhood of D. E. Chipps was spent in West Virginia and Kentucky, and after a common school education he started for himself in the lumber business at Ports- mouth, Ohio. Subsequently he was located at Memphis, Tennessee, and at Maysville, Ken- tucky. In 1905 he came to Texas, and at Diboll established in that year the first hard- wood mills. Mr. Chipps removed his busi- ness headquarters to Fort Worth on Decem- ber 14, 1908, and has since been the active head of the D. E. Chipps Lumber Company. This is both a manufacturing and distributing business, manufacturing large quantities of Texas hardwood and pine with mills at Jack- sonville, Security and other points in East Texas. The company is one of the largest firms in the state handling lumber products.
Mr. Chipps is a resident of Fort Worth, and is a popular member of the Fort Worth and River Crest Country Clubs. He is a Knight Templar Mason and Shriner and in politics classifies as a Joe Bailey Democrat, though he voted for Harding in 1920. On Decem- ber 14, 1908, he married Miss May Murphy,
of Texarkana, Arkansas. They have one son, D. E., Jr.
ANDREW JACKSON CLENDENEN has been a Texas lawyer thirty years, but is almost equally well known for his extensive business interests, particularly in Wise County, though his home and law offices since 1902 have been in the city of Fort Worth.
Some of the facts in the career of Andrew Jackson Clendenen have a significance that imparts more than ordinary interest to him. For years he has been one of the successful lawyers and men of affairs in Northern Texas. But at the age of four years he was left an orphan and grew up largely among strangers, had to seek opportunities to acquire an edu- cation in the intervals of self-supporting labor, and his mature career and battle with circum- stances have been therefore much longer than the date of his birth would indicate.
He was born in Warren County, Tennessee, November 27, 1862, the youngest of three sons and one daughter. His mother died when he was four, and his father died while a soldier of the Confederacy. He had some advantages in the district schools of his native county, and in 1884, at the age of twenty- two, graduated from a collegiate institution in Tennessee. After a period of work in Tennessee Mr. Clendenen came to Cleburne, Texas, in 1886, and while paying his way by other occupations he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1891. The following year he moved to Wise County and established himself in practice at Decatur, where he was busied with his cases in court and counsel for ten years. In 1902 he moved to Fort Worth, where he continues active in law practice, though much of his time is devoted to two important industrial organizations, one being the Wise County Coal Company, of which he is president and manager, and the other the Bridgeport Brick & Tile Company, both pros- perous institutions at Bridgeport.
In 1893 Mr. Clendenen married Miss Mity- lene Long, of Cleburne, daughter of W. S. and Sarah Long. They have three daughters, Holly, Marie and Trula. Holly is the wife of C. C. Jones, Jr., of Wichita Falls.
NEWTON ALONZO CUNNINGHAM. A busi- ness that has been growing and acquiring a constantly enlarging circle of patronage not only from Fort Worth but from much of the adjacent territory is the furniture store of Newton A. Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham
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has been a Fort Worth merchant and business man for thirty years and has achieved a place of influence among the city's merchants from a beginning without capital.
He was born in Cherokee County, Alabama, December 15, 1857. His birthplace was a farm twenty miles from the Alabama & Great Southern Railway. His parents were James M. and Sarah (Standifer ) Cunningham, both natives of Alabama. His father was a farmer, cattle raiser and merchant and was born in Alabama, December 15, 1814. Sarah Cunningham died at the age of forty-nine, the mother of ten children. James Cunningham had four children by two other marriages.
The seventh child and the seventh son N. A. Cunningham passed his boyhood days on a farm, and' acquired up to the age of twenty-five a varied knowledge and experi- ence of farm work, cattle raising and mer- chandising. After he left home he was em- ployed as clerk in several towns before he came to Fort Worth in 1890. Mr. Cunning- ham made his headquarters at Fort Worth for several years while traveling over a large part of the state as representative for a Boston shoe company. He did a good business for his house, made considerable money, but sent all his surplus earnings back home to the sup- port of his widowed stepmother in assisting her to pay for a home she was then buying. Therefore when Mr. Cunningham decided to start in business for himself in 1894 he had no capital of his own to put into the venture, and his first stock of furniture was acquired solely on credit. His experience as a furniture mer- chant at Fort Worth covers twenty-six years, and his business has grown apace with Fort Worth's general development. Fort Worth had a population of about twenty-seven thou- sand when Mr. Cunningham reached the city and at that time there were neither paved streets nor modern facilities of transportation, the street cars on Main Street being drawn by mules.
October 24, 1894, about the time he started in business for himself Mr. Cunningham mar- ried Laura Fender. Her father Capt. John W. Fender was a Confederate soldier. Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham have a daughter and son. Kate is the wife of A. L. Kentwell, connected with the Gulf Production Company at Fran- kell, Texas. John F., the son, is a student in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. Mr. Cunningham is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias, is a member of the Lions Club, and has long been prominent in the
First Presbyterian Church, having held the office of elder for a quarter of a century.
FERGUS MORIARTY has been a resident. of Fort Worth since the year 1893 and has here been continuously associated with the whole- sale grocery business, in connection with which he has become a prominent and influential rep- resentative and gained place as one of the vigorous and progressive figures in the com- mercial life of the city.
Mr. Moriarty, who is secretary and treas- urer of the James McCord Company, which controls a large and widely disseminated wholesale grocery trade, was born in Wapello County, Iowa, on the 18th of December, 1859, a date that indicates that he is a representa- tive of a pioneer family of the Hawkeye State. He is a son of Maurice P. and Mary Eliza- beth Moriarty, both natives of Ireland, where the former was born in County Cork and the latter in County Kerry. The marriage of the parents was solemnized in New York City, and thereafter they were for a time residents of Ohio, from which state they went forth to Iowa, where they became pioneers and where they passed the remainder of their lives. Maurice P. Moriarty was a success- ful contractor and was associated in this field of enterprise with the construction of the line of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad to Ottumwa, Iowa, at which place he later established himself in the grocery business, with which he continued to be identified until his death, when about fifty years of age, his widow having been about fifty-five years of age when she passed to the life eternal and both having been devout communicants of the Catholic Church.
Fergus Moriarty gained his preliminary education in the schools of his native county, and thereafter was for one year a student in the Benedictine College at Atchison, Kansas. He then entered a college conducted by the Franciscan Fathers at Quincy, Illinois, and in this institution he continued his studies four years. After thus receiving a liberal education he became associated with his brother in the retail grocery business, at Ottumwa and Red Oak, Iowa. In July, 1890, he established a wholesale jobbing business, in the grocery line, at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, this being the first enterprise of the kind in that now pros- perous commonwealth. He continued his resi- dence in Oklahoma until February, 1893, when he came to Fort Worth and became associated in the founding of the wholesale
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grocery house of McCord & Collins. He took an executive position in the office of this firm and at the death of Mr. Collins the firm name was changed to the James McCord Company, of which corporation he has since been sec- retary and treasurer. He has been a resource- ful factor in the development of the extensive business of this company, which maintains branches at Cleburne, Quanah, San Angelo, and Pecos, Texas, and at Altus, Oklahoma. In the headquarters and the branch establish- ments the company now gives employment to a corps of about 115 persons, and the busi- ness is exclusively wholesale, with trade ex- tending throughout Northwest Texas and the State of Oklahoma. Mr. Moriarty has been distinctively successful in his business career since coming to Texas and has important busi- ness interests aside from those represented by the James McCord Company. He is alert, progressive and loyal as a citizen, is a promi- nent member of the Kiwanis Club of Fort Worth, as he is also of the Fort Worth Club, the Salesmanship Club, and the Glen Garden Country Club. He holds membership in the Travelers' Protective Association, the United Commercial Travelers, and the Commercial Travelers Association of America. He is a communicant of the Catholic Church, as was also his wife, and is affiliated with the Knights of Columbus and the Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks. Mr. Moriarty is president of the Columbia Investment Company, is a direc- tor of the Fort Worth Relief Association, and during the nation's participation in the World war he was active and liberal in the further- ance of the various agencies in support of the Government's war policies.
In the year 1881 was solemnized the mar- riage of Mr. Moriarty to Miss Anna Hart, and she passed to the life eternal on the 29th of January, 1911, being survived by four chil- dren-Mary E., Margarette, Fergus Maria, and J. Hart. Mr. Moriarty takes loyal interest in all things pertaining to the civic and mate- rial well-being of his home city, is a progres- sive and public-spirited citizen and is a stal- wart supporter of the cause of the democratic party.
JUDGE ROBERT HAMILTON WARD, a dis- tinguished corporation attorney, is one of the leading members of the Texas bar, and has been prominent at Wichita Falls for the past several years, but proposes to leave this city in the near future for the wider field offered at Houston. At an early period of his pro-
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