USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume IV > Part 3
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With the entry of this country into the World war, Mr. Eddleman felt it to be his duty to take up arms, and volunteered and was sent to the Officers' Training Camp at Leon Springs, Texas, in May, 1917, and three months later received his commission as lieu-
tenant. He was then assigned to duty at Camp Travis, San Antonio, Texas, where he was promoted to the rank of captain, and there he was stationed when the armistice was signed, having been in the service for twenty-two months. Upon his discharge in February, 1919, he returned to Wichita Falls, and resumed his practice in this city. He is engaged in a gen- eral practice of law, but his most important legal duties are connected with his position as counsel for the Texhoma Oil & Refining Com- pany of Wichita Falls, one of the largest and most important oil producing and refining com- panies in the Southwest, which has extensive fields, pipe lines and refineries in Texas and Oklahoma. Captain Eddleman belongs to the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce, the Wichita Club, which he is serving as secre- tary, and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
Captain Eddleman was married to Miss Margaret Black, of San Antonio, Texas. He is one of the sound and dependable men of his profession, whose knowledge of the law, especially with reference to corporations and land titles, is profound and intimate, he having specialized on those branches of his profes- sion. His interests are numerous, and he is very proud of his city and the remarkable progress it has made, and is still making, and of the fact that developments are being made in an orderly and sane manner and not along the line of usual "boom towns."
EVAN JONES BARNES. Born within four miles of Ranger, educated in its schools, gain- ing his first knowledge of the lumber business in a yard where one of Ranger's most promi- nent banks now stands, Evan Jones Barnes has directed all his business enthusiasm and energies to the lumber business, and about the time he left the army he returned to Ranger and established himself independently in the lumber business, and has prospered to a remarkable degree, the more so since he has never directly participated in the fascinating game of oil production.
His birth occurred on his father's farm in Eastland County, four miles north of Ranger. in 1889. He is a son of J. E. and Nancy (Yates) Barnes. His father, a native of Georgia, was brought to Texas when a small child, the family locating in Falls County. J. E. Barnes was a pioneer in Eastland County. homesteading his place north of Ranger in 1878. For a number of years past he has made his home at Ranger, and is one of the town's
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most estimable citizens, highly regarded for his sound and mature judgment in business. His wise counsel has been of great advantage to Evan Jones Barnes in every phase of the latter's career.
While he grew up on his father's ranch. Evan Jones Barnes attended school in Ranger and during vacations worked in a lumber yard located on the present site of the Guaranty State Bank of Ranger. In 1910 he went to Dallas, where he was employed in the lumber office of the A. G. Wills Lumber Company and also the South Dallas Lumber Company and the Black Land Lumber Company. He has never been in anything but the lumber business, and has learned it from every pos- sible standpoint. Leaving Dallas, he went to Oklahoma and was manager of the yards and plant at Sentinel and Hobart for the T. H. Rogers Lumber Company of Oklahoma City.
Mr. Barnes gave up profitable business con- nections to enter the army at Camp Travis. Texas, in February. 1918. He was commis- sioned a lieutenant in August, 1918, and was on duty at Camp Pike, Little Rock. until his discharge February 10. 1919. In the mean- time his old home town had been transformed almost beyond recognition by the oil boom, and he returned there and in March, 1919, estab- lished the E. J. Barnes Lumber Company. His business associates at Ranger regard his suc- cess as nothing less than remarkable, since in one year its volume aggregated profits running into six figures. The Barnes Lumber Com- pany now has branch yards at Leeray and Frankel. Since its establishment the company has furnished the building material for prac- tically every structure of importance, both resi- dence and business. at Ranger. Mr. Barnes not only knows lumber, but also the best and most substantial arts of salesmanship. and goes after business in a thoroughly methodical man- ner. He always knows when anyone is plan- ning a building enterprise, and he places his own experience and the facilities of his com- pany at their service. even to the arranging of the important matter of financing through the banks or other sources of money lending. He overlooks no detail of the promotion end of the business. and handles all these matters with the finest tact and diplomacy.
Mr. Barnes is a member of the Chamber of Commerce. is a director of the Ranger Rotary Club and is affiliated with the Elks Lodge. He married Miss Blanche Pennington. a native of Warren, Arkansas.
SAMUEL DODD TRIPLETT. Among the sub- stantial and successful business men of Fort Worth, men of a younger generation whose energy and enthusiasm have been devoted to- ward the building of a modern metropolis. Samuel D. Triplett, vice president of the Stripling-Jenkins Company, has made himself an important factor.
Mr. Triplett was born in St. Louis. Mis- souri. August 25. 1879, a son of John S. and Alberta (Stein) Triplett, who in turn were descendants of old established families of Vir- ginia and Alabama, respectively. John S. Triplett brought his family to Fort Worth in 1887. where he continued to reside for a num- ber of years. Later he removed to Farwell. Texas, where he is now living at the advanced age of ninety-two years. His wife died in 1910 and is buried in Fort Worth.
Samuel D. Triplett was a lad of eight vears when he came with his parents to Fort Worth. and his advance to manhood has been synony- mous with the development of that city. He attended the public schools of Fort Worth. graduating from the High School. He was awarded a scholarship in a higher institution of learning at St. Louis, but his boyish ambi- tion. however. led toward an active commer- cial life and he plunged at once into its activ- ities. Subsequent to one or two positions where the practical experience gained was the principal feature he accepted a position with the First National Bank of Fort Worth. Later he associated himself with the Waggoner Bank & Trust Company. serving the same as cashier until the institution was merged with the First National Bank. after which he continued with the First National Bank for a number of years. Since July. 1920. he has been actively con- nected with the management of the affairs of the Stripling-Jenkins Company. where his broad experience has proven an effective factor in the advancement of the business. The Stripling-Jenkins Company. as an institution. eniovs the distinction of being the only estab- lishment of its kind in Texas, and the pro- gressive. liberal policy of the management has resulted in making it one of the important manufacturing establishments of Texas and the entire southwest.
In 1901 Mr. Triplett married Miss Sadie Kohnle. and their two children are Samuel Dodd. Tr .. and Louise Alberta.
Mr. Triplett is a member of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, and is a willing sup- porter of its policies in boosting Fort Worth and in making it "a bigger and better city."
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He also holds membership in the Kiwanis Club, the Advertising Club, the Meadowmere Club and the Elks. His religious faith is that of the Episcopal Church.
B. CARROLL chose the vocation of an edu- cator during his early youth in Tennessee. For over twenty years he has been actively identified with school work in Texas, and his abilities in administering the affairs of several different schools in Tarrant County made him the logical candidate for the office of county superintendent of schools, the position he now holds.
Professor Carroll was born in middle Ten- nessee, March 1, 1870, a son of Samuel W. and Mary (Ward) Carroll. His parents were natives of the same state and both are deceased. B. Carroll is the third of six chil- dren, and was educated in the public schools of Tennessee and also the Tullahoma Normal School. He was a teacher in his native state until 1899, when he came to Texas, and since 1907 his school work has been in Tarrant County. He taught the schools at Keller, Brooklyn Heights, Birdville and Sagamore Hill, and in 1918 was elected county superin- tendent. His first term in that office, in spite of difficulties, was characteristic of main- tenance of high standards of schools all over the county and proved so satisfactory that he was re-elected without opposition in 1920.
Mr. Carroll married in 1892 Mary Ander- son, of middle Tennessee. They have one child, Ethel, who is Mr. Carroll's assistant in the office of county superintendent. Mr. Car- roll is affiliated with the Woodmen of the World.
SAMUEL MOORE GAINES is one of the vet- erans of the railway mail service in Texas, a line of duty which he embraced as a vocation nearly forty years ago and in which his per- sonal efficiency has brought him successive pro- motions until he is now superintendent of the Eleventh Division of the Railway Mail Serv- ice, with headquarters at Fort Worth. The Eleventh Division comprises the states of Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. There are only fifteen divisions of the railway mail service in the United States, and the Eleventh Division covers the largest territory of any of the divisions. There are about 1,600 employes in this division.
Mr. Gaines was born at Madisonville, Ten- nessee, son of Prof. Samuel Moore and Susan (Cater) Gaines, the former a native of Ten-
nessee and the latter of South Carolina. Samuel Moore Gaines has been a resident of Texas since 1873, when he located at Austin. In 1882 he became a railway postal clerk in the railway mail service. He was assigned to duty in the chief clerk's office at Dallas in 1888, and on November 15th of that year was transferred to Fort Worth as assistant super- intendent of the Eleventh Division. Succes- sive promotions took him through various positions to the office of superintendent. On the resignation of Superintendent O. L. Teach- out in 1897 he was promoted to the superin- tendency, the office he continues to fill, though its responsibilities and duties have vastly increased and broadened in the twenty-four years of his consecutive service.
Mr. Gaines is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, belongs to the Fort Worth Rotary Club and to the Lodge of Elks. His wife, Jessie Newton Gaines, is a native of San Antonio, Texas. They have two children. The son, Samuel Newton Gaines, now living at Fort Worth, graduated with the degree of Electrical Engineer from the University of Texas in 1912 and is now teaching mathematics in the Fort Worth High School. The daugh- ter, Sadie Gaines Jackson, is now living at Skowhegan, Maine. Her husband, James Fos- ter Jackson, is an engineer with the Central Maine Hydro-Electric Company.
JESSE V. HOWELL. A native of Fort Worth, reared in Southwestern Texas, a uni- versity man of varied business experience. Jesse V. Howell put his personal resources and enterprise to work at Wichita Falls only a few years ago, but has become one of the con- spicuously successful figures as an oil operator, merchant and business developer.
Mr. Howell was born at Fort Worth in 1883, a son of Seth Jones and Bessie (Brown) Howell. His parents are now deceased. His father was born in Yell County, Arkansas, lived for some years in Little Rock, and then came to Texas and was an early settler at Fort Worth. When Jesse V. Howell was eight years of age the family moved to Medina County in Southwestern Texas. He gradu- ated from the Devine High School in that county in 1903. Mr. Howell was a teacher for about four years, and earned his way through college. He attended the University of Chi- cago and later Columbia University at New York.
One of his interesting early experiences was his employment for about a year with the
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Mexican Light & Power Company on con- struction work about a hundred miles east of Mexico City. In 1910 he returned after a period of residence in New York City to Texas, and was married that year at Detroit, Texas, to Miss Neva Canon.
From 1912 for about three years Mr. Howell was connected with the Dallas house of Sears, Roebuck & Company. Following that for three years he was sales manager for the Burton- Roundtree Company, automobiles, in Dallas.
Wichita Falls .was just coming into promi- nence as the great metropolis of the North Texas oil fields when Mr. Howell moved to the city in September, 1918. Remarkably good fortune has attended all his efforts in the petroleum field, and he has large interests as a producer, is owner of leases of oil lands, and has a large aggregate of oil royalties. Both in petroleum and mercantile and other enter- prises his active associate has been his brother, R. E. Howell.
Out of the substantial fortune that has accrued to his efforts Mr. Howell has invested liberally and with striking faith in the Wichita Falls community. He is a public spirited citi- zen of the new and greater Wichita Falls, and has taken part in a number of the notable construction enterprises in the city. In 1920 he was largely responsible for the opening of the Howell Store, a men's and women's furnishing goods establishment representing in quality of merchandise and service the most advanced ideas in mercantile art. The store is in the Bob Waggoner Building at Eighth and Scott streets, and the equipment alone repre- sents a most unusual investment in stores of this character. Undoubtedly it is one of the finest stores and specialty shops in the South- west. A branch of the business is also main- tained at Iowa Park.
Mr. Howell is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Wichita Club and is affili- ated with the Masonic order. He and his wife have three children: Vernon C .. Gordon Bruce and a young son two years old.
EDWARD H. RATCLIFF, son of a prominent Mississippi lawyer, became a member of the Fort Worth bar ten years ago. He has won for himself a successful position as a lawyer and has acquired many valuable interests as an oil man in the state.
He was born in Gloster. Mississippi, Decem- ber 24. 1886. a son of Edgar H. and Ira (Webb) Ratcliff. He was six years of age when his mother died. His -father. also a
native of Mississippi, served for eight years as district attorney of his district, being elected without opposition, and has long been one of the ablest lawyers of the state. He is now liv- ing at Natchez, Mississippi.
Edward H. Ratcliff was reared and educated in his native town, and in preparation for his career was given every advantage in the graded schools of his home country and abroad. He attended the Jefferson Military College, was abroad as a student of the University of Leip- sic, Germany, was a student in Washington and Lee University of Lexington, Virginia. and graduated in law from the University of Mississippi at Oxford. He was admitted to the bar in 1908, and for two years before com- ing to Texas practiced at Natchez, Mississippi. At Fort Worth the first two years he was associated with Bryan & Spoonts, but since 1912 has practiced alone. He engages in a general practice and is attorney for the Invin- cible Oil Corporation, is a director and secre- tary of the Montrose Oil Refining Company, is a director of the Realty Holding Corpora- tion, and individually has some important oil interests in the leading Texas fields.
On July 24, 1912, he married Carolyn Whit- son. of Water Valley, Mississippi. Mr. Rat- cliff had the misfortune to lose his wife by death January 17, 1919. Interested in politics, he has never become a candidate for any office. He is a member of the Fort Worth Club, the Sigma Chi fraternity. the Knights of Pythias. the Masons, and is a member of the Board of Trustees of the First Presbyterian Church. His law offices are on the ninth floor of the Waggoner Building.
JAMES WHITEHEAD POWERS, an early day Trans-Missouri freighter, pioneer banker and cattleman, has been a resident of Gainesville twenty-eight years, and in that time one of the most extensive local cotton buyers in North Texas. The scope and career of James W. Powers covers a field of action that few living men have any knowledge of by actual experience. A short time before the outbreak of the Civil war he left his home on the east side of the Missouri River and became an actor in the life and affairs of the great Western plains. He fought Indians, freighted goods all over the West, was identified with one of the greatest transportation outfits before the era of railroads, acquired extensive inter- ests as a cattleman, was a banker for twenty years or more, and had been a man of action and achievement for almost a third of a cen-
de Rateliff
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tury before he came to Texas and took up the somewhat quiet role of business which he now follows.
Mr. Powers was born in Jessamine County, Kentucky, April 18, 1844, and belongs to one of America's oldest families, descended from one of the colonists who located at Jamestown, Virginia, very early in the seventeenth century. His great-grandfather fought in the Revolu- tionary war. His grandfather. James Powers, was a soldier under General Jackson in the battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. This James Powers was a native of Old Virginia, was a tanner and planter. and early in the nineteenth century located near Charleston, now the capital of West Virginia. He spent the rest of his life there and died in 1884, when a hundred and two years of age. Of his four children the oldest was John Randolph Powers, who was born near Charleston, West Virginia, in 1816. He lived for several years and married in Kentucky and was an unusually well educated man for his time, a skillful surveyor. He was one of the very first settlers in the Platte Purchase in Northwest Missouri, entering land there in 1842, on the date of the purchase of that region by the Government. He helped run the original lines of survey, and in 1848 moved his family to Missouri and opened a farm in the northeast corner of Andrew County, some miles north of the river city of St. Joseph. He continued to live there the rest of his life. He was a democrat, and he died in 1860. just before the election of Mr. Lincoln. John R. Powers married Miss Savanna Earthenhouse. of Kentucky. Her father was two vears of age when brought by his parents to this coun- try from Hamburg, Germany. After the death of her husband and during the Civil war she sold her interests in Missouri and moved to Leavenworth. Kansas, and finally to Salina, Kansas, where she died in 1879. She was the mother of eight children. James Whitehead being the second in age. The other four sons were David B., Edmund A .. John Q., of Min- neapolis, and Joseph L. Edmund and Joseph are deceased. The oldest daughter was Helen. a twin sister of David. and she married a suc- cessful farmer, L. W. Boggs, in Andrew County. Missouri. Elizabeth is the wife of T. F. Baker and lives in Greeley, Colorado. The daughter Sue died unmarried.
James W. Powers was about four years of age when the family moved to Northwest Mis- souri. He grew up on the farm and most of his school advantages were given him by his VOL. IV-2
father, who taught his children in his own home. Before the death of his father it was planned that he should take up the study of medicine. He spent a good deal of time in a doctor's office, but his home was in a region where there was too much excitement to allow him to concentrate his attention upon medical books. He and his chum acquired the Colo- rado fever by watching the outfitting of the big wagon trains along the Missouri for cross- ing the plains. The two boys decided to become members of a party, and without noti- fying their parents made arrangements with an old Connecticut Yankee Irishman, "the mean- est man that ever lived," says Mr. Powers, to take them to Denver for the work they could do on the way. Young Powers therefore started for the West before he was sixteen, and spent a year in Denver. Returning to Mis- souri he reconciled his mother to his ambitions to find his career in the great West. At the opening of the Civil war he returned to Denver and in 1862 enlisted in the Colorado troops to fight Indians. His chum, Rube, was with him in this military experience as well, and the boys served about ninety days, having several fights with the Indians, in one of which Mr. Powers was wounded. When the regiment disbanded both took up freighting. Young Powers joined the firm of Powers & Newman. A member of this was his uncle, David W. Powers, one of the big men in the West at the time and one of the few capitalists of the region. Young Powers had in the meantime saved some money, which he invested in the organization. and for ten years continued to be identified with the company. Besides having some finan- cial interest in the enterprise, he was con- stantly engaged in the actual work of transpor- tation and freighting. He took several wagon trains as far southwest as Santa Fe, and made a great number of trips between St. Joseph and Denver. He alternately worked and drove. and one time he walked the entire distance from the Missouri River to Laramie, Wyoming. Some years later he had the satisfaction of riding across the plains in a Pullman palace car. Of the life of the great West between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains during the sixties and sev- enties it is doubtful if any man now living has a wider knowledge than Mr. Powers. He knew the late Buffalo Bill when Colonel Cody was identified with the "Pony Express." He became an intimate friend of that distinguished frontiersman. He met Kit Carson at Fort Union. New Mexico, and found him to be an
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educated man instead of an illiterate, as many believe him to have been. . He knew other famous fighters and peace officers, including Wild Bill Hickock and others whose names are never omitted from narratives of the West prior to the railroad era. Mr. Powers was himself in the capacity of a transcontinental freighter, a real ambassador of civilization in all the region from the Missouri to the Rockies. It was with the building of railroads that he gave up freighting. and he witnessed the gradual dissolution of the great business employing countless teams of horses and mules and strings of cattle, wagons and other para- phernalia.
When he left overland transportation Mr. Powers continued in association with his uncle and older brother. D. Bruce Powers, in the cattle business. They operated their thousands of head of stock on the range along the Smoky Hill River in Western Kansas. The big freeze of 1873 destroyed over eleven thousand of their eighteen thousand head. The Powers
ranch was established on that river in 1866, and the headquarters remained in that locality until 1878, when his uncle became too old and the firm dissolved. In 1868 James W. Powers entered banking at Ellsworth, and two years later opened the first bank at Salina, Kansas. The business was known as the Powers Bank, and it was the first banking institution in both Ellsworth and Salina. The bank at Salina was discontinued in 1873, and thereafter the varied interests of the firm were concentrated at Ellsworth. James W. Powers remained in that section until 1887. when for reasons of health he removed to Springfield, Missouri, and organized the Central National Bank of that city, and four others in Southwest Missouri. He was there about six years, and on removing to Texas spent a few months in Fort Worth. then in the Panhandle, and in August. 1892, came to Gainesville.
At Gainesville Mr. Powers turned his atten- tion to an entirely different line of work, that of buying cotton. For years he was the largest local buyer of the staple at Gainesville, and of the cotton that came to market in this city he frequently bought as high as forty-three per cent. He has rounded out twenty-eight con- secutive years as a buyer, and today he looks after the details of his business as actively as he did in the early nineties.
A life of action and useful work such as this brief personal outline indicates is of itself the highest essential of good citizenship. Mr. Powers has impressed his initiative and enter-
prise upon several localities in the Middle West. He has been one of the public spirited men of Gainesville, and during the World war he was the first subscriber to the first Liberty Loan in the city. At Leavenworth, Kansas, December 24. 1867, he married Miss Martha Belle Hail. Her father, Micajah Hail, was a veteran of the War of 1812, and lived at Somerset. Kentucky, where Mrs. Powers was born in 1846. She died at Gainesville Decem- ber 24. 1894. Of their children the oldest. Oscar Eugene, is cashier of the Lindsay National Bank of Gainesville. The two daughters. Mrs. Grace Gray and Miss Emma Bell, both live in the City of Washington, Dis- trict of Columbia, the latter being a Federal employe. The son, E. Thornton, was the busi- ness partner of his father when he was acci- dentally drowned and left a wife. In 1897 James W. Powers married for his second wife Josephine Margaret Gambill, a daughter of Dr. William Gambill, of Honey Grove. Texas, of which place he was a pioneer.
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