USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume IV > Part 31
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As a public-spirited citizen he is interested in the growth and development of Fort Worth and its institutions and in the welfare of its citizens, and is, therefore a supporter of worthy movements and enterprises. He is a member of the American Society of Mechan- ical Engineers, fraternally is a Mason of Campbell Hill (Illinois) Blue Lodge, and socially belongs to the Temple Club. Polit- ically he is a republican. On November 7, 1914, he was united in marriage at New York City with Miss Maybelle Schmachten- berger. and to this union there has come one
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son, Wallace J., Jr., who was born at Balti- more, Maryland, September 22, 1915.
THOMAS H. ROWAN is a native Texan, and in the course of his active career has had a varied participation in farming, stock ranch- ing, banking and latterly in the oil industry. Mr. Rowan is well known in Fort Worth and other oil centers as president of the Co- Operative Oil Products Company, a whole- sale and retail firm, chiefly engaged in the business of building and operating service filling stations. The Fort Worth central offices are in the Cotton Exchange Building.
Mr. Rowan was born February 22, 1875, twenty-five miles north of Fort Worth, son of John R. Rowan. His father was born and reared in New York State, enlisted in the Union army in 1863, and after the war came West and settled in Texas, where he mar- ried in 1867 and where for many years he was a farmer and stock raiser. He is now living, at the age of seventy-five, at Canyon, Texas. Of his twelve children Thomas H. was the third in order of birth, and seven of them are still living.
Thomas H. Rowan had a country school education, attending as a rule only three months of the year up to twelve years of age, while the rest of the season he spent in assisting on the farm and ranch. He was also an employe of the Santa Fe Railroad for four years, and leaving that he took up stock farming. While a resident of Canyon Mr. Rowan was vice-president and director of the First State Bank. As a banker he became interested in the oil industry, and for several years has been a resident of Fort Worth and active in his duties as president of the Co-Operative Oil Products Company. The Co-Operative Company now has twenty-eight retail filling stations and nine wholesale sta- tions and does a business practically over the entire state. The volume of business for a single year runs more than half a million dollars.
Mr. Rowan is a member of the Independ- ent Order of Odd Fellows. On November 25, 1895, he married Miss Maggie E. Yar- brough. Her father was a pioneer cattleman of Northwestern Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Rowan have three children. The two daugh- ters living are Mabel C. and Johnnie. Mabel completed a college education and Johnnie is an accomplished musician, whose education was finished in a musical conservatory of VOL. IV-11
Chicago. She has been for some time a teacher of piano.
B. S. HUEY. In every community there are certain men who by reason of their personal- ity, accomplishments and position with refer- ence to business operations stand prominently before the people. Eastland County has a number of such men, but one deserving of special mention in this connection is B. S. Huey of Cisco, one of the capitalists and ag- gressive men of this section.
B. S. Huey was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and came to Houston, Texas, when a youth. For several years after his arrival he was a prominent cotton man of that city, which he left in 1911 to come to Cisco, where for a time he continued his cotton operations. One of his present active business enter- prises is the Huey Motor Company, agents for the Hudson cars. He has invested capital freely in Cisco, and has been one of the force- ful factors in the building of modern Cisco, which began in 1917, or about the time of the launching of the oil boom in Central West Texas. It is due to Mr. Huey that the city has a live, modern daily newspaper, the Cisco Daily News, of which he is the principal owner. In January, 1921, he began to pro- mote the movement to build a large, modern hotel at Cisco, and will undoubtedly carry out the project to a successful completion. In developing the oil interests of the Cisco ter- ritory and its commercial and industrial re- sources in general he is a real leader. As a member of the Cisco Chamber of Commerce he is exerting a strong influence along con- structive lines in all civic affairs.
F. J. Huey, brother of B. S. Huey, and his associate in the Huey Motor Company, is widely known as one of the most expert ac- countants in the United States, and for several years practiced the profession of accountancy.
JACOB T. FITCH. When he sold his farm and retired to the comforts of a town home in Pilot Point recently, Jacob T. Fitch had not only a large degree of material prosperity but also the satisfaction that comes from many years of consecutive residence and work in one community, and the knowledge that his life has been of some avail and benefit to the community.
Mr. Fitch retired about the age of three- score and ten. He was born in McMinn County, Tennessee, December 5, 1848. His grandfather, Jacob Fitch, was born in Vir-
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ginia. son of an Irish settler in that colony, and his wife was Polly Akin, whose father also came from Ireland. This old couple reared the following children: John and James, twins ; Isaac; Joseph; Thomas, who is still living in Tarrant County, Texas ; George W., who lived in Arkansas ; William, who died in Missouri; Mary, who was the wife of Andrew Akin, and Ophelia, who married John Shipley.
John Fitch, father of the Denton County citizen, was a native of Virginia, as was his first wife, Eda Tully. They were reared from childhood in Tennessee and married there and both died in Meigs County of that state. John Fitch was a Confederate soldier, being in Company G of the 62d Tennessee Infantry. under Colonel Rowan and General Vaughn. His service was concluded with the siege of Vicksburg, and after the fall of that city he was paroled and did not rejoin the army. The rest of his life he spent as a farmer in Meigs County, Tennessee, and beyond voting the democratic ticket took no part in civic affairs. He was a Methodist. His life came to a close in 1909, at the age of eighty-four. His first wife passed away before the war, her children being: James I. who died at the age of ten years: Jacob T .; William, who died in childhood; while the only daughter, Mary Elizabeth, became the wife of Ray Akins and lives in Rusk County. Texas. The second wife of John Fitch was Mary Clark, and among their children now recalled were George. Thomas and Susan.
Jacob Turner Fitch was reared chiefly in Meigs County, Tennessee. A country school furnished him limited education, two months being the limit of any term. His people were poor, the country was largely undeveloped, and the Civil war interrupted even such forms of institutional service as existed, consequently he and other boys and girls in a like situa- tion had few opportunities. -
It was as a young man of twenty-two, in 1870, that he left Sweetwater. Tennessee, by railroad, going thence to New Orleans, thence by steamship to Galveston, and over the line of the Houston & Texas Central to Kosse, the northern terminus. From Kosse he walked acress the country to Waxahachie and thence east to Rusk County, and for five years lived in the locality just north of Hen- derson. The first dollar he earned in Texas was as a farm hand, when wages were $12.50 a month. He was paid $150 for twelve months' labor. He brought no capital with
him and depended altogether on the labor of his hands to get a start. After the first year he began cropping on the shares, and after his marriage he lived in a rented home and did what he could at farming in that sec- tion of Eastern Texas. When he left there he was little better off than at the start, since much of what he saved went to pay doctor bills caused by the malarial conditions of Rusk County. It was chiefly to get away from the swampy climate of Rusk County that he changed his home and came to Den- ton County. Another object of removing was that opportunities were greater for a young man of industry in this then comparatively new section of the state. The soil was also better and promised more to the man who tilled it diligently.
Therefore, in 1875, Mr. Fitch came to Denton County, accompanied by his wife. driving a wagon and team that constituted most of their working capital. Their first home was established five miles southeast of Pilot Point. Here they bought a small piece of land on time, and for about two years lived in what was little better than a shack. His efforts were encouraging from the start. and thenceforward there was a general climb of the ladder to prosperity. More land was added from time to time, at prices ranging from eleven to twenty-five dollars an acre, until he had a well improved farm of 21512 acres. In that one locality he lived and worked forty-four years, when he sold his farm and its improvements and moved to a home in Pilot Point, where he still finds occu- pation of a lighter nature in looking after his truck garden.
Mr. Fitch has always voted the democratic ticket, as have his sons. He and his family are Methodists, and he is perhaps the oldest member of the Pilot Point Lodge of Masons. He joined that order in Tennessee. While in the country on the farm he was a member of the School Board, and was steward of Friendship Church there.
In Rusk County in 1872 he married Malinda Honea, a native of Georgia. Her father came to Texas soon after the war and died not long afterward. The mother of Mrs. Fitch was M. A. Hughes. Mrs. Fitch was the second of six children. and others still living are Mrs. Lizzie Todd and Mrs. Laura McCamy of Rusk County. Eight children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Fitch. Six grew up and four are still living : Mrs. Bertie Elliott, of Pilot Point, mother of two children ;
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E. V. Fitch, of St. Joseph, Missouri, who married Dora Lybarger and has two children : Miss Ada, of Pilot Point ; and Victor B., of Floyd County, Texas, who married Carmen De Spain and has three children.
WILLIAM H. ODOM, a prosperous farmer of the Grandview locality, is one of the real pioneers of Texas, for he was brought here when the flag of the Texas republic was flying, and here he has lived ever since, par- ticipating with much of the stirring history of the Lone Star State. He was born in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, September 6, 1840, a son of Simeon Odom and grandson of Malachi Odom and his wife Polly (Rus- sell) Odom. Malachi Odom is supposed to have been a native of Georgia, and from there he journeyed through the Carolinas and on out west to Mississippi, and it was in. that state that his son Simeon Odom was born in June, 1819.
The childhood home of Simeon Odom was a humble one, for his father was a laboring man, and his schooling amounted to nothing worth mentioning, for he attended but one school in his life, and that for but a few weeks. However, he was very ambitious and quick to learn and taught himself to read and write and became expert at figures, keep- ing all of his accounts in his head. A man of intensely religious convictions, he studied the Bible and took up gospel work in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church and continued one of the local preachers of that denomination all of his life. A powerful exhorter, he gave his large congregations the real meat of the gospel, and exerted a re- markable influence for good.
As his large family began to grow up about him he felt that he ought to move into a locality where better opportunities would be afforded them, and Texas then being in the public eye, he came here from Lauderdale County. Mississippi, in January, 1845, when William H. Odom was only four years old and established his homestead in what is now Navarro County, then the Cherokee County domain, and began farming, while still continuing his gospel work. He had brought with him to Texas his father and mother, who wanted to stop in Cherokee County and go no further. Here Simeon Odom remained until both had died, and then, in 1852, sold his interests and brought his family to Johnson County, settling five miles east of Grandview, and. there he continued to
reside until his death, when only forty-five years of age. He was on a journey to Louis- iana to look after a sick soldier son, then serving in the Confederate army, was taken sick in Nacogdoches County, Texas, died very suddenly and was buried in a local cemetery in that county.
Simeon Odom was married to Sarah Ward. a daughter of William and Rebecca (Powell) Ward, who were farmers, and moved to Mis- sissippi from some southeastern state. Mrs. Odom died in 1890, when she was almost seventy years old. Simeon Odom and his wife became the parents of twelve children, of whom the following reached maturity : William H., who was the eldest; Malachi Franklin, who was killed in battle during the war between the North and the South ; John Washington, who served in the Confed- erate army, spent the greater portion of his life following the close of the war in John- son County, but died in one of the western counties of Texas ; Thomas C., who lived and died in the region of Grandview; Christopher C., who also died in the region of Grand- view; James Fisher, who died in Johnson County : Robert Payne, who is a resident of Cross Plains, Calahan County, Texas; and Henry David, who was killed in an accident near Grandview.
William H. Odom grew up in a region where there were no schools, for the little community was composed of but four families. so he, like his father, had to study out for himself what education he acquired, but he added to his store of knowledge through close observation and experience, and is well in- formed upon many subjects. Up to the out- break of the war between the two sections of the country his experiences were the same as any small Texan farmer, with a few cattle as a side issue, but with that catastrophe he entered upon another phase of life. On Sep- tember 11, 1861, he enlisted in Company F. Texas Dragoons, C. S. A., and as a member of this cavalry regiment belonged to the Western Department of the army and saw service all over Texas and in Louisiana. He took part in the engagement at Cotton Plant and followed General Banks' army on its re- treat down the Red River, and fought at every opportunity. Later he was on detached serv- ice in Southern Texas and was in that part of the state when the news reached him of General Lee's surrender. He furloughed home to harvest his mother's wheat and was
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there when the dissolution of the Confederate army of this region took place.
Like so many Southerners of that period. Mr. Odom was confronted with serious prob- lems and he fought harder battles during the reconstruction period than when in the army. Resuming his farming. he has been connected with the Grandview region ever since, and has won a sound place for himself in the esteem of his neighborhood. Mr. Odom has been satisfied with securing a good living. and has never been too busy to do his part, in a quiet way. in his community, taking a sincere interest in educational and church affairs as well as in civic matters. He is a Methodist and has officiated as steward of the Green Brier Church. For many years he has served as a trustee of the district schools. As a democrat and anti-prohibition- ist, he supported Governor Hogg in 1892 when he was running against George Clark. It was during this famous campaign, when the two candidates met in a joint debate, that the stage collapsed. injuring Mr. Clark so seriously that he has never fully recovered.
In 1860 William H. Odom was married to Miss Euphemia Page, who died in February. 1882, having borne her husband the follow- ing children : Mrs. S. E. Duncan, who died. leaving a number of children now living in Johnson County ; William V., who is a farmer of the Grandview locality; Janie, who is Mrs. Wilbanks, of Johnson County; Coke, who is mentioned at length below ; Porter, who mar- ried Walter Henderson, of Johnson County : Amy J., who married Lez Wilbanks, of John- son County ; and Grandbury, who is a farmer of Auburn, Texas. Mr. Odom married for his second wife Miss Mary E. Doss. a daugh- ter of Shelton Doss, who came from Barren County, Kentucky, where his daughter was born in 1854, and located in Texas. By his second marriage Mr. Odom had two children : Earl, who was graduated from Baylor Uni- versity; and Elizabeth, who, after she had completed her regular collegiate training in Baylor University. took the art course and was graduated therefrom. She is now en- gaged in public school work.
Coke Odom was born near Cleburne, Texas. August 31, 1872, and has resided in Texas all his life, spending the earlier portion of it in educational work and the remainder in agri- cultural activities, which are now absorbing him, his farming property being in the Auburn community. His boyhood was passed on the farm near Grandview. where his father still
resides, and he began his educational train- ing in the old box schoolhouse of his locality. Later he attended the Grandview High School, from which he was graduated, and the Uni- versity of Texas, where he took up special studies. Before he went to the university he was engaged in teaching in the country schools, and after he had completed his uni- versity work he spent three years in the high school of Timpson, Texas, the last two years being its principal. In all he was in the edu- cational field for sixteen years, completing his career as such in the district school at Auburn.
While he was engaged in teaching, Mr. Odom had become interested in farming, and in 1906 established himself on Chambers Creek, where he is now located, and since 1914, when he stopped teaching, he has de- voted all of his time to operating his large farm. He has been affiliated with church and Sunday School work for many years, and for the past twelve years has been one of the valued teachers in the latter. Realizing the responsibility of citizenship, Mr. Odom has endeavored to live up to his duty as such and cast his first presidential vote for Wil- liam Jennings Bryan, but his maiden vote was cast in 1894 for Charles A. Culberson for governor. Like his father, Mr. Odom has continued in the ranks of the democratic party, although he has not cared to run for office. The somewhat unusual name borne by Mr. Odom was given him in honor of his father's brother, who was named for Thomas Coke, a contemporary of John Wesley, and a dignitary of the Methodist Church. As was but natural, all the men connected with Methodism were honored people in the eyes of Simeon Odom. the eloquent local preacher, to whom is ac- corded the distinction of having preached the first sermon ever delivered in Johnson County.
Coke Odom was married January 25, 1903, in the locality where he now lives, to Miss Jeffie Queen Mabry, a daughter of Albert T. Mabry, and a granddaughter of Jeff T. Quinn. her mother's father, who settled in Johnson county in 1854. Mr. Quinn became a resi- dent of Auburn after the close of the war of the '60s, in which hamlet he built the first storehouse. Albert T. Mabry married a daughter of Mr. Quinn, and they had the following children: A. T., Jr., who lives at Bakersfield, California; Mrs. India Mae Childress, of Benbrook, Texas; and Mrs. Odom, who is the eldest. Mr. and Mrs. Odom have two living children. Jeffie Miriam
Ben R. Grant
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and Lillian May Kathleen. Thomas Laurens, a twin brother of Jeffie Miriam, died at the age of four years. Mr. Odom was made a Mason at Grandview, and belongs to the Blue Lodge and Chapter of that city, and to the Cleburne Commandery. Both Mr. Odom and his father are quiet, dependable men, who have endeavored to do their duty as they have seen it and render a service to their home com- munity in accordance with their American citizenship. As farmers they have done their part in developing this section of the state and are justly numbered among the worth- while men of the Grandview and Auburn localities.
ARTHUR S. GOETZ is a man of wide busi- ness experience in handling industrial enter- prises all over the West and for the past twenty years his home has been in Fort Worth.
Mr. Goetz was born in Milwaukee, Wis- consin, July 16, 1863. His father, A. W. Goetz, was a native of Germany, came to the United States when a youth and for many years was identified with mercantile life in Milwaukee. He and his wife are now de- ceased and are buried at Milwaukee.
Arthur S. Goetz was one of a family of eleven children, five living. He acquired a public school education in Milwaukee until he was fourteen and after that made his own way in the world. His business career was partly shaped by his very first employment, at the age of fourteen years, as office boy for J. J. Hagerman. Mr. Hagerman was a na- tionally known financier, the man who devel- oped the iron ore fields of the Menominee Range of Michigan, built the Colorado Mid- land Railroad and the present Santa Fe from Pecos to Amarillo, Texas, and built the irri- gating system of the Pecos Valley. When about twenty-four years of age Mr. Goetz removed to Cleveland, Ohio, and was con- nected with the vessel and iron ore business of the company, in which the late Mark Hanna was a conspicuous figure. On leaving Cleve- land Mr. Goetz again resumed his associations with Mr. Hagerman as his private secretary at Colorado Springs. He remained in Colo- rado Springs five years and then was manager for Mr. Hagerman of his interests at Carls- bad in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico, where he superintended the construction and operation of the seventh beet sugar factory in the United States.
Leaving there, Mr. Goetz removed to Fort Worth and practically ever since has been connected with the Texas & Pacific Coal & Oil Company, the Thurber Earthern Products Company and the Thurber Brick Company. He is a member of all branches of Masonry, is a past exalted ruler of the Elks Lodge and is chairman of the executive committee of the Fort Worth Welfare Association.
BEN R. GRANT has been one of the es- teemed citizens of Stephens County for a long period of years. He practically grew up here, and after completing his college educa- tion was a successful teacher. For a number of years past he has been a figure in the county government and is now county tax as- sessor at the Court House at Breckenridge.
Mr. Grant was born at Cornelia, Haber- sham County, Georgia, in 1881, a son of J. C. and Lovina B. (Devers) Grant. His parents were also natives of Georgia. His father, who served as a Confederate soldier throughout the war between the states, spent his active life as a planter and farmer, and for several years was county judge of Haber- sham County.
Ben R. Grant after gaining a limited edu- cation in the schools of Georgia left home and came alone to Texas when he was four- teen years old. The first six or eight months he was at Ranger in Eastland County, and since then his experience has been almost en- tirely in Stephens County. As a boy and youth he worked on farms and cattle ranches. Realizing the bar to future advancement im- posed by lack of education, he used some of his earnings to attend Gorman College at Gor- man and the Daniel Baker College at Brown- wood. When he was about twenty-one he began his career as a teacher, and for some eleven years was active in school work, prin- cipally in Stephens County.
Mr. Grant left the schoolroom to become deputy tax collector at Breckenridge. The two years he spent in that capacity gave him an accurate knowledge of the affairs of office and the revenue collecting system, and in 1918 he was well qualified for the office to which he was elected as county tax assessor. He was re-elected in 1920, and has performed the highly responsible duties of this office during the great oil boom in the county. Mr. Grant is a director of the Breckenridge State Bank & Trust Company and is a member of the Baptist Church.
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His first wife was Miss Edith Simmons, and by this union he has two sons, Otis and F. P. Grant. Mr. Grant married for his pres- ent wife Miss Etta Downing, and they have three children. Arlene, Oscar Aaron and Bonnie Edith.
ROY MITCHELL PITNER is head of the firm Pitner & Adams, accountants and auditors, representing one of the indispensable modern services to business. They are experts in their field and have gained a large clientage, to whom they render special facilities in audit- ing, as counselors on costs and accounting systems, in matters involving the income tax, and in making investigations for investors.
Mr. Pitner was born at Athens, Georgia, November 17, 1883, and graduated from the high school of his native city in 1900, and for practically twenty years has worked in and been a student of accounting. From Janu- ary, 1909, to November, 1915, he was a trav- eling auditor of Swift & Company of Chicago, with headquarters at Norfolk, Virginia. Mr. Pitner removed to Fort Worth in November, 1915, and has since been engaged in the pub- lic accounting profession. During these years he has handled the work of many representa- tive concerns in different lines of business and industry. He is a member of the Kiwanis Club and the Broadway Presbyterian Church.
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