USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume IV > Part 32
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CLIFF F. WITHERSPOON is a native Texan and since 1884 his home and business inter- ests have been centered at Denton. Largely due to his personal enterprise, the name Witherspoon is now favorably known in prac- tically every great market for the American cotton staple. He is founder and senior part- ner of Witherspoon & Sons, cotton merchants and exporters, with representatives at the leading cotton ports of America. England and Europe.
While his activities for a number of years past have been widely extended, Mr. Wither- spoon started his career within narrow limits and with no capital beyond his modest earn- ings. He was born at Marshall, Texas, in 1852. His grandfather was a Tennesseean. His father, John F. Witherspoon, was born in Mississippi and moved from near Natchez, that state, to Marshall, Texas, in 1846. His entire active career was spent as a druggist. After leaving Marshall he was in business at Longview and finally moved to Denton, where he died in 1892, at the age of seventy-four. He had three brothers in the Confederate
army, all of whom lived out their lives in Texas. John F. Witherspoon married Miss Eliza Hawley, of Mississippi, who died at Henderson, Texas, in 1883. Her children were: Tenie, who died at Louisville, Ken- tucky, wife of Marshall Morris, a civil engi- neer; James H., who since early manhood has lived somewhat apart from his family : Cliff F. and Lenore, who married Ben Wet- termark and died at Nacogdoches, Texas.
Cliff F. Witherspoon was reared in Mar- shall until after the Civil war. He attended public school there and then because of fam- ily circumstances due to the freeing of the slaves and a general economic depression, he relieved his father of further responsibilities in the matter of supporting him and, going to New Orleans, did clerical work in a store for two years. He had earned his first dollar by service as deputy sheriff of Harrison County, Texas. On returning to Texas he located at Longview, then the terminus of the Texas and Pacific Railroad, clerked in a drug store and followed that with five years of independent merchandising as a grocer at Henderson, Texas.
On removing to Denton in 1884 Mr. With- erspoon bought a lumber yard and sold lum- ber and also bought cotton for the McFad- den concern. The years 1885-86-87 were a period of drought in the region and there was no demand for lumber. Giving up that branch of the business. he took up the grain trade and that was an important feature of his business enterprise until the World war. when the Government practically took charge of the grain markets throughout the country and since then the firm has practically dis- continued its interests in grain.
Mr. Witherspoon took all his sons into a partnership with him in 1918, thus consti- tuting Witherspoon & Sons. His boys, as soon as they finished their education and were ready for business. were given responsi- bilities with him, and two had charge of Mr. Witherspoon's offices at Chickasha, Oklahoma. and Abilene, Texas. The Chickasha office subsequently was removed to Houston and the Abilene office to New Orleans, now impor- tant headquarters of the firm as cotton, ex- porters. The operations of Witherspoon & Sons cover a wide range of territory, han- dling cotton from the states of Texas and Oklahoma through the offices at Houston and Galveston, while the New Orleans branch of the business takes a large share of the cotton crop tributary to that port. Their exports go
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to the continent of Europe as well as to England, and the spinners of all the European countries recognize the Witherspoon firm as an important source of supply for the Amer- ican people. The firm also has compress interests in Oklahoma, West and North Texas and the Traders, Northwestern and Inland Compress companies.
Now that his sons have relieved him of some of his heavier and wide extended respon- sibilities, Mr. Witherspoon has found leisure to take up and prosecute an interesting and useful diversion as a practical farmer and stockman in Denton County. His stock farm and breeding grounds are the old Country Club, where he is raising big-boned Poland- China hogs and registered Jersey cattle. His stock interests have reached a point where exhibits can soon be made in the stock shows. His dairy herd is already the source of con- siderable production and he is president of the Dairy Products Company of Denton, an organization formed to stimulate the dairy industry.
At Longview, Texas, July 12, 1877, Mr. Witherspoon married Miss Mattie Crutcher. a native of Kentucky, daughter of Asa and Martha ( Pittman) Crutcher. Mrs. Wither- spoon, who died in 1907, was the mother of children. There were two daughters, Miss Nellie, who died at the age of ten years, and Miss Anna LaValan, who died at the age of seventeen. The oldest of the four sons is Ford C., who has charge of the Hous- ton headquarters of the firm. He married Miss Louise Henderson, of Athens, Tennes- see, and their children are Jane Gettys, Ford C., Jr., and Philip. The second son is Guy Pittman, whose headquarters are at New Orleans. His wife was Miss Virginia Guitar, of Abilene, Texas, and their two children are Guy P., Jr., and Bettie. Clifford Witherspoon, Jr., is in charge of the Witherspoon office at Liverpool, England, as selling agent of the company. He married Mrs. Minnie Williams. The fourth son, Horace Trabue, in charge of the business at Galveston, married Mar- garet Bass of Denton and has a son, Horace, Jr.
During a residence of nearly forty years in Denton Mr. Witherspoon has at all times endeavored to play the part of a public spir- ited and useful citizen. Fraternally he is a well known Odd Fellow, having filled all the chairs in the subordinate and encampment degrees, and has been deputy grand master of Texas. He was one of the local citizens
largely responsible for making Denton a cen- ter of the higher educational interests of the state. He was chairman of the committee to secure the location of the College of Industrial Arts at Denton. Not only were there many other towns competing for the honor of the location, but the primary difficulty with which Mr. Witherspoon contended was arousing Denton people themselves to a proper appre- ciation of the advantages that would come from the school and welding them into an effective organization to work with that end in view. For a number of years Mr. Wither- spoon was president of the Denton School Board. He was on the committee to secure the location of the North Texas Normal Col- lege, and School Building No. 2 was donated to the state as a nucleus of the Normal. While this act rather hampered the efficiency of the public schools and made it necessary for the property holders to pay double taxes for a time, the people generally approved the act of the school board, which was an assumption of authority not contemplated within the strict letter of the law.
L. M. LINGENFELTER, district sales man- ager for the Miller Petroleum Company at Fort Worth, was reared and educated in Oklahoma and in that state laid the founda- tion of an extensive experience in nearly every phase of the oil business. The Miller Petroleum Company, whose general offices are in Kansas City, have carried on extensive operations in the North Texas fields for sev- eral years. One of the most complete and modern refineries in the Southwest is owned by this company at Wichita Falls, and they have another refinery at Humboldt, Kansas. The general officers of the company are : J. H. Miller, president : F. L. Miller, vice president ; and G. E. Craig, secretary.
L. M. Lingenfelter was born in Marion County, Illinois, September 12, 1892, a son of N. H. and Jennie B. Lingenfelter. His par- ents are now living at Frederick, Oklahoma. His father is a veteran newspaper man, has been a resident of Oklahoma for about twen- ty-two years, and is now publishing the Daily Leader at Frederick.
L. M. Lingenfelter as a boy attended the public schools of Oklahoma City. On leav- ing school he went into the wholesale grocery business and from that turned to the oil in- dustry. He helped promote and was fiscal agent of a drilling company known as the Kentexo, with headquarters at Oklahoma City.
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Following that he was salesman for the Lone Star Refining Company at Wichita Falls, and after assisting in the promotion he was for about six months secretary-treasurer of the Paramount Oil Company.
His first relation with the Miller Petroleum Company was as assistant sales manager. Later he joined the Sammies Oil & Supply Company at Sioux City, Iowa, as secretary- treasurer, but resigned this post to return to the Miller Company, and has since been dis- trict sales manager at Fort Worth, where his offices are in the F & M Bank Building. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity.
JOHN J. ROBERTSON, stockman, farmer, capitalist and banker, came to Texas soon after the close of the Civil war. in which he was a youthful soldier, and is a pioneer citizen of Stephens County, where he has had his home and active interests for forty-five years.
He was born in Benton County, Missouri, April 27, 1846, a son of Richard Jackson and Sarah ( Foster) Robertson. His father, a native of Virginia, was a pioneer of Benton County, Missouri. On his farm in that sec- tion of Missouri John J. Robertson grew to manhood and at the age of fifteen volunteered his services to the Confederate Government. He was in the army throughout the struggle, under General Stirling Price in the Trans- Mississippi Department in Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana. Directly following the war he left his Missouri home and in 1866 came to Collin County, Texas. A year later, with his parents, he moved to Hopkins County and lived on their farm in that section of Texas for a time. After his marriage in 1868 he continued his career as a farmer in Hopkins County until 1875, and then moved to Brown County. He remained there until 1877. when he moved out to the very frontier of Western Texas in Stephens County. His first location was near his present home in Crystal Falls. He began here as a range stockman, and still has extensive land holdings, totaling about two thousand acres and situated chiefly north and east of Crystal Falls. Much of this land in recent years has come under lease to the oil companies for development, and there is considerable production on lands which were formerly entirely devoted to stock pasturage. Mr. Robertson is justly rated as one of the solid and substantial men of Stephens County. He is president of the First Guaranty State Bank of Crystal Falls, with a capital of
twenty-five thousand dollars. He has occu- pied his present home in Crystal Falls since 1881.
Mr. Robertson married on March 4, 1868, Miss Susan A. Hankins. Their four chil- dren are Sterling P., Mrs. Flora Keithley. Mrs. Fay Ball and Richard Jackson Robert- son. Mr. Robertson has been a member of the Baptist Church since 1885, since which time he has been a deacon. He has been on the Executive Board of the association since its organization and has been moderator of the Stephens County Association and chairman of the Executive Board for over a quarter of a century. He is a Mason, a charter member of Crystal Falls Lodge No. 614, A. F. and A. M., of which he was the first worshipful master. Mr. Robertson has been a member of the County Democratic Executive Board for a number of years, has been and is prominent in democratic politics and has been a delegate to congressional conventions.
JOHN W. Ross, a retired business man of Grandview, has lived in Johnson County since 1865, coming here as a boy, and eventually his character, ability and energy placed him in the ranks of successful men. In the fifty odd years he has lived in Johnson County he has been a farmer, merchant and banker and has identified himself with every worthy movement requiring the general co-operation of citizens.
Mr. Ross was born in Cass County, Texas, August 4, 1855. His father, Rev. Akin Ross, was a Methodist circuit rider and gave his entire life to the church. He came to Texas in 1844, when this was a republic, and the family has lived under all the different flags of the state and nation since then. Rev. Mr. Ross made the journey from Georgia to Texas by water as far as Jefferson and soon estab- lished his home in Cass County. As a Meth- odist minister he rode all over the Red River country, preaching and organizing churches, and was subsequently elected presiding elder of the district which then included Dallas. He died in 1861 and is buried in Bowie County. His wife was Martha A. Lumpkin, who in 1865 moved with her family to Johnson County and died at her home in Alvarado. Of her children John W. is the only sur- vivor. Her four oldest sons were all Con- federate soldiers. The sons were: Dr. W. S., who practiced medicine for many years at Alvarado; Melvin C., who is a farmer near Alvarado; George A., who died while in the army ; Thomas E., who spent his active years
A.Y. Robertson
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at Alvarado; John W .; and Charles Cicero, who died at Alvarado.
John W. Ross was ten years of age when brought to Johnson County and he grew up at Alvarado, attending the village school. Among his playmates and schoolmates were such prominent men as Marion Sansom, Judge W. F. Ramsey, now head of the Federal Reserve Bank at Dallas; Judge William Poin- dexter of Cleburne, and the noted lawyer, Judge Sam R. Frost. The wise educator who guided the thought and conduct of these and other young men at Alvarado was Professor John Collier, now a resident of Baird, Texas.
John W. Ross lived on his mother's farm near Alvarado and assisted in its work and management until 1880, when he left that locality and came to Grandview. At that time Jot Smith's store was the only business house here and he became a clerk in that estab- lishment. After a couple of years he formed a partnership with his employer, and the firm of Ross & Company continued until 1887, when Mr. Ross retired and then continued merchandising on his own account until 1913. During most of this period he sold drugs, but for a time was also a hardware merchant. Having accumulated in the meantime consid- erable farming interests, he has for the past eight or nine years given them his chief concern.
Grandview, for several years after he came, had no banking facilities, and all banking business was transacted through the City National Bank of Fort Worth. To eliminate this hardship from local business men Mr. Ross was one of the leaders in the movement for the establishment of a bank. His asso- ciates were W. G. Davis, T. S. Mastin, T. E. Pittman, Charles Coffin and John Coffin. They started a bank with a capital of $50,000 and the first officers of the First National Bank were Mr. Pittman, president; Doctor Gebhard, cashier; while Mr. Ross was one of the directors for a number of years. In forty years of residence at Grandview Mr. Ross has been in touch with every move for the establishment of churches of the various denominations. Personally he is a Metho- dist, the church in which he was reared. He is one of many thoughtful men who have not regarded themselves bound by strict partisan ties in politics. Normally he has been a dem- ocrat, but as a sound money man he sup- ported McKinley in 1896, and through his admiration of the manhood and other progres- sive qualities of Theodore Roosevelt voted
for him for president in 1904. He twice voted for Mr. Wilson, whose clear vision and breadth of statesmanship he regarded as unsurpassed during the past century. Mr. Ross has never been in practical politics. He supported George Clark for governor in 1892 instead of Mr. Hogg and was a Senator Bailey partisan in the primary campaign of 1920.
At Grandview, in September, 1889, he mar- ried Miss Nannie Pitts. She was born in Mississippi and died in December, 1919, the mother of two sons and one daughter: Jennie, wife of Karl H. Moore, of Grandview ; Her- bert P., a student of engineering at the Rice Institute at Houston; and Robert P., a stu- dent in the Grandview High School.
RALPH REED acquired his early experience in the oil industry while an Oklahoma banker, and has put his entire time and experience at the service of this business since 1918.
Mr. Reed was born April 26, 1884, at Reedville, Meigs County, Ohio, a son of Clinton and Cynthia (Knowles) Reed. His father is now living at Athens, Ohio, having spent his early life as a farmer.
First in a family of five children, Ralph Reed grew up on his father's farm and at- tended school at Reedville. Leaving home at the age of sixteen, he came West and for a time was employed in the store of his uncles in the mining district of Joplin, Missouri. Removing to Oklahoma, he was with the Oklahoma National Bank of Shawnee and then at Vinita, and was connected with the Vinita Producing and Refining Company. Following that he bought a small bank at Porum and was a banker until he sold his interests and removed to Texas in 1918.
Mr. Reed is a member of Scottish Rite Consistory No. 2 at McAlester, Oklahoma, and of Bedouin Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Muskogee. He is a member of the First Christian Church at Fort Worth and in pol- itics is republican in national elections and strictly independent in local issues.
He was united in marriage with Miss Zoe Kennedy, of Shawnee, Oklahoma, December 29, 1909. She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. D. N. Kennedy, of the same place. There has been born to them one son, Mark, aged four years.
JOSEPH S. COVERT is well known among the oil men who have found Fort Worth a con- venient headquarters for their business. He
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about 600 barrels of production in the Duncan field and has paid 160 per cent dividends in the last four years. The company, also with offices in the F and M Bank Building, was organized by Mr. Dulaney in 1916 and has been under his management. He is vice pres- ident of the Slaughter Motor Company of Ardmore, organized in 1918, which has paid 120 per cent dividends. This company is state distributor for the Maxwell and Chalmers automobiles.
Mr. Dulaney is a republican in politics, is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Modern Woodmen of America. On December 27, 1903, at Cornish, Oklahoma, he married Miss Stella Allred, of a well known family of farmers at Cornish. She finished her education in the public schools of Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Dulaney have two sons and four daughters. The five living are : Othella, born in 1904; Marie, born in 1906; R. O., Jr., born in 1909; Evelyn, born in 1911 ; and Charles Hughes, born in 1916. The older children are students in the Fort Worth public schools.
JOHN DE LAMATER COVERT, M. D. As an accomplished member of the medical profes- sion and also as a public-spirited citizen, Dr. Covert has been identified with Fort Worth since 1899.
He was born at Napoleon, Jackson County, Michigan, August 16, 1876. His early edu- cation was acquired in the public schools of Brooklyn, Michigan, graduating with the class of 1892. Later he pursued his studies in the University of Michigan and received his M. D. degree from that university in 1899. In October of that year he began practice at Fort Worth, and continuously for over twenty years has been associated with Dr. G. W. Cook in the firm of Doctors Cook & Covert, one of the oldest medical partnerships in North- west Texas.
Doctor Covert is affiliated with Southside Lodge No. 114, Free and Accepted Masons, Fort Worth Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, Worth Commandery No. 19, Knights Templar, and Moslah Temple of the Mystic Shrine. He is a member and senior warden of Trinity Episcopal Church. On April 29, 1902, he mar- ried Mrs. Virginia Scoble Ford. They have one daughter, Sarah Virginia.
BERT L. MILLER. With respect to length of experience as well as other qualifications Bert "L. Miller is one of the most complete authori-
ties on the subject of the oil industry to be found in the city of Fort Worth. He has been identified with nearly every phase of oil and gas both east and west, and is now a broker of oil leases, royalties and drilling contracts.
He was born December 21, 1874, at Spar- tansburg in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, in a section where a very large part of the current business talk is on the subject of oil. His parents E. T. and Emma Jane Miller, are now deceased. His father was a stonemason by trade, and for many years followed his work in New York and Pennsylvania. Of seven children, five still living, Bert L. was the fifth in age.
He acquired his grade school education at Spartansburg and at the age of nineteen re- moved to West Virginia to learn telegraphy from his brother, who at that time was con- nected with the South Penn Oil Company, a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company. After familiarizing himself sufficiently with the subject so as to receive and send mes- sages, Mr. Miller was put to work at an oil pumping station with the Eureka Pipe Line Company. He filled in as an extra hand while the regulars took their vacations at the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893. That was the be- ginning of almost thirty years of continuous service in some department of the oil busi- ness. Mr. Miller has pumped oil wells, has done roustabout work, and eventually was put in the office where he had learned teleg- raphy. He was in that office for about ten years, and was then transferred to the head- quarters of the company at Mannington, West Virginia, coming under the supervision of T. A. Neill. He had charge of the Manning- ton district in the absence of the two regular superintendents for about two years. When he resigned from the South Penn Oil Com- pany Mr. Miller went on the road selling oil well supplies. For over a year he did that line of work, and for a time was connected with the Telephone Company at Jamestown, though he soon found this uncongenial. He then drifted back to the Standard Oil Com- pany's service and was bookkeeper for the United Natural Gas Company at Sharon, Pennsylvania, until 1915, when he was trans- ferred to the well known oil town up the Allegheny River known as Tidioute, Penn- sylvania. He was manager there fifteen months, until the office was closed.
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In May, 1916, Mr. Miller took a vacation, and spent it in the famous oil city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He had been there only a few days, he says, when he "became so smeared with oil that it got into my blood to get back into the field." His first formal connection with southwestern oil interests was with the Carter Oil Company, who sent him as lease man to Enid, Oklahoma, his contract being for two weeks' time. The first well at Garber had just been started, and instead of two weeks he remained there more than two years, having charge of the leasing department for the Carter Oil Company in the Enid district. From Enid Mr. Miller came to Texas, first at Dallas, and in April, 1919, joined the Humble Oil & Refining Company under T. B. Hoffer as head of the leasing department. January 15, 1920, he established himself inde- pendently as a broker in the Dan Waggoner building at Fort Worth, and in August of the same year moved to the eighteenth floor of the new W. T. Waggoner building, where he is still located. In February, 1921, he added two more rooms to his offices, and George H. Anderson now shares this suite with him. Both are prominently known among oil men all over the southwest.
Mr. Miller is deeply interested in civic affairs at Fort Worth and socially is a member of the Fort Worth Club, Chamber of Com- merce and is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a member of Moslah Temple of the Mystic Shrine. He is a republican and was reared a Methodist, though he has no church membership. At Warren, Ohio, April 12, 1911, he married Miss Della Doty.
Ross ELLIOTT, a young business man with an engineering training, is manager of the Stephens County Abstract Company at Breck- enridge. This is one of the oldest abstract concerns in West Texas, having been founded in 1884. It performed a careful and efficient service during all the years while Stephens County was slowly developing from an open stock range to stock farms and a settled com- munity, and the accumulating records, the responsible management of the business, made it possible to reap the large rewards and fur- nish an adequate service with the beginning of the county's great oil boom in the latter part of 1917.
In the past three years the company's facil- ities have been greatly increased and its serv- ice has proved indispensable to the orderly process of oil development. During this time
there has probably been many times as many transfers of title, division and subdivision of old holdings and trading in oil leases, as in all the years preceding. The company has been an exceedingly prosperous institution, is conducted by experts of the highest skill, and it is both a responsibility and an honor to be manager of the business.
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