USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume IV > Part 45
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73
To the oil industry Mr. Hobbs has brought individual enterprise, unlimited energy and a skillful business judgment, and these qualities have given him a high rank as a successful financier. He is a director of the Security National Bank of Wichita Falls, and is asso- ciated with half a dozen prominent business and professional men of that city in the owner- ship of a ranch of 80,816 acres in Dallam County, Texas. His beautiful home at Wichita Falls was built at a cost of forty thou- sand dollars. He also owns a valuable thirty- acre orange grove at Fullerton, California.
Mr. Hobbs married Miss Teck Hand, of Stephens County, Texas. Their two children are Melvin Hobbs, born in 1904, and Alta Hobbs, born in 1907.
The fame of his achievements as an oil man has gone abroad. Early in 1921 the financial page of the New York Morning Telegraph carried an interesting story, the data for which was supplied by former Governor Haskell of Oklahoma. A portion of the story that deals with the two main chapters in Mr. Hobbs' life as a cattle man and as an oil producer may be appropriately quoted :
"Henry Hobbs was nineteen years old when he married his 'best girl' from the neighboring ranch and started life for himself. This was back in the year 1903. Hobbs mixed a fair degree of prosperity with a world of hard work, which by 1910 enabled him to feel quite comfortable, with several thousand head of cattle on a nice little ranch in Motley County, West Texas. He had arrived at the dignity where his credit standing with the cattle bank- ers of Kansas City gave him a hundred and fifty thousand dollar rating, and, being aggres- sive in business, he was using the full limit, but, as Hobbs says, 'you can't always bet on
602
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
rain in West Texas,' and from this pinnacle of cattleman's prosperity came the four years known as the 'continuous drought,' which played no favorites, but wrecked all the cattle- men in that region. Hobbs with the rest of them. Year after year all dust and withering sunshine and no rain. Grass, cattle and every- thing else died except the mortgage. The mortgage lived in all its vigor. Mr. Hobbs struggled to make his remaining property pay his debts. He smiles now over the reflection and says the assets came much closer to equal- ling the liabilities than he expected, but he finished up ten thousand dollars behind.
"After years of earnest effort to overcome the blighting effects of the climate, the oil opportunity came, giving Texans opportuni- ties they had never dreamed of before. Hobbs, with nine of his associates, consolidated their credit on a twenty thousand dollar note, which Hobbs says was taken by a neighboring bank at its face, evidently on the hopes of the banker that they would acquire assets rather than faith in any property the makers of the note then had. But this was twenty thousand dollars, and the bunch of ten went to the oil field now widely known as Burkburnett, Texas, but then in its very infancy. The Extension had one well drilled and five others drilling. They or- ganized the Texas Chief Oil & Gas Company of Texas. Hobbs tells us how they came to call it the Texas Chief. His wife's name was Texas, and, as Hobbs says, he had learned to recognize her as the chief in his family affairs, it therefore furnished the name 'Texas Chief.'
"They secured a lease on 160 acres of land with their twenty thousand dollars borrowed money, in the name of the Texas Chief Oil & Gas Company, with its authorized eighty thou- sand dollars capital. They watched the five wells drilling. Shortly these five wells gen- erated enough excitement so that the new Texas Chief Oil & Gas Company sold one- half of their lease for forty thousand dollars.
"With their note paid and twenty thousand dollars from the sale of one-half their lease, the Texas Chief Oil & Gas Company pro- ceeded to drill its first well. Passing over six weeks of heart-breaking trouble and mishaps, day and night work, Well No. 1 of the Texas Chief Oil & Gas Company reached what the oil men term 'the pay sand' 1,760 feet below the surface. Then with all the ten cowboys assembled came the climax, with oil gushing up 1,760 feet from its source and overflowing the derrick and bringing undreamed wealth to
all the participants. That is how the Texas Chief Oil & Gas Company got its well No. 1."
COL. BYRON C. RHOME. The name of Col. Byron C. Rhome belongs permanently in the history of the Texas Northwest. not only for his achievements as a practical man of affairs but for the character he exemplified as a man of generous and high purpose, who made ample fulfillment of all the duties and obligations of a long life.
Colonel Rhome, who died at Fort Worth November 10, 1919, was then eighty-two years of age. He was born in Georgia November 22, 1837. He was educated in the school of the world, experiencing a greater number of vicissitudes than ordinarily falls to the lot of young men, but he steadily learned wisdom from a long and active career. He was pos- sessed of the real pioneer experience and when a seventeen-year-old boy journeyed with his father a thousand miles from his home in Georgia to Texas, at a time when immigrants encountered dangers and inconveniences which are unknown today. The spirit, the cour- age, the dare, the faith, the true spirit of ad- venture of the pioneer, has never been ade- quately told and will have some day a Cer- vantes, a Walter Scott, a Shakespeare or a Homer, who will tell in sweeping epic, thrill- ing romance and lofty tragedy the marvelous deeds of their daring.
Col. Byron C. Rhome was a man of great faith, large heart, tender sympathies, and heroic spirit, an unfailing guide and a helper whose friendship doubled life's joys and halted its sorrow. His life was an open volume filled with strength and inspiration for the ambitious and struggling youth in search of business success, and the art of right living. Because he loved God, honored his country, and followed the gleam, he has a two fold im- mortality, an immortality of the soul and an immortality of influence. He was a man of untarnished honor, loyal and chivalrous, mod- est and humble, tender and true. He was unselfish, magnanimous and sincere-the very soul of honor. As Shakespeare made Mark Anthony say of one of his characters, "his life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, 'this was a man.'"
Colonel Rhome's ancestors located on the eastern shores of the Atlantic Coast before the Revolution, and the name appears in the Patriots Army under Washington. Peter G. Rhome, father of Colonel Rhome, was born
٠
603
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
in Montgomery County, New York, in 1806. In 1825 he removed to Georgia, and on March 25, 1832, married Miss Nancy Elmira Cran- dall. The Crandall family was of Welsh origin. One of them was a Baptist minister who was obliged to seek an asylum in Provi- dence, Rhode Island, in 1637, to escape relig- ious persecution. Peter G. Rhome for a num- ber of years lived in Richmond County, Georgia. He was a promoter and builder of one of the first railroads in America, extend- ing 171 miles from Augusta to Atlanta.
Col. Byron C. Rhome took an active part in the war between the states, serving three years in the 18th Texas Infantry, entering the army as a sergeant. The last year of the war he received the appointment of first lieutenant and then of captain. He was wounded at the battle of Opelousas. Owing to the privations of the Confederate soldiers, drastic efforts were necessary to secure clothing and the few conveniences to sustain the life of the soldier. There was a scarcity of uniforms and one of Colonel Rhome's duties was to canvass for clothing, and this commission led to the first romance of his life. He met Miss Ella Loftin and after a courtship of three weeks they were quietly married August 31, 1864.
Prior to the war he had been associated with his father in mercantile business at Jack- sonville, Texas. At the close of the struggle he re-entered business with his two brothers- in-law, J. P. Douglas and W. P. Loftin, and they established a mill, manufacturing plant and system of stores at Etna in Smith County. Texas. Later Colonel Rhome acquired the interests of his partners, but in 1878 he sold all his holdings in East Texas and removed to Wise County, then a remote and frontier sec- tion of Northwest Texas. Here he made the beginning of the industry which has so long been associated with his name, the raising and breeding of Hereford cattle in Texas. Meth- ods introduced and improved by Colonel Rhome have added millions of dollars to the livestock industry of Texas and have stimu- lated and encouraged many other stockmen to specialize in the Hereford strain. His ranching interests became a central commu- nity, out of which developed the town of Rhome named in his honor, one of the sta- tions along the route of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway.
Colonel Rhome joined the Masonic Lodge at the age of twenty-one, and was a member of Lodge No. 148. He was the first candi- date initiated in Worth Commandery No. 19
which was organized in 1884, and he was made Eminent Commander in 1889. He was also a charter member of Hella Temple, Dallas.
In 1879 the wife of Colonel Rhome died leaving three children. Byron C. Jr., became prominently identified with the livestock inter- ests of the state, and only recently severed his connections with the livestock commission business at the Fort Worth Market to recu- perate his health in California. Joseph O. lives at Cleburne, has a fine ranch in Bosque County, and is following in the footsteps of his father as a leading breeder of pure bred
Herefords. The third child is Mrs. Ella Rhome Woody, wife of Charles L. Woody. a prominent corporation attorney of New York City. In March, 1880, Colonel Rhome married Miss Fannie C. Day, of Denton County, member of an old and respected fam- ily of that section. The only child of this union, Romulus J. Rhome, has become a prom- inent and successful business man of Fort Worth where he is president of the Guaranty State Bank and is identified with many of the modern day enterprises.
The late Colonel Rhome took up his resi- dence in Fort Worth in 1896. He was a di- rector in the American National and the Guar- anty State Bank, Fort Worth. He retired from active business a short time before his death. However, almost to the time of his death he gave his personal supervision to the operation of his ranch known as Hereford Park at Rhome. Hereford Park became widely known and celebrated as the home of some of the finest cattle in America. Rhome cattle have taken prizes and have been awarded grand sweepstakes at fat stock shows throughout Oklahoma, Texas and the South- west. They were widely sought by expert breeders and ranchmen everywhere.
Colonel Rhome was one of the charter mem- bers of the Magnolia Christian Church at Fort Worth, for many years was a church official, and among other important services he ren- dered that denomination was his active and generous part in securing the establishment of Texas Christian University in this city and generously gave of his means and his business counsel to making it one of the best institu- tions of higher learning in the Southwest.
The last years of his life were spent in the quietude of his home at 1024 Penn Street among his friends. He was loved by all who knew him. It can be truly said of him as one of England's great leaders, "he gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor,
604
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
his sympathy to the suffering, and his heart to God." Like Robert Louis Stevenson, he walked the way of the loving heart and could say.
"Gladly I lived, gladly 1 died, And I laid me down with a will : Home is the hunter, home from the hills And the sailor is home from the sea."
ROMULUS J. RHOME. In the financial de- velopment of the Lone Star State R. J. Rhome, president of the Guaranty State Bank of Fort Worth, has won for himself deserved recog- nition.
Mr. Rhome is a native Texan and repre- sents a family that has long been prominently identified with the great livestock industry and other financial interests of Northwest Texas. His father was Byron C. Rhome, who was born in Georgia in 1837. and who came to Texas at an early day, when the northern and western portion of the state was little more than an unbroken wilderness in which the sturdy pioneers faced all of the dangers incident to frontier life. Byron C. Rhome took active part in the work of reclaiming the wilderness and lived to see his section trans- formed into one of the most prosperous sec- tions of the state. He became the founder of the town of Rhome. For many years he conducted extensive ranching and cattle inter- ests in Northern Texas, and was regarded as one of the state's pioneer stockmen. He died November 10, 1919. rich in the esteem of his fellowmen.
Romulus J. Rhome was born in the town of Rhome in Wise County, Texas, February 15, 1881. He was educated in Fort Worth, graduating from high school in 1899. and from the Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1901. He then enrolled as a student in the law department of the State University, from which he graduated in 1903, receiving the degree of LI .. B. His collegiate work was still further supplemented by a course of study in New York University during 1904-5.
Mr. Rhome has been an active factor in Fort Worth banking circles since 1908, when he organized the North Texas State Bank. of which he was made president. In 1908 he became president of the Guaranty State Bank, which under his efficient direction has become one of the representative financial institutions of the city.
In social and fraternal circles Mr. Rhome is a thirty-second degree Mason and a Knight
of Pythias. He still retains his connection with the Phi Delta Theta fraternity of his col- lege days, and of which he was made a mem- ber during his attendance at the University of Texas. He also holds membership in the Fort Worth Club, River Crest Country Club, the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, the Texas State Bankers Association and the American Bankers Association. November 26, 1919, he wedded Miss Eugenia Welborn.
ROBERT D. LANEY. The examples are not so numerous as to be commonplace of a man voluntarily accepting a peculiarly difficult and unremunerative public office, involving a hard and uphill fight, arousing of enmities, and, altogether, a thankless job.
It is such a task that Robert D. Laney as- sayed when he became mayor of Burkburnett. Ordinarily the office of mayor in a Texas town can be handled by a citizen without special sacrifice of his business affairs, but that was not Mr. Laney's conception of conscientious performance of duty. He has given his entire time to the office since he was first elected in December. 1919. The problems and difficul- ties of governing and carrying on public ad- ministration in a boom city like Burkburnett, comprising within a small space one of the richest sections of the world, and actracting, as it did, thousands of people from all over the country, accompanied by the inevitable lawless and disreputable element, have been such as only persons at some time or other conversant with actual conditions in similar localities can understand and appreciate. From the first Mayor Laney has stood squarely for decency and the observance of law and order. In that he has met with persistent and power- ful opposition that would try the soul of any man. One of the local ministers says that Mr. Laney has given almost his life's blood to the welfare of the town. It was not merely a matter of the efficient exercise of police power and official authority, but his administration was complicated also by the difficulty of secur- ing money for the necessary public improve- ments. The great sources of wealth from which Burkburnett derives its fame and upon which the local population depend are owned chiefly by outside individuals and corporations, including some of the great refining and oil companies. These corporations and other in- dividuals have evinced no special interest in the improvement of the town, and have grudg- ingly contributed what they have been com- pelled to contribute as a fair share of taxation.
If Ahome -
605
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
Robert D. Laney has had a business experi- ence that perhaps entitles him to the courage- ous and determined disposition which consti- tutes a fundamental in his character as mayor. He was born in Morris County, Texas, in 1876, grew up there and attended school. After leaving school he lived for several years at Terrell, Texas, for a time being an employe of the North Texas Hospital for the Insane, and subsequently beginning his railroad career as a fireman out of Terrell on the Texas Mid- land Railway. He left the railroad to go with the Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Company, his first position being in Krum, Texas, subsequently at Alvarado and still later in Weatherford. He first came to Wichita Falls as an employe of the Telegraph and Telephone Company, and was district com- mercial manager for the company at Wichita Falls for about six and a half years. Leaving that city about 1913, he returned to Alvarado, and for four or five years was in the electrical business and also had some connection with the Texas Power & Light Company.
The bringing in of the Fowler well started the great oil boom at Burkburnett in July, 1918. It was in the following September that Mr. Laney moved into the community and, purchasing the Burkburnett "Star," turned his hand and abilities to newspaper work. In a comparatively brief time he had developed the paper into one of the most profitable weekly journals of the state. He still owns it, though he leased it soon after his election as mayor. He was chosen mayor at a special election in December, 1919, and was confirmed in office at the regular election of April, 1920. Purely as a matter of public spirit and unself- ish devotion to the interests of his home city he gave up the splendid income he was receiv- ing from his newspaper property and is serv- ing as mayor with only a nominal salary. Mayor Laney married Miss Nannie E. Carson, of Alvarado, and they have one son, Robert D., Jr.
HON. HARVEY HARRIS, former county judge of Wichita County, and whose professional career has been contemporary with the great development of this section from the begin- ning of petroleum production, is a native Texan and was reared and educated in this state.
He was born in Ellis County in 1888. His father, C. S. Harris, was a native of Missis- sippi, came to Texas about 1886 and located
in Ellis County, but is now living at Iowa Park in Wichita County.
Judge Harris attended country schools in the home neighborhood of Ellis County, also a preparatory school at Ferris in the northern part of the county. Following that he was a teacher for three years, and then entered the University of Texas at Austin, where he pur- sued both the academic and law courses. He received his degree in law with the class of 1912, and in the same year located at Burkbur- nett in Wichita County. He was soon drawn into politics, and in 1914 was elected county judge, and since that year his home has been in Wichita Falls. The four years he served as county judge set a high mark in the admin- istrative and constructive record of the county. It was during his term that the splendid new Court House was completed, and Judge Harris also helped devise a wisely considered pro- gram of general improvement that has been of great benefit to the county in recent years, with its rapidly expanding population and industrial development. On leaving the office of county judge he resumed private practice and is one of the successful members of the Wichita Falls bar. Mr. Harris is a Knight Templar and thirty-second degree Mason. He married Miss Anna Laura Bivings, a native of Ellis County, and the heaviest misfortune of his career came in her death on February 1, 1920.
NACE M. CLIFFORD has been a resident of Wichita Falls since 1907, was for ten years employed in the local offices of the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad, and since 1918 he has been prominently identified with the banking business in this thriving city. He was one of the organizers and incorporators of the Secur- ity National Bank, which opened for business on the 1st of July, 1920, and of which he is the efficient and popular cashier. Of the in- ception and status of this institution adequate record is given on other pages, in the sketch of the career of its vice president, C. C. Cabi- ness.
Mr. Clifford was born in Putnam, Callahan County, Texas, on the 6th of May, 1886, and is a son of George H. and Belzora (Birdwell) Clifford. He was but four years old at the time of his mother's death, and was twelve years of age when his father passed away, that latter having been a pioneer cattleman of Western Texas, where he established his resi- dence in Callahan County in the year 1879. He was born in Tarrant County, this state, to which his parents came from Kentucky in the
606
FORT WORTH AND THE TEXAS NORTHWEST
'50s, so that the subject of this sketch has full claim to the distinction that is associated with being a native son of the Lone Star State and a representative of an honored pioneer family.
Nace M. Clifford was reared on his father's extensive cattle ranch in Callahan County, and after the death of his father he assumed man- agement of the ranch, though he was still a mere boy. In the meanwhile he had attended the public schools at Putnam, and after leav- ing the old home ranch he wisely continued his educational discipline-by attending the Poly- technic College in the city of Fort Worth for two years and by completing a course in Draughan's Business College in the same city. Thereafter he was employed as a stenographer in various offices of the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad Company, in the service of which he came to Wichita Falls in 1907 and assumed the position of stenographer in the ticket office of this road. Later he won promotion to the position of local ticket agent for this company, and still later he was appointed joint ticket agent for the various railroads entering Wichita Falls. The unfailing courtesy and con- sideration which were manifested by Mr. Clif- ford during his ten years of active association with railway service at Wichita Falls gained for him inviolable place in popular confidence and esteem, and this popularity has tended to further his success in other fields of endeavor. In 1918 he resigned his position as joint ticket agent and became assistant cashier of the City National Bank, with which he continued his association until the summer of 1920, when he became one of the organizers and incor- porators of the Security National Bank, of which he has since served as cashier and as a member of the Board of Directors. At the time when he assumed his present executive office, a Wichita Falls daily paper, in an ap- preciative estimate, spoke as follows: "Mr. Clifford is one of the best known young men of Wichita Falls. He has made his own rec- ord, and it has been a good one. For about ten years he was employed by the Fort Worth & Denver in various capacities, resigning as joint ticket agent here two vears ago to be- come connected with the City National Bank. from which he comes to the new bank as cash- ier and director."
Mr. Clifford is a loval and popular member of the Wichita Falls Chamber of Commerce, has completed the circle of the York and Scot- tish Rites of Freemasonry. in the latter of which he has received the thirtv-second degree, the while his maximum York Rite affiliation is
with Wichita Falls Commandery of Knights Templars in his home city. He and his wife are active members of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in which he is serv- ing as steward.
In 1914 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Clifford to Miss Laura Bell, daughter of the late Dr. J. M. Bell, one of the representa- tive physicians and surgeons of Wichita Falls and a former mayor of this city. Mr. and Mrs. Clifford have a winsome little daughter, Dorothy Bell.
WILLIAM KNOX GORDON, of Thurber. Texas, an oil and coal producer, vice president and general manager of the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company, a civil engineer of wide experience and a trained executive, has not only been successful in his own undertakings. but has brought success to organizations with which he has been connected.
Possessing the spirit of an explorer, he has never been content to follow beaten trails and travel along well defined highways. Mr. Gor- don is a Virginian, born in Spottsylvania County, in January, 1862, a son of Cosmo and Adelaide Gordon. He was educated in Fred- ericksburg, Virginia. Before he had attained his majority he was, 1881-1883, doing civil engineering on the Virginia and Carolina Railroad, now the Seaboard Air Line. In 1883-1885 he was with the Georgia-Carolina & Northern Railroad. In 1885-1888 he was with the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, the Carolina Central and the Georgia Pacific. In June, 1889, he became connected with the Texas Pacific Coal Company.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.