USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume IV > Part 66
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the Brazos, this vessel being overtaken by a gulf storm and for fourteen days and nights those who survived the wreck clung to the vessel before being rescued. Later he served with the army and was with General Scott at the surrender of Mexico City in 1847. He lived to be seventy-four years of age and died at the old Daggett homestead known as Mount Olivet, two and a half miles north of Fort Worth.
Mount Olivet cemetery is part of the old Daggett estate. The first Daggett home was a log cabin, occupying the present site of the sexton's house. Col. Bud Daggett was buried in Pioneer's Rest, where many of the family have been laid away since his grandmother, Mrs. Eleazer Daggett. was interred there. His father and mother and also a brother and two sisters preceded him to Pioneer's Rest.
Bud Daggett was the third in a family of nine children. Almost his first conscious recollections concerned themselves with Fort Worth and vicinity since he was four years old, when the family came here from Shelby County. These recollections included prac- tically the entire history of Fort Worth as a town and city. He had a frontiersman's education. He rode a horse before he could climb into the saddle and at the age of ten was in the saddle as part of the daily pro- gram, with a regulation six-shooter strapped around him. He put literally sixty years in handling cattle and other livestock. For many years he was senior member of the Dag- gett-Keen Commission Company. In earlier days he was an expert broncho buster, and when a youth he performed that double service always expected of the old-time cowboy, as a civilian soldier. He spent days and nights in the saddle engaged in scouting and ward- ing off Indian raids. He was too young to become a Confederate soldier, but even so he did some scouting and helped produce beef for the Confederate army. When the war closed in July, 1865, he was at Shreveport. Louisiana, when that city was under Federal military rule. Mr. Daggett had many mem- ories of the odious features of military rule and reconstruction. Not only at Shreveport but even at Fort Worth he saw instances of negro domination sided and abetted by carpet bag authority and military control. Mr. Dag- gett became a taxpayer at Fort Worth before he reached his majority, and paid taxes on property in and around the city for fifty-five years. He saw five successive courthouses in the city and witnessed every successive phase
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of local politics. During reconstruction times he saw all the voters of the county com- pelled to vote on the old courthouse on the Bluff, when the voters had to pass between files of negro soldiers to reach the polling place. In the years following the war Fort Worth and vicinity had to contend with the hardships imposed by carpet bag authority and also the people were still in danger of Indian raids. Mr. Daggett was a member of a party that trailed the last band of Indian raiders out of this section. These Indians had come as close to Fort Worth as Marine Creek near the modern stockyards, and in a territory ten miles from Fort Worth had killed between five and six hundred horses. This was in June, 1871. Just a few years later Mr. Daggett saw the work of construc- tion which carried the Texas & Pacific Rail- way from Sycamore Creek west of Dallas into Fort Worth. The rails and ties, as he often recalls, were put on the ground without grading and everything was done in double quick time in order to save the right of way and the bonus granted the construction com- pany. He was conspicuous in a group of cowboys that stood at attention when the first train whistled into Fort Worth.
January 14, 1880, Colonel Daggett married Miss Laura Palmer, a Kentucky girl, who had been in Texas only two years when she mar- ried. Mrs. Daggett survives her pioneer hus- band and of their nine children six are still living and also eleven grandchildren. Mary S. is the wife of William Lake of Fort Worth and has three children. Cora J. is the wife of Khleber Jennings, a grandson of Major Van Zandt, the veteran Fort Worth banker. and they have their home at Fort Worth and are the parents of four children. Charles W. Daggett lives at Fort Worth and is a member of the Daggett & Keen Commission Company ; he married Vivian Sloan of Whites- boro, Texas. John Palmer Daggett, a cattle dealer at North Fort Worth, where he re- sides, married Willie Lyon of Canadian, Texas, and they have three children. Helen is the wife of Glenn Allen, a cattle buyer for many years at North Fort Worth and now living on a ranch west of Odessa, Texas. He and Mrs. Allen have a daughter, Helen. The other daughter of Mr. Daggett is Elizabeth Field, named for Dr. Field, and now Mrs. D. A. Simmons, of Houston, Texas.
Colonel Daggett used his influence in poli- tics and was a keen observer of political con-
ditions though he seldom found time to accept official responsibility. Many years ago he was road overseer for the district north of the city, including what is known as Daggett Lane, through the black mud of the Trinity River Bottoms. He was one of the men who cut the oak timber from the site now occupied by the packing houses. He belonged to the First Presbyterian Church. He was always a staunch democrat. His family may take a justifiable pride in his long citizenship at Fort Worth, the influence he was able to exer- cise in behalf of good government and jus- tice, and his further contributions to the hon- ors of a pioneer name. Colonel Daggett in the fall of 1876 loaded out the. first train of cattle from the Texas & Pacific yards east of the old depot. He became one of the most familiar figures among Fort Worth's cattle- men and commission dealers and most of the modern generation of stockmen who fre- quented the North Fort Worth market were familiar with him personally and in business relationship.
M. R. HULL, one of the prominent repre- sentatives of the dental profession at Fort Worth, with offices in the Reynolds Building, is a native Texan and member of a prominent old family in the eastern part of the State.
His grandfather moved to Panola County in pioneer times, bringing out of North Caro- lina many of the slaves he had employed on his extensive plantation in the East. Dr. M. R. Hull was born in Panola County at Carthage, August 31, 1877, son of Thomas F. and Mary (Ross) Hull. His mother is a native of Michigan. Thomas F. Hull was born in North Carolina, but has lived in Panola County since childhood, and is dis- tinguished in Eastern Texas as a lawyer, and has served as county judge, county attorney and in other offices in Panola County.
M. R. Hull was educated in the public schools of Texas and finished his professional education in Vanderbilt University at Nash- ville, Tennessee. He graduated with the de -. gree doctor of dental surgery in the spring of 1903. On returning to his native State he began practice at Cisco, and for ten years was located at Hico. Doctor Hull came to Fort Worth in March, 1912, and has now practiced dentistry in this city for ten years. He is a member of the Tarrant County and Texas State Dental Association and the Broadway Baptist Church at Fort Worth. June 4, 1905,
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he married Miss Katherine Kirkley of Car- thage. They had been children together in that East Texas town.
A. G. DONOVAN served his practical ap- prenticeship in the packing industry at Kan- sas City, Kansas, and had risen to an official station in the Armour Packing Company be- fore he came to Fort Worth about the time the large packing companies established their plants in this city. Mr. Donovan has been closely identified with the growth and devel- opment of the great industrial district of North Fort Worth in the past eighteen years, and is now general manager of the Fort Worth stockyards and vice president and general manager of the Fort Worth Railway Com- pany.
He was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylva- nia, October 10, 1875, a son of Thomas H. and Mary (Osterman) Donovan. His par- ents were also natives of Pennsylvania. A. G. Donovan was next to the youngest of four children and was nine years of age when he went with his father to Kansas City. He fin- ished his grammar school education there and as a boy went to work around the plant and in the offices of the Armour Packing Company as a messenger boy. He gained rapid pro- motion with this company and when he left there he was serving as superintendent of the Armour car lines in Kansas City, Kansas.
In the fall of 1902 when the great packers were building their first plant in Fort Worth, he came as manager of the Southwestern Mechanical Company and that was his chief post of duty in the industrial affairs of Fort Worth until 1915, when he took over the man- agement of the stock yards and also the man- agement of the Belt Railway Company. He is a director in the Stockyards National Bank, the Fort Worth Cattle Loan Company, the North Fort Worth Townsite Company, all of which interests make him a man of prominence in the livestock and manufacturing affairs of Northwest Texas.
Mr. Donovan is a member of the Fort Worth Club and he and his family are Cath- olics. He married, in 1903, Nellie Garrett of Kansas City. Their five children are Cath- erine, Thomas, Al, Paul and Charles.
MALCOLM KINTNER GRAHAM. The county seat of Young County was very appropriately named Graham for the founder of the town, Edwin S. Graham, the man whose remark- able energy and enterprise did more than
anything else to advertise that section of Northwest Texas, and stimulate its develop- ment.
A son of this pioneer is Malcolm Kintner Graham, whose life since early boyhood has been in a large and important degree identified with Young County and with the City of Graham, and who became heir to the respon- sibility of carrying out some of the big con- structive plans of his father, particularly the building of the first railroad.
Col. Edwin S. Graham was born at Louis- ville, Kentucky, February 15, 1831. His father, Robert Graham, was born in Penn- sylvania in 1791, served with the Pennsylvania Militia in the war of 1812, was one of the defenders at Fort Henry on Chesapeake Bay and was on that battlefield the night Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner." After the war he studied architecture in New York City for several years and in 1817 moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he was archi- tect for the famous Gault House, was active in the business and later established a cotton factory and mercantile business at Grahamp- ton in Meade County, Kentucky. He died in 1862. His wife was Roxanna Winchell, who was born in 1799 and died at Louisville in 1886. Three of their sons came to Texas, Edwin S., Francis H. and Gustavus A., the latter being associated with his brother Edwin in the organization of Young County and the founding of the town of Graham.
Edwin S. Graham was reared and educated in Kentucky and afterward was one of the mercantile firm of Robert Graham & Sons until the death of his father. He then bought the other interests and continued the business along for several years. In view of the recent oil developments on some of the Graham prop- erty in Young County it is interesting to note that Edwin S. Graham more than fifty years ago promoted a company and drilled oil wells in the field at Glasgow, Kentucky. He in- vested a large amount of capital in the lands of the Peters Colony of Northern Texas and acquired upwards of 100,000 acres by these purchases. The land on which the town of Graham was later established he acquired at 70 cents an acre. He and his brother bought an old-established salt works in Young County and invested several thousand dollars in the purchase of new and modern equipment brought from Pittsburgh and carried overland at great labor to Salt Creek in Young County. This was an important manufacturing industry of early days.
A.G. Donovan
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In 1872 Edwin Graham and his brother laid out the site of the town of Graham. At that time they had some influential connections with the stockholders of the Texas & Pacific Rail- road and it was understood that this road would be built through Young County. When Jay Gould got possession of the road the plans were changed and Edwin Graham never lived to see his hope of a railroad realized, Graham being brought into connection with the out- side world by steel track three years after his death. He established at Graham a land office and through that office hundreds of set- tlers were brought to Young County. He showed distinctly individual and successful enterprise as a town builder, spending thou- sands of dollars in advertising the attractions of his townsite. Graham will always have an interesting place in the history of the Texas Cattle Raisers' Association since this associa- tion was born at Graham. Colonel Graham finally, on account of failing health, left Young County in 1893 and lived at Spokane, Wash- ington, until his death on May 7, 1899. His body was returned to Texas and laid to rest at Graham.
He married Miss Addie M. Kintner on August 8, 1865. Her father, Jacob Kintner, settled on the Ohio River thirty miles below Louisville in pioneer times, his home being ยท known as Cedar Farm, overlooking the Ohio River. Mrs. Graham was born at that farm December 10, 1843. Three of her sons have been identified with Young County : Robert G., Malcolm K. and Edwin S. Edwin S. Graham, Jr., is the present mayor of Graham.
Malcolm Kintner Graham was born in Har- rison County, Indiana, at the home of his maternal grandfather on March 20, 1872. Colonel Graham did not bring his family to Young County until 1879, when Malcolm was seven years of age. Here he attended school. later was a student in the Southwestern Uni- versity at Georgetown, Texas, and when he was seventeen years of age the late Governor Lanham of Weatherford, then a congressman, secured his appointment as a cadet in the West Point Military Academy. He remained there two and a half years, his abilities put- ting him at the head of his class. On account of his father's failing health he resigned in 1891, and returned home to take charge of the land business and a year or so later suc- ceeded to the management and subsequently was executor with his mother of his father's estate. For many years now he has been extensively engaged in the land and cattle
business. With the beginning of oil develop- ment in Young County in 1920 he has been diverted almost perforce to the new industry. He is owner of a large acreage in the vicinity of the original Mccluskey well, and several valuable wells have been drilled on his land. Not without a sense of regret has Mr. Graham turned over the farm which has been his pride for a number of years to the use of drilling companies. This is an irrigated farm on the Clear Fork of the Brazos, fourteen miles southwest of Graham. Oil development has practically superseded agricultural operations. Prior to that the farm was widely known as one of the highest developed productive areas in West Texas. Mr. Graham was responsible for improving the land from practically a waste acreage. He constructed a lake cover- ing about sixty-five acres, and from the waters thus impounded was able to irrigate about 200 acres. All the farm buildings are of concrete construction, including silos.
At the death of his father, Mr. Graham felt that the responsibility descended to him to make every possible effort to realize his father's cherished project of a railroad. He kept in touch with officials of the Rock Island Company and he finally secured the accept- ance of the company's officials to the propo- sition that Graham should donate a large sum of money and land for the extension of the road from Jacksboro to Graham. Construc- tion work was started immediately as soon as the proposition was accepted, and the road was completed to Graham in October, 1902.
Mr. Graham, while never a politician, has on a number of occasions during the past quarter. of a century held public office. One of the first important offices he filled was that of county commissioner. He has also been mayor of Graham and a school trustee. He is a Royal Arch Mason and a member and active official in the Methodist Church.
In August, 1901, he married Miss Maud Garrett, who was born in Young County, Texas, in 1884. Her father, B. B. Garrett. was one of the pioneers of the county. The three children of Mr. and Mrs. Graham are Louise, Alice and Malcolm.
WALTER H. BENNETT is a young Texan whose interests and enthusiasm were early enlisted in motor mechanics and the automo- bile business and who has achieved a distinc- tive success in that field. He is now presi- dent of the Bennett Motor Company, distrib-
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utors of the Ford cars for Breckenridge and Stephens county.
Mr. Bennett was born in 1892 at Tyler, in Smith County, Texas, son of I. H. and Fan- nie (Human) Bennett, also natives of Texas, both now deceased. While a school boy at Tyler Mr. Bennett had more than a passing curiosity in some of the early types of auto- mobiles that appeared on the streets of that city, was soon deeply absorbed in motor me- chanics, and in 1910, at the age of eighteen. went to Dallas to get the opportunities of a real career. At Dallas he became associated with the Ford Motor Company, of which he was assistant superintendent of the great assembly plant at Dallas, a plant erected in 1912. Mr. Bennett remained with this plant. acquiring both technical and business experi- ence, until 1919, when his abilities were rec- ognized by being transferred to an executive position with the Ford agency at Fort Worth.
In February, 1920, he moved to Brecken- ridge and established the Bennett Motor Com- pany, of which he is president. This company has the general distribution for Ford cars and Fordson tractors, and already has developed a very extensive business in the marvelous oil city of West Texas. The outstanding char- acteristics of the Ford Motor Company's busi- ness, efficiency and attention to detail are com- pletely exemplified in the Bennett Motor Com- pany at Breckenridge.
Mr. Bennett married Miss Bonnie Belle Bryant, a native of Tyler, Texas, and a daughter of John A. and Mollie Bryant.
JOHN HENDERSON HUGHES, president of the Sanger National Bank, is one of the real pio- neers of Denton County and a native son of the Lone Star State. of which he is a most enthusiastic admirer. His entire life has been spent within the confines of Texas and all of his interests are centered here. He has played a very constructive part in the devel- opment of Denton County and is accepted as one of the most representative of the sound business men and able financiers of this part of the state.
The birth of John Henderson Hughes took place January 14, 1861, in a log cabin on the southeast corner of the Square in Denton. and he is a son of John James Hughes, a native of Kentucky, who came to Texas from Louisville, Kentucky, a few years before the opening events of the war between the North and the South, and during that war served as a soldier. He died at Lockhart, Texas, about
1869. He was married at Denton, Texas, to Miss Minerva Murphy, who was born in Ar- kansas, but was brought to Texas in infancy. Her death occurred when she was about thirty-one years old and she left two sons and two daughters to get along as best they could without her tender care. The daugh- ters did not long outlive their mother, but John Henderson Hughes and his brother, George Hughes, reached maturity, but the former is the only survivor of the family, as George died in Utah, leaving a family to mourn his loss.
After the death of his mother John Hen- derson Hughes was taken by his maternal grandparents, who, however, gave him but few educational advantages, his attendance at a pay school, the only one in his neighbor- hood, being of short duration. From boyhood, however, he has possessed acute perceptions and has been able to acquire a fair working knowledge of necessary subjects, and is one of the best-informed men of Sanger today. When he was nineteen years old Mr. Hughes left his grandfather and, going to what was then the frontier of civilization, entered the employ of Lock S. Forrester, one of the dom- inant cattlemen above the Big Wichita River. and worked over the territory now occupied by the rapidly increasing metropolis of this section, Wichita Falls. At that time there not only was no sign of a settlement, but not even the most optimistic dreamed of what the future held in store for the locality. Several ranch outfits worked over the range, among them being that of Dan Waggoner and Burk Burnett, in addition to Mr. Forrester.
After a year with Mr. Forrester, Mr. Hughes went into South Texas and joined J. M. Ellison at San Marcos, and they started up the old Chisholm trail with 3,000 head of two-year-old steers bound for the prairies of Kansas. Mr. Hughes, however, only accom- panied the band as far as Fort Griffin, Texas. and then returned home to Denton. The fol- lowing spring he went to the Two Circle Ranch, which was much further west than Forrester's ranch, and spent the season there. In 1884 he went into Greer County to work for the Franklin Land and Cattle Company. the manager of which was B. B. Grooms. another well-known figure in the cattle history of the Southwest. This region was also in its infancy and during the two years Mr. Hughes spent in it there was but little change in the pioneer conditions. Supplies for the headquarters were secured from Vernon, then
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the terminal of the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad, and the postoffice was kept at Doan's store on the Red River. At the end of his two-years' connection with this outfit Mr. Hughes returned to Denton for the winter and was employed by Bob Wright in Harde- man County, and for a season ran cattle for him. Mr. Hughes once more returned to Denton, was married, and then went into the cattle business for himself.
Taking up the stock business on his own account, he proceeded to make practical and personal use of the knowledge he had acquired and established himself on Clear Creek in the northwest portion of Cooke County, adjacent to Greenwood, Wise County, and ran cattle under his brand "the Lazy H on the side," and was thus engaged for five years. He then closed out his cattle interests, located at Sanger, and went into business. At present he is the second oldest resident of the city, and is the only one of the original settlers still in active business. Mr. Hughes has been a retailer in several lines, including dry goods and groceries, and also owned and operated a livery stable for a short time. Still later he was active in trading ventures, and then, in 1905, became a banker. He aided in effect- ing the organization of the First National Bank, in association with E. L. Berry and A. J. Nance, and was elected vice president of the institution, which office he still holds. He is president of the Sanger National Bank. which was founded a few years before its interests were purchased by the First National Bank, and he is still its executive head. His son, George O. Hughes, is cashier, and B. R. Sullivan and J. H. Hughes, Jr., are the assist- ant cashiers of the Sanger National Bank. This bank was capitalized at its organization at $30,000, which is still maintained, and there is also a surplus of $18,000.
Mr. Hughes was one of the founders of the Sanger Mill and Elevator Company, one of the leading industries of Sanger, and is its vice president and one of its directors. He has served his city as a school director for fourteen years, and was the first treasurer of Sanger, whose incorporation he supported. Mr. Hughes is a democrat and cast his first presidential vote for Grover Cleveland and has never missed voting at a presidential election since then, at each one supporting the nominee of his party. He is a Master Mason.
On December 9, 1886, Mr. Hughes was married to Miss Alpha Jane Fortenberry, a daughter of William Fortenberry, and a native
of Denton County, Texas. Mr. Fortenberry came to Denton County from Arkansas, where he combined farming and stockraising, and where he died some years later. During the war between the two sections of the country he served as a soldier in the Confederate Army. Mrs. Hughes is the seventh in the family of nine children born to her parents, the survivors of whom are as follows: Mrs. Nancy Brownfield, Mrs. Ann Murphy and Sevier Fortenberry. Mrs. Hughes, like her husband, had but few educational opportuni- ties. She was a lady of beautiful character, and when she died, November 23, 1917, she was mourned by the many who knew and appreciated her many excellent qualities. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes became the parents of nine children, namely: Pearl, who was identified with educational matters in California and Sanger, is now her father's housekeeper ; George, who is cashier of the Sanger National Bank, married Maud Zumwalt, and has a son, George, Jr .; May, who is the wife of A. L. Shirley of San Francisco, California ; Belle. who was liberally educated, is also at home ; John . H., Jr., who is assistant cashier of the Sanger National Bank, married Susie Stone ; Essie, who is a student of the Oklahoma Woman's College at Chickasha, Oklahoma ; Joseph Casey. who is the youngest living child : and two who are deceased.
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