Hutchinson County Biographies

Source: The Handbook of Texas Online

MEREDITH, AUSTIN A.
LOVETT, HENRY BELL
HOBART, TIMOTHY DWIGHT
WHIPPLE, AMIEL WEEKS
SNEED, JOSEPH TYRE, JR.
PHILLIPS, JACOB RICE
PAUL, JAMES CHRISTOPHER

MEREDITH, AUSTIN A.

(1891-1963)

Austin A. Meredith, conservationist and city manager, one of five children of George and Aline (Carroll) Meredith, was born on January 24, 1891, on a farm in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana. After graduating from high school in Monroe, he attended Meridian Military Academy in Meridian, Mississippi. There he was stricken with malaria, and doctors advised him to move to the drier climate of Texas. Accordingly, in 1909 Meredith enrolled at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. Two years later, while taking malaria treatments at Mineral Wells, he met Grace Bernice Haynes, whom he married on December 25, 1911. They had seven children.

After completing his college education Meredith began working for the Gulf Refining Company in Fort Worth. In 1916 he was transferred to Amarillo, where he became active in the local Rotary Club and was involved with Boy Scout and Girl Scout programs. He was also a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the West Texas Chamber of Commerce. Meredith moved to Plainview in 1931 and returned to Amarillo a few years later to take charge of the Potter County relief program.

In 1935 he was appointed area director for the Works Progress Administration, which helped pave streets and construct sidewalks, tennis courts, and a grandstand in Amarillo. Some $400,000 in federal funds that Meredith obtained went to support building projects at West Texas State College (now West Texas A&M University) and the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon.

In 1941 Meredith moved to Borger and was elected city manager. In that position he engineered tax-reform measures to curb financial instability brought on by the Great Depression. Under his leadership thirty-six miles of Borger's streets were paved, Main Street was widened, and a water system and sewerage plant were installed. As early as 1926 Meredith saw the need for a dam and reservoir on the Canadian River to furnish water for the Panhandle and South Plains areas. He promoted the project in numerous speeches and was foremost among the organizers of the Canadian River Water Users Association on June 17, 1949.

In August 1952 he resigned as Borger city manager to devote himself full time to the association as its executive secretary. As part of his promotion campaign he published pamphlets, held meetings, and lobbied in both Austin and Washington. In addition he coproduced a color documentary film, entitled Water: Our Greatest Natural Resource, that showed how a dam would benefit area agriculture, industry, and recreation. His efforts came to fruition with the state legislature's approval in 1953 of the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority. Meredith was a member of the Texas Water Conservation Association and the National Reclamation Association. Governor Marion Price Daniel, Sr., appointed him a delegate to the forty-fourth annual National Rivers and Harbors Congress at Washington in 1957.

After the death of his wife on December 22, 1949, Meredith remained a widower until April 18, 1954, when he married Mrs. Foy Cannady Stewart, a widow from Floydada, who had three children by her first marriage. For his work in soil and water conservation Meredith was given the sixteenth annual Save the Soil and Save Texas Award. For his work as a civic leader he was named Borger's Man of the Year in 1950, Citizen of the Year by the Borger Kiwanis Club in February 1961, and the Borger Altrusa Club's Outstanding Citizen the following year.

At a special ceremony on July 1, 1962, Meredith and United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall officially opened construction of the new Sanford Dam on the Canadian River. The next March, Meredith received the nation's highest conservation award from the United States Department of the Interior, but he did not live to see the reservoir project completed. He died of cancer on April 13, 1963, and was interred in Llano Cemetery, Amarillo. By request of the Borger city commission and the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority board, Congress named the reservoir formed by the dam Lake Meredith.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Amarillo Sunday News-Globe, April 14, 1963. Hutchinson County Historical Commission, History of Hutchinson County, Texas (Dallas: Taylor, 1980).

H. Allen Anderson



LOVETT, HENRY BELL

(1858-1940)

Henry Bell Lovett, rancher and county official, the son of Eli and Mary E. (Bell) Lovett, was born on September 21, 1858, on a farm near Dallas. From the age of four he lived with his grandparents in Parker County; he received only three years formal schooling, at a country school. In 1876 he joined the buffalo hunting outfit of Murphy and Lumpkin, which operated out of Fort Griffin. He spent that winter cutting cordwood for the troops at Fort Elliott and then resumed hunting. He was elevated from skinner to shooter in the spring of 1877.

After the buffalo were killed out in 1878, Lovett again cut wood along Red Deer Creek and the Washita River for use at Fort Elliott and later cut hay on a ranch near Mobeetie. In 1879 he acted as a guide for Henry Rogers, a tax assessor, to locate outlying cattle outfits. During the next four years he worked for various ranches, including the JA, OX,q Diamond F, and Bar O, and made two trail drives to Honeywell, Kansas. He registered an S-Bar brand in 1883.

In 1884 Lovett returned to his home in Weatherford. There on September 2, 1885, he married a young widow, Fannie (Hopkins) Long, daughter of James Alvin and Elizabeth Hall Hopkins. In November 1886 the couple moved to Mobeetie. While Henry continued working as a cowhand for area ranches, Fannie stayed at the home of H. B. Spiller, a surveyor, where in 1887 a daughter was born to the Lovetts. In November Lovett purchased a half section of land on Grapevine Creek, southwest of the future site of Lefors, and built a dugout that eventually grew to seven rooms. There he began raising corn and grain sorghum and made extra money by selling buffalo bones for fertilizer.

The Lovetts' nearest neighbors were Perry LeFors, Henry Thut, and J. E. (Jim) Williams. During the eleven years they lived on Grapevine Creek, the Lovetts expanded their land and cattle holdings. They raised registered shorthorns, Poland China hogs, and Buff Orpington poultry. They usually employed between two and five men. Lovett served as tax assessor for Roberts, Gray, and Hutchinson counties and in 1902 helped organize Gray County, where he served three terms as a county commissioner.

In 1904 the Lovetts' daughter died of typhoid fever. In 1906 Lovett invested much of his cattle fortune in downtown property in Pampa. He purchased four brick business buildings and donated one lot for a new hospital. The Lovetts built a house on Turkey Creek, fourteen miles south of Pampa, in 1917 and later constructed a gray stucco house on Houston Street in town. They divided their time between the ranch and town until 1927, when they leased out the ranch and moved to town permanently. Their fortune increased after 1926, when oil was discovered on their land. The loss of their daughter was partially eased in 1929, when a nine-year-old niece, Mattie Velma Brown, came to live with them. The Lovetts were members of the Pampa First Christian Church, where Henry served as an elder.

During his later years Lovett suffered from poor health that prompted him to seek warmer climates during the winters. He died on January 21, 1940, and was buried in Miami beside his daughter. Mrs. Lovett remained at the house in Pampa until her death on October 2, 1949. Three years before her death she had made a will specifying that the bulk of her estate was to be left in the trust of three civic leaders-Montague K. Brown, Cecil V. P. Buckler, and Walter Purviance-for a period of ten years. It was to be used for "charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes." With funds from this bequest the libraries in McLean and Miami, the Nurses' Home near Highland General Hospital in Pampa, and the Lovett Memorial Library in Pampa were constructed.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Elleta Nolte, For the Reason We Climb Mountains-Gray County, 1902-1982 (Pampa, Texas: Gray County Historical Commission, 1982). Millie Jones Porter, Memory Cups of Panhandle Pioneers (Clarendon, Texas: Clarendon Press, 1945).

H. Allen Anderson



HOBART, TIMOTHY DWIGHT

(1855-1935)

Timothy Dwight Hobart, Panhandle businessman and civic leader, was born in Berlin, Vermont, on October 6, 1855. He was superintendent of the Berlin schools for several years before he moved to Texas in 1882 to work for the New York and Texas Land Company, which owned five million acres scattered from Brazoria to the Panhandle. During his four-year apprenticeship with the company, Hobart worked with a surveying crew under E. A. Giraud in Southwest Texas and learned much about the soils, climate, vegetation, and wildlife of the state.

In 1886 he was put in charge of a million acres of the company's lands in the Texas Panhandle, then a part of the open range. He established headquarters at Mobeetie, from which he surveyed, fenced, and improved lands for leasing and subdividing among cattle companies. In 1888 he married Minnie Wood Warren of Vermont. They had four children; a son died in 1910.

In 1903, after disposing of most of the company's lands, Hobart was employed by the White Deer Lands Trust Company, which had bought 1,000 square miles of land from him in Carson, Gray, Roberts, and Hutchinson counties. From his Gray County headquarters he surveyed, fenced, improved, and sold the White Deer lands until 1924, when he resigned to give more time to his private affairs and to manage the JA Ranch. He became an executor of the estate of Cornelia Adair in 1921 and sole administrator of the JA Ranch in 1932.

Throughout his later years, Hobart devoted himself to civic improvements in Pampa, which he had helped found in 1902. He was elected mayor in 1927. He was also president of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society for six years in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He assisted the board of directors in securing funds to build the first unit of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, which was dedicated on April 14, 1933. He also was a banker and twice president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. Hobart died of pneumonia in Pampa on May 19, 1935, leaving a wife and three children.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lester Fields Sheffy, The Life and Times of Timothy Dwight Hobart (Canyon, Texas: Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, 1950).

L. F. Sheffy



WHIPPLE, AMIEL WEEKS

(1817-1863)

Amiel Weeks Whipple, Union army officer and surveyor, the son of David and Abigail (Pepper) Whipple, was born on October 21, 1817, in Greenwich, Massachusetts. He spent part of his youth in Concord, where his father ran an inn. In 1836 Whipple attended Amherst College for a year before his appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. He graduated fifth in his class in 1841 and was commissioned in the First Artillery. He was transferred to the Topographical Engineers shortly afterward. During the next three years he was engaged in hydrographic surveys of the Patapsco River in Maryland, the approaches to New Orleans, and the harbor at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

At Portsmouth he met Eleanor Mary Sherburne, whom he married on September 12, 1843. They had four children, one of whom died in infancy. From 1844 to 1849 Whipple handled the instrumental work for a survey of the northeast boundary of the United States. As an assistant with the United States Boundary Commission, he helped survey the new boundary with Mexico west from El Paso and along the Gila River to the Pacific.

Whipple worked closely with commissioner John R. Bartlett, whom he accompanied across Texas from Indianola through San Antonio to El Paso in the fall of 1850. Along the way he made several astronomic and magnetic observations, and he erected an observatory at San Elizario in December and another at Rancho Fronteras, eight miles from El Paso, the following February. He acted as the project's chief surveyor for a time before Col. William H. Emory's appointment to that position. Whipple was promoted to first lieutenant on April 24, 1851, and completed his boundary survey report by spring 1853.

Since he had experienced firsthand the frequent dangers and privations of the desert Southwest, Whipple was chosen by the War Department to direct the survey of a possible transcontinental railroad route along the thirty-fifth parallel from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Los Angeles. With him were eleven civilian scientists, including J. M. Bigelow, surgeon and botanist; Jules Marcou, Swiss geologist and mining engineer; and Heinrich Balduin Möllhausen, German artist and student of Alexander von Humboldt.

Whipple and his command left Fort Smith on July 14, 1853, worked their way up the Canadian River, and on September 6 camped at the Antelope Hills in what is now Shackelford County. In the Panhandle Whipple followed trails marked by Josiah Gregg in 1840, James W. Abert in 1845, and Randolph B. Marcy and James H. Simpson in 1849. The expedition was briefly guided by Comancheros and Pueblo Indians from New Mexico who happened to be in the area. Whipple had frequent contacts with roving bands of Comanches and Kiowas, with whom he exchanged presents and whose behavior was unpredictable.

At one point he peacefully but unsuccessfully sought to ransom some Mexican captives. On September 11 he passed by the ruins of Bent's Fort Adobe, or Adobe Walls in what is now Hutchinson County. Near the site of present-day Sanford, the expedition left the Canadian and ventured over Marcy's route across the Llano Estacado to Anton Chico, New Mexico, before pushing on to Arizona and California. At Los Angeles the expedition disbanded, and Whipple and several others sailed back to New York City. In his report Whipple confirmed the feasibility of the thirty-fifth parallel route for a railroad. Bigelow, Marcou, and the other scientists had collected specimens and geological data.

Möllhausen's paintings and reports sparked interest throughout Europe and led to lengthy correspondence between Whipple and Humboldt. Except for the Civil War and Reconstruction politics, the Canadian valley might have been included in the first transcontinental railroad. Whipple was the last of the antebellum pathmarkers to venture across the Panhandle, though he incorrectly identified some of the creeks Simpson had labeled, thus misleading many later historians who used his itinerary.

When the Civil War broke out Whipple drew the Union Army's first maps of the northern Virginia theater of war and was appointed chief topographical engineer on the staff of Gen. Irvin McDowell. He participated in the first battle of Bull Run (Manassas) on July 21, 1861, and became friends with President Lincoln. In September 1862 Whipple was assigned to the Third Army Corps, and on December 13-15 participated in the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. At the battle of Chancellorsville, which started on May 2, 1863, the Third Corps, commanded by Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, advanced into an exposed position between Robert E. Lee's and Stonewall Jackson's Confederate forces.

Whipple was shot in the stomach by a Confederate sniper while supervising construction of some earthworks near a battery on May 4. He was taken back to Washington, where he died on May 7, 1863. Just before Whipple's death President Lincoln signed his promotion to major general of volunteers. Whipple was posthumously awarded more brevets for his wartime services, and both of his sons received presidential appointments to the military academy of their choice. Fort Whipple, now part of the Fort Myer reservation near Alexandria, Virginia, is named in his honor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ernest R. Archambeau, ed., "Lieutenant A. W. Whipple's Railroad Reconnaissance Across the Panhandle of Texas in 1853," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 44 (1971). David E. Conrad, "The Whipple Expedition on the Great Plains," Great Plains Journal 2 (Spring 1963). W. H. Goetzmann, Army Exploration in the American West, 1803-1863 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959; 2d ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1991). Francis R. Stoddard, "Amiel Weeks Whipple," Chronicles of Oklahoma 28 (Autumn 1950). Amiel Weeks Whipple, A Pathfinder in the Southwest, ed. Grant Foreman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941).

H. Allen Anderson



SNEED, JOSEPH TYRE, JR.

(1876-1940)

Joseph Tyre Sneed, Jr., Panhandle rancher, one of three children of Joseph Tyre and Lillian (Beall) Sneed, was born on June 12, 1876, in Milam County. By 1879 his father had built up a substantial ranching operation based in Georgetown, Williamson County. The young Joe thus developed a keen interest in the cattle business, to which he devoted most of his life; he also became involved in banking. It was these interests that drew him to the Panhandle around 1900. He ran the Dalhart National Bank (later First National Bank) in Dalhart until 1904, when he became associated with the Amarillo National Bank.

When the American Pastoral Company decided to liquidate its LX Ranch holdings in 1906, Sneed was one of the three--the other two were Robert Benjamin (Ben) Masterson and Lee Bivins--to purchase those vast ranges. The story relates that just before making that investment, Joe Sneed, along with his younger brother John Beal and an uncle, made a preliminary inspection tour of the range in Moore County, south of Dumas. The uncle was all for his nephews' proposition until a severe dust storm blew through and lasted two days. Though he changed his mind, the Sneed brothers went ahead with the purchase. Shortly afterward, John Beal Sneed sold his interest in the spread to their father; later John Beal was one of the principals in the Boyce-Sneed Feud.

Joe Sneed and his father built up and expanded their Panhandle acreage, on which they grazed steers exclusively until after the latter's death in 1912. Sneed then added cows and calves and became one of the first ranchers in the area to improve his herds with higher-grade cattle. For a brand he used the Pot Hook, or Tumbling A, which he had acquired in 1900 from W. H. Ingerton. As more land was made available, Sneed bought it up; gradually, he acquired portions of the old XIT Ranch domain in Dallam County in addition to his original Moore County holdings.

His first headquarters was on Plum Creek, in the ranch's southern portion, but in 1918 he acquired an old three-room house from Lee Morrison, renovated it, and made it the permanent headquarters since it was more centrally located. Lew Haile served for years as foreman and later was a trustee of the Sneed estate. It was said that Sneed's cattle always brought a premium. He served as president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and later served on its board of directors. With Lee Bivins, he organized the Amarillo Livestock Loan Association; he was also affiliated with the Texas Livestock Marketing Association.

Sneed's wife, Bradley, was a widow who had three daughters from her first marriage; later they adopted another daughter, Elizabeth. In addition to the ranchhouse, the Sneeds maintained a residence on Harrison Street in Amarillo, where they attended the Polk Street Methodist Church. Sneed supported such charitable organizations as the Preventorium and the Childrens' Home in Amarillo, as well as Southwestern University in Georgetown. He was also an early member and chairman of the board of directors of Texas Technological College in Lubbock; a dormitory on the campus bears his name.

In 1923-24 Sneed's fortune was enhanced even more with the discovery of natural gas deposits on his property. By 1936 he owned more than 200,000 acres in Dallam, Moore, and Hutchinson counties in the Texas Panhandle and also in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Never in his life was he known to have sold any land. He died of a heart attack at his home in Amarillo on October 15, 1940, and was buried in Llano Cemetery in Amarillo. Subsequently Sneed's Panhandle ranching operations were carried on by his daughter, Elizabeth Sneed Pool Robinett, and her son, Joseph H. Pool.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Amarillo Daily News, October 16, 1940. Amarillo Daily Panhandle, January 14, 15, 1912. Pauline D. and R. L. Robertson, Cowman's Country: Fifty Frontier Ranches in the Texas Panhandle, 1876-1887 (Amarillo: Paramount, 1981). Myrna Tryon Thomas, The Windswept Land: A History of Moore City (Dumas, Texas, 1967).

H. Allen Anderson



PHILLIPS, JACOB RICE

(1881-1957)

Jacob Rice (Jake) Phillips, Panhandle oilman, the son of William and Mary (Keefe) Phillips, was born on March 6, 1881, in Deep Valley, Pennsylvania, the eighth in a family of fifteen children. He attended a one-room country school and spent his youth in near poverty. Weary of farm life and hearing of opportunities in the oilfields, he left home in the summer of 1901. He spent three months digging ditches for a new oil pipeline at St. Mary's, West Virginia, and later went to Salem, West Virginia, and worked as a roustabout for the South Penn Oil Company.

In 1903 Phillips moved west and was hired as an oil scout in Independence, Kansas, for the Prairie Oil and Gas Company. He started in the field at Chautauqua Springs, where he quickly mastered the techniques of locating and drilling potential well sites. He was transferred to Skiatook, Oklahoma, and made superintendent of the territory's first major oilfield. His ability to map out good locations for new wells attracted the attention of geologists like Professor I. C. White of the University of West Virginia, who accompanied him on geological expeditions in 1907. On February 24, 1909, Phillips married Martha Alice Benge; seven children were born to the couple, but only five survived.

In 1912 Phillips and two partners, A. W. Lucas and L. L. Wiles, formed the Paloma Oil and Gas Company and started drilling in the swampy Osage area near Tulsa. That venture proved successful against heavy odds, and in 1917 Phillips and Bill Scott invested their savings in an equally profitable gas lease in Kansas. Nevertheless, Phillips remained with Prairie Oil and Gas until 1919, when he and J. E. Foster of Tulsa organized the J. E. Foster Oil Company. For the next six years Phillips enjoyed good fortune. In 1925 he decided to investigate the wildcat drilling that was going on in the Texas Panhandle and sold out his Oklahoma holdings.

He bought property from the Kingsland Ranch on Dixon Creek, Hutchinson County, Texas, about three miles east of the site of future Borger. There he established a camp and family homesite which he named Skiatex, a portmanteau of Skiatook and Texas. He secured several area leases and organized the Stansylvania Oil and Gas Company, which brought in its first well on September 1. During the next two years he successfully drilled eight more producers. His Skiatex camp quickly grew from tents to a village of wooden houses; there he established a grade school and hired two teachers from Canyon for his own children and those of his employees. In 1926, after Sherman D. (Tex) McIlroy's Smith Number 1 touched off the boom that resulted in the founding of Borger, Phillips became involved in that town's civic and cultural growth. Eventually, he and his associates brought in more than 200 producing wells; as the owner of forty of them, Phillips was one of the Panhandle's most successful wildcatters.

The onslaught of the Great Depression left Phillips and his fellow wildcatters momentarily broke. In 1930, despite financial straits, he and the Currie brothers of Amarillo secured an eighty-acre lease on the Harvey Ranch east of Borger and formed the Texilvania Oil Company. Eventually that lease paid off with the opening of the Watkins field. Phillips also began developing leases around Stinnett and in 1937 sold one successful holding to the Phillips Petroleum Company (no relation) for $160,000 to help pay off debts. World War II brought new growth to the independent oil producers, but the temporary shortage of manpower prompted Phillips to resume a roustabout's role.

That ended late in 1944, when a falling mast severely injured his right leg during a well-cleaning operation; the leg had to be amputated, and Phillips was fitted with an artificial limb. In October 1955 the first Magic Plains Oil Exposition was held at Borger in his honor. Phillips was president of the Texas Independent Royalty Owners Association and a charter member and president of the Panhandle Producers and Royalty Association. He was also a Mason, a Shriner, and an organizer of the Borger Methodist Church. He died at Borger on September 25, 1957, and was buried there. Many of the oil leases in which he invested are still active producers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Betty J. Phillips, Grand Old Man of the Panhandle Oil Industry: Jacob Rice Phillips (M.A. thesis, West Texas State University, 1970).

H. Allen Anderson



PAUL, JAMES CHRISTOPHER

(1852-1935)

James Christopher Paul, Panhandle banker, son of James M. and Susan (Kiger) Paul, was born on September 19, 1852, in Fairfield, Rockbridge County, Virginia. He attended Illinois State Normal University at Bloomington and became a teacher at Waynesboro, Iowa, and at Nunda, Illinois, where on September 1, 1886, he married a student, Nina Darby. They moved to Wichita, Kansas, which was then experiencing a boom, and Paul engaged in the real estate and insurance businesses. The boom in Wichita collapsed, however, and in January 1888 Paul moved to the frontier town of Panhandle City, Texas.

Panhandle City (now Panhandle) was the new terminus of the Southern Kansas (Santa Fe) Railway, which was intended to build onward through New Mexico. At the same time the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway was proposing to intersect the Southern Kansas at Panhandle City. The prospect of these rail connections, in Paul's words, "gave to Carson County a greater prominence than any other Panhandle county then enjoyed." Paul arrived in the small town as treasurer of the Southern Kansas. He held this position for the next twenty years, moving with the rail headquarters to Amarillo in 1900.

With the backing of Kansas friends and capitalization of $5,000, he opened the Panhandle Bank on May 6, 1888, in a two-story frame structure in Panhandle City. The bank and offices for lawyer Temple L. Houston occupied the ground floor, and the second floor served as the Paul home. Paul and his wife had two sons. At the time of Nina's death on December 27, 1892, the Paul family was living in the Square House, which became the central building of the Carson County Square House Museum complex. On April 28, 1904, Paul married Cora Bryant in Paris, Texas. In 1888, when Carson County was organized, he was elected the first county treasurer, a post he held for four terms. He was instrumental in selling $8,000 in bonds for the construction of a jail and courthouse. He studied law under Temple Houston and passed the bar but never practiced. In 1898 he was elected judge of Carson County and thereafter was known as Judge Paul.

In addition to founding the first bank of Panhandle City, Paul helped establish a number of other financial institutions and was active in promoting the banking industry. He was one of the organizers of the Amarillo National Bank in 1892 and was its president from 1892 to 1896. In 1893 he became sole owner of the Panhandle Bank. In 1896 he was a cofounder of the Panhandle Bankers Association and was named its first president. In 1906 Paul helped to organize the Amarillo Bank and Trust Company and then served as its first president.

He and his son Howard organized the Paul Bank in Slaton in 1911. In 1917 they had it chartered as the First State Bank of Slaton and then sold it to other investors. Father and son purchased an interest in the Guaranty State Bank in Amarillo in 1919. They soon acquired a controlling interest in this bank, which the Paul family maintained until the 1970s. Meanwhile the bank itself evolved into the American State Bank and then the American National Bank. Paul was also one of the organizers of the First National Bank of Panhandle, which opened in 1926 in response to an oil boom in Carson and Hutchinson counties. The Panhandle Bank closed in 1942 and merged with the First National.

When the Francklyn Land and Cattle Company, for whom Paul had worked as a grazing-land leasing agent, began to sell its lands in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Paul was offered first choice as a token of appreciation for his services. On May 2, 1902, he selected four sections near the town of Panhandle. He also purchased land in Bailey and Lamb counties from the XIT Ranch, which he sold to his sons in 1911. Throughout his life he remained involved in ranching and farming in the Panhandle. When West Air Express (later Trans World Airlines) began transcontinental service to Amarillo, Paul and Fletcher Lusby, another pioneer of the Texas Panhandle, were the only passengers on the first flight from Los Angeles to Amarillo on May 29, 1929. Paul died in Panhandle on March 3, 1935, and was buried in Llano Cemetery, Amarillo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Amarillo Daily News, March 5, 1935. Buckley B. Paddock, ed., A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis, 1906). Frank A. Paul, "Early Day Banking in the Panhandle," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 37 (1964). J. C. Paul, "Early Days in Carson County, Texas," Panhandle-Plains Historical Review 5 (1932). Jo Stewart Randel, ed., A Time to Purpose: A Chronicle of Carson County (4 vols., Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1966-72). Lester Fields Sheffy, The Francklyn Land & Cattle Company (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963). Bobby D. Weaver, The First National Bank of Panhandle (1988).

Jo Stewart Randel

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