Tarrant County Newspaper Clippings

Fort Worth Gazette TOWN AND COUNTY In Judge Beckham's court yesterday the divorce suit of Elizabeth Diets vs. Charles Diets occupied the entire day. The jury returned a verdict at 6:15 p. m. finding the allegations of cruel treatment, etc. were true, and awarding her half the property. She will get her decree. [April 2, 1891]

Fort Worth Gazette MARRIAGE LICENSES - Only one couple dared brave the approach of hot weather by entering into the connubial bliss yesterday. They were Acy Hendricks and Rosa Williams, both colored. [April 2, 1891]

Fort Worth Gazette A Tarrant County Doctor a Little Late at the Altar, But He Gets there All the Same Lancaster, Tex., April 16 - Dr. TIMS of Arlington and Miss Lena ORR were married this morning at 1:30 a.m. at the residence of the bride's father, Capt. W. A. ORR, a few miles east of here. The marriage was to have occurred at 8 p.m., but on account of the fire at Dallas the train on which the doctor was depending could not reach the city, and dumped him off at Grand Prairie. He took in the situation at once and wired a friend at Wilmer to go post haste to Capt. ORR's and make known the reasons for his delay. [April 23, 1891]

Fort Worth Star Telegram FT. WORTH RESIDENTS RECALL FREED INDIAN Ft. Worth residents who learned Monday of the full pardon granted Victor M. Locke, Jr., given a 10 year sentence for the killing of a young Choctaw Indian in 1927, recall visits he made to Ft. Worth during the war days of Camp Bowie. Locke, half Indian, was chief of the Choctaws from 1911 to 1918, and visited the some 3,500 Indians, many of them Choctaws, in the 141st and 142nd Infantry regiments at Camp Bowie. Locke held the commission of major in the infantry. In 1921 he was appointed superintendent of the Five Civilized Tribes by President Harding. [December 1949, submitted By K. Torp]

Fort Worth Star Telegram GREENVILLE MAN MADE DISTRICT JUDGE Appointment of L. L. Bowman of Greenville to succeed Judge Grove Sellers as judge of the Eighth District Count was announced by Governor Moody. Reappointment of J. O. Guleke of Amarillo and Mrs. J. E. Watkins of Henderson as members of the State Board of Education also was announced. [December 1949, submitted By K. Torp]

Victoria Advocate NINE ESCAPE DEATH IN FT. WORTH FIRE Ft. Worth, Jan 2 -- Nine persons narrowly escaped death when fire destroyed a two story rooming house here today. Mrs. Roy Jackson and her four small children were rescued after they had been overcome by smoke. [Jan. 2, 1929, transcribed by, Amanda Jowers]

Victoria Advocate Express messenger F. E. Cunningham was murdered in his car on the Texas & Pacific west bound cannon ball train between Terrell and Forney, Texas. There is no clue. [Jan. 2, 1929, transcribed by, Amanda Jowers]

FORT WORTH, Tex.. Oct. 1.—Jim Carlington was to-day convicted of train robbery and murder and given the death penalty. Three others will be tried next week for complicity in the same affair. In June last Carlington. Moore, Ellis, Evans and Petty held up a Santa Fe passenger train near here, at 11 o'clock at night, for the purpose of robbery. Garlington and Ellis boarded the engine and shot and killed Engineer Williams and Fireman Whittaker, and then kicked their bodies off the engine. [submitted by Barb Z]

FORT WORTH, Tex. Sept. 27. Rev. G. E. Morrison, pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Panhandle City, who has been on trial at Vernon for a week, on the charge of murdering his wife, Oct. 10. 1897, was to-day found guilty and his punishment fixed at death. Morrison administered strychnine to his wife after returning from church. The jury was out only two or three hours. Before the death of his wife Morrison was engaged to wed Miss Annie Whittlesey, of Topeka. Kan., and when intercepted he was at her home. It developed In the trial of the case that Morrison was infatuated with the Topeka young lady, and he chose to put his wife out of the way in order that he might marry Miss Whittlesey. An appeal will be taken. [submitted by Barb Z]

Dallas Morning News JAMES DARLINGTON Gov. Sayers Declines to Interfere and Darlington Must Hang Tomorrow Fort Worth, Tex., July 26 - James Darlington, alias Garlington, must pay the extreme penalty of the law. He will suffer death on the scaffold next Friday between 11 o'clock in the morning and sunset. A telegram from the governor of Texas received at the sheriff's office at 1:50 this afternoon, conveyed this information. The message was brief, simply reading: "Let Darlington execution proceed; I decline to interfere." The condemned man was told at about 3:30 that executive clemency had been denied him and that the governor had wired Sheriff Clark to this effect. Before the contents of this telegram had reached him, however, others had learned through the press dispatches of Gov. Sayers' decision, and the man, who has just passed his 25th year, was immediately notified that no hope remained for him. He became nervous for several minutes walked impatiently back and forth in his cell, seemingly meditating. In a few minutes, however, he seemed calm, and then it was that he gave his first utterance on the chief executive's action: "It's pretty tough," he remarked in a mild-mannered way, and he followed this expression with other statements about his case. A News representative was in the presence of the condemned man at about 4 o'clock. His actions and demeanor indicated that he had reconciled himself to the inevitable. In reply to interrogatories he said that he had no particular dread of death. "Of course there is mental pain about it, but I mean that I am not afraid of the hereafter. My mind is at rest so far as that is concerned." He said in a slow and deliberate tone of voice. Replying to further questions he said: "I think yet that my sentence should have been commuted to imprisonment and I believe that had not the opposition arisen to my petition and indorsements that the governor would have shown clemency. He should have done so. The testimony was plain that I did not kill either the fireman or engineer of the train we went to rob. There is a difference between having robbery in your heart and having murder in your heart. I never went out to Saginaw to kill any one, and it was shown on my trial that I protested against taking any one's life. The law provides that the life imprisonment could have been imposed and I maintain now as I did the day I received the sentence to be hanged that justice and the law in view of the facts demanded that I only receive the life imprisonment." The condemned man was asked if he had any requests to make so far as the disposition of his body was concerned and he said that relatives would probably be present from Navarro county. He said he would rather have his body interred in the cemetery there, but as for that matter he declared that he had no particular wishes. When it became known that Gov. Sayers had refused to interfere, several persons called at the county jail to see the prisoner but he informed the death watchers that he did not care to have them come up and they were turned away. Late in the afternoon, however, one of the officers of the First Baptist Church here called to see the condemned man and he was received courteously. Darlington has said at different times that he was a Baptist minister from 1895 to 1897, and that he was licensed to preach the gospel at El Paso. He told the church officer late in the afternoon that he believed his future was clear and that he had no great horrors of death. He was born in Colfax, La., Oct. 4, 1873. He was a baby when his father removed to Jackson parish, LA., and remained until 1877 when he became a resident of Navarro county, Tex., living about fifteen miles west of Corsicana for a number of years. He says he attended school at Lampasas in 1894 and afterwards went to El Paso and received instructions there. About 5 o'clock a photographer called and a sitting was had for a photograph. He was cheerful - exceptionally so - for a person whose hopes for a longer lease of life had been shattered but a few hours before. (July 27, 1899, page 8, transcribed by Peggy Thompson)

Marion County Herald  ( Marion County, AL) July 11, 1889 – pg 1 – FLOOD IN TEXAS Fort Worth , Tex. – July 5 – Several inches of rain fell in this part of the=state yesterday, and great damage has resulted.  Reports from the west show heavy rains for 200 miles.  The Brazos and Trinity rivers are booming. At Bead Brook, twelve miles west the bridge of the Texas Pacific and 100 feet of track are washed away.  The St. Louis , Arkansas and Texas for two miles out is submerged.           The Missouri, Kansas and Texas and Fort Worth and Denver have abandoned their trains north.  The Texas Pacific has abandoned trains both east and west.  At Fort Worth , lands to the north for two miles and to the east for a miles and a half are submerged and truck farms also.  City Marshal Farmer, Sheriff Richardson and their entire force, for the time became a rescuing corps and manned boats which brought people to the city where they are quartered in a large warehouse. There are 200 men, women and children thus cared for.           P. PLUME and sister are said to have been washed away, and Mrs. H. S. Bentley and Patrick, her son, who lived on the Trinity, are missing and are said to be drowned.  Their house was carried away.  The river there is two miles wide, and all cabins and tents are gone. Six inches more of water and the water work will have to be abandoned.           Wheat, oats, and fruit and cotton are badly damaged.  The loss can hardly be estimated, but conservative estimates place it is high as $2,000,000.  There is some fear for little villages along the Trinity above Fort Worth , but there is no telegraph communication and nothing definite can be learned.           At 1 o’clock this morning it was still raining heavily.    [Transcribed and submitted by Veneta McKinney]

Mr. Miller To Wed The Fort Worth Telegram, of date December 22, says: As the culmination of a courtship lasting for several years and ending with a trip of 4,250 miles, Grover C. Miller is in Fort Worth to wed Miss Ruby King, daughter of Frank King, a conductor on the International and Great Northern railway. The young people first met in Palestine, Texas, where their acquaintance ripened into love. Later the girl’s father removed to Fort Worth and Mr. Miller in time came to this city also and was employed at the Covey & Martin drug store as drug clerk. Later he went West and after a time in San Francisco received an offer from a druggist in Honolulu. For nearly two years he has been employed in that island city. Deciding to return to Fort Worth, where he knew the girl was waiting him, Mr. Miller left over two weeks ago, braving the typhoon-swept waters of the Pacific. The Asia, a trans-Pacific steamer, arrived in Honolulu with all but one life missing and the cabins torn away just as he was preparing to depart, but nothing daunting, he left. The seven-day trip was a memorable one. At this season the Pacific is lashed with fierce storms, and his boat spent much of its time battling the waves. So terrific was the beating of the waters, so rough the voyage that he has decided the return trip at this time of year would be too much for the future Mrs. Miller, and the two probably will remain in Fort Worth the rest of the winter. The wedding will take on the evening of December 30 at the home of the bride’s parents, 605 May street.  [Palestine Daily Herald, Palestine, Texas, December 23, 1908.  Transcribed and Submitted to Dale Donlon]

In Trinity River  Was Found the Remains of Assessor W. B. Rogers  The Interment Was At Smithfield,  His Old Home, Where Many Mourning Friends Attended the Last Sad Rites The sad fate of Tarrant county’s faithful officer, Assessor W. B. Rogers, was revealed Sunday morning when his body was found lodged in a drift in Trinity river, a short distance above the Sylvania bridge east of the city. The two searching parties organized Sunday morning and commenced a thorough search at about 10 o’clock. Ex-Tax Collector J. E. Murrey discovered the body, which, when taken out of the water, showed no signs of violence and his had being buttoned under his coat, gave evidence of his forethought. A coroner’s jury empanneled by Squire Adams returned a verdict of death by drowning.  The body was prepared for burial at the undertaking establishment of George L. Gause, and the funeral services were performed yesterday morning.The remains were carried to Smithfield, about fifteen miles northeast of this city, where they were interred beside his wife, who was buried there.A large procession of friends accompanied the funeral party, composed of many county officials who were constantly thrown with him in his work about the court house. The deceased assessor was known and loved among the county people, and as the procession passed on to the burial ground it was joined by others until reaching the destination, where a large crowd had already gathered. The church in which the burial services were held would not contain the vast throng of people who were present. The religious ceremonies were conducted by Rev. J. Morgan Wells in a most impressive and appropriate manner. The last sad rites were performed by the Masonic fraternity, of which the deceased was a loved and honored member, and of these ceremonies, Mr. Albert Walker was master.About 12 o’clock the services were concluded, and the saddened concourse of people departed for their homes. [Fort Worth Gazette, Fort Worth, Texas, April 21, 1896. Transcribed as written by D. Donlon]

Married   Married at the Catholic church on Monday September 8th Mr. Gus Bejer and Miss Anna Marek, by Rev. Joseph Hudecek. The couple will move to Oklahoma to live.  [Shiner Gazette, Shiner, Texas, September 10, 1902.  Transcribed and Submitted by Dale Donlon]

Married   Mr. Otto Grutz and Miss Frederika Nenbauer were married at the home of the bride’s mother at Charlottenburg. Rev. Stock officiating. [Shiner Gazette, Shiner, Texas, September 10, 1902.  Transcribed and Submitted by Dale Donlon]

Baby Bites Tongue and Bleeds To Death   Gonzales, Tex., Dec. 12 – Douglas Skinner, age 2, son of Thomas Skinner, died last night. The child bit his tongue in twain while playing, and bled to death. [El Paso Herald, El Paso, Texas, December 12, 1910.  Transcribed and Submitted by Dale Donlon]

Dallas Morning News September 26, 1897 Fort Worth Not Afraid Fort Worth, TX, Sept. 15 – While all yellow fever news is eagerly read here, still no apprehension exists and not even a suspicious case of fever has resulted to date.   There was a meeting announced yesterday at which Dr. D.R. Fly, Mayor Paddock, Judge G. W. Armstrong and others were to talk about quarantine, but so little did they think of the danger of yellow fever ever gaining a foothold in Fort Worth that none of them thought it worth their while to attend the meeting, so none was held.   Dr. Fly, county quarantine physician, said we have here an atmosphere, a soil and the altitude to simply defy an epidemic.  He said Fort Worth has never had an epidemic except la grippe, and that is a germ that the ice of the north or the heat of future fires will never be able to kill out.   Dr. J.W. Irion said that while it might not be advisable to do so, yet he thought we could safely throw open our doors to the refugees. It does look now as if any quarantine will be established here, as the people generally feel it is not needed. [Transcribed and submitted by Sandy Denney]

Dallas Morning News September 26, 1897 Big Cattle Sale Fort Worth, TX,  Sept. 25 – Col. E.A. Paffrath of this city has just closed, one of the largest and best cattle deals in point of price made to date.  The cattle sold were the property of Capt. S.B. Burnett and consisted of 1150 head of bought cattle, 4 years old and up, at $30 per head, and about 2000 head of native cattle, 3 years old and up, at the remarkably good price of $36 per head.  The cattle were sold for feeding purposes prior to marketing.  [Transcribed and submitted by Sandy Denney]

Dallas Morning News September 26, 1897 Fort Worth, TX, Sept. 28 – John Stateham was given five years in the penitentiary on a charge of burglary in the seventeenth district court today. The case of the state vs. J.W. Born, charged with swindling, result in a verdict of guilty with two years. Mrs. Kate Cabell Currie of Dallas will be here to organize a chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy tomorrow afternoon at the meeting of the R.E. Lee camp United Confederate Veterans. A civil service examination will be held here on Oct. 25 for positions in the Indian Service and other branches of the government. Hon. B.B. Paddock will give a talk upon his recent visit to England during the queen’s jubilee to the Men’s Guild of Trinity church.  Hemphill and Pennsylvania avenue, on Tuesday evening, Sept. 28 at 8 o’clock.  The public is invited to be present. The Brotherhood of Blacksmiths have reorganized their lodge—Onward union No. 91, International Brotherhood of Blacksmiths, Fort Worth, TX.  The following officers were elected to serve for the ensuing year: S.P. Schmitt, president; Joseph Stanley, vice president; J.L. Bowers, treasurer; W.J. Fahey, secretary.  Meet (first and third Sundays of each month at I.O.O. F. hall, corner of Rusk and Fifth street. The Fourth Regiment band will give a concert from 5 to 6 p.m. at Tyler’s lake tomorrow Mrs. Tillie M. Reynolds will deliver a series of lectures at the Spiritualist hall, Tenth and Main, at 8 p.m. nightly. Commencing tomorrow evening, with sundown and continuing for two days the Hebrews all over the globe will celebrate the new year 5658 since the creation of the world.  On this occasion the congregation Ahovath Sholom will hold services in their synagogue, corner of Hemphill and Jarvis streets, Sunday and Monday evenings at 7 o’clock, also Monday and Tuesday mornings at 8 o’clock.  The services will be conducted by Rev. A. Dunva, assisted by Mr. S. Mehl.  Everyone is invited to attend.  [Transcribed and submitted by Sandy Denney]

Dallas Morning News September 26, 1897 Fort Worth, TX, Sept. 25 – Rev. Father Daniel O’Sullivan, of the Roman Catholic  Church, died at 7 o’clock this morning, at the Fort Worth hotel. He had been here for only two or three days and was in apparent good health on his arrival, but he has long been a sufferer at times from heart trouble. He was taken ill yesterday and medical aid called to attend him.  He was better last night but at 5 o’clock this morning he was taken worse and died at 7 o’clock. Rev. Father Goyot and Mr. Martin Casey looked after the funeral arrangements and the body was prepared for burial and sent to Dallas this afternoon where, after the funeral services, it will be interred. Father O’Sullivan has been for many years in charge of the church work in the panhandle country, where he was well and favorably known.  He was a highly education gentleman, genial and courteous to all. He was born in Ireland about 38 years ago, and only came to this country some three years ago.  He was stationed at Henrietta up to some two months ago, when he was transferred to Paris.  [Transcribed and submitted by Sandy Denney]

Morning Avalanche Thursday, Oct. 10, 1946 Woman Posts Bond In Slaying Of Husband  FORT WORTH, Oct. 3, (AP)— Mrs. Alice Cole, 34, today had posted $10,000 bond on murder charges in. connection with the fatal shooting, of her estranged husband, James Clarence Cole, 31- year-old overseas veteran. Mrs. Cole blamed jealousy and told officers she knew the shootins as "a terrible thing." She said her husband repeatedly had tried to get a divorce in order to marry another woman. When he came to take her out to dinner, she said, she took a pistol out of her purse and fired it into his  right side after they had gotten into his car. Services for the Fort Worth lumber dealer will be held at Normangee.  -- Submitted by Janice Rice

Vernon Courier (Lamar County,AL)  June 5, 1890   SPRING PALACE BURNED – It was Crowded with People – The Loss Not Known Fort Worth, Tex , May 30 – The Texas Spring Palace was burned to the ground at 10:30 tonight.  One life was lost and five persons were injured.  The loss is estimated at $100,000.  Women were running to and fro striking for the husbands and children, and from the opposite windows of the fiery furnaces the forms of men and women clinging to the windows and dropping 20 feet to the ground could be seen.   Seicher jumped from a window on the first floor, and he says there was no pressure on crowding.  He immediately began searching for Harrison, and it was at first reported that the president’s son was lost, but within a few moments every one of the party was accounted for.  A message to the president was promptly forwarded, with the request that if asleep he should be awakened so that no sensational stories should reach him first and shock him. The fire department was quickly on the ground, but the flames spread with such incredible speed that nothing could be done except to save the adjoining property.                  The spring palace, as the exhibition was to have closed Sunday, and a grand ball was the closing even of the tonight.  Ladies and gentleman in full doors and the best society of the city and vicinity were on hand.                  One man is known to have fatally burned, and several were seriously injured by being trampled or scorched.  It is impossible to know where the loss of life is large or not.  Many think that no one was burned.  Others feat that at least twenty-five perished. [Transcribed and Submitted by Veneta McKinney]

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