biography – Page 5 – Texas History Notebook

Enid Justin

Enid Justin was called the world’s only female boot manufacturer. She was born in Nocona on April 8, 1894 and was the middle child of Herman Joseph Justin (1859 – 1918) and Louanna F. Allen Justin (1865 – 1939). Enid’s father Joe had come to Texas in 1879 after learning the basics of shoe repair while serving as an apprentice in his former home of Lafayette, Indiana. After settling near the Red River on a cattle trail, Joe slowly began to make his own name as a boot maker. He finally set up shop in Nocona where he lived and built a boot factory. The children worked in the factory on Saturdays and after school and learned the business. Enid began working there at around age ten. She was bright and a good student, but dropped out of school at age thirteen to work in the factory with Joe and the older siblings.

Ignacio Zaragoza

Probably most people who are familiar with Texas have heard of the annual celebration called “El Cinco de Mayo” or just “Cinco de Mayo,” but fewer may know the actual event that it celebrates and memorializes.

Tex Rickard

George Lewis “Tex” Rickard was a well known boxing promoter and the founder of the New York Rangers hockey club. He was born January 2, 1870 in Kansas City, Missouri to Robert Wood Rickard and Lucretia J. Ferguson Rickard. When George was about four years old, his family moved to Texas, first settling in Cambridge, a few miles south of the Red River in Grayson County. They later moved to Henrietta in Clay County in North Texas where Robert worked as a carpenter. In the 1880 census, the family consisted of Robert and Lucretia, daughter Minnie, son George, son Merlin, son Robert Jr. and daughter Kate. Another sister named Alice was born after the census had been recorded. Robert was a veteran, having previously served four years in the Union Army during the Civil War and died of unknown causes in 1881 at the age of forty-three. Lucretia was left to raise her six children. She married Samuel C. Adams, a grocer, later in the 1880s. As the children of Lucretia and her late husband Robert matured and moved away, she and Samuel had two more children, one of whom lived to be an adult. They were living in Henrietta as of the 1900 census. Two years later, Samuel died from complications of asthma. Lucretia survived him another thirty-five years.

The C. C. Slaughter Family

C. C. Slaughter was the oldest son of George Webb Slaughter (1811 – 1895) and Sarah Mason Slaughter (1818 – 1894). C. C. was born to the couple February 9, 1837. He was married to Cynthia Ann Jowell on December 5, 1861. To this union were born six children:

George Morgan Slaughter (1862 – 1915)
Minnie Slaughter (1864 – 1955)
Dela Slaughter (1866 – 1956)
Eugene Ewell Slaughter (1868 – 1870)
Robert Lee Slaughter (1870 – 1938)
Edgar Dick Slaughter (1873 – 1935)

C. C. and Cynthia had moved their family to Dallas in 1873. Two to three years later, Cynthia Ann became ill and passed away in her sleep on May 17, 1876. Her obituary was not specific on the cause, calling her death “unexpected” and saying that she had been ill with “a complication of diseases.” This left C. C., then about thirty-nine years old, to take care of his five surviving children who ranged from around three to about fourteen years old.

In his excellent biography (1) of C. C. Slaughter, author David J. Murrah relates how C. C. and his second wife, Carrie Averill met at a church social in Kansas later in 1876. Carrie was the twenty-four year old unmarried daughter of a local Baptist minister and his wife, Alexander McCormick Averill and Rebecca F. Morton Averill. After a long and somewhat methodical courtship, the couple was married on January 17, 1877. To this union were born the following children:

Christopher Columbus Slaughter (1879 – 1940)
Walter Webb Slaughter (1880 – 1881)
Alexander Averill Slaughter (1881 – 1931)
Carrie Rebecca Slaughter (1883 – 1958)
Nelle Louise Slaughter (1892 – 1964)

James Kerr

James Augusta Kerr was one of the more interesting people in the early days of Texas. He was born September 24, 1790 in Boyle County, Kentucky to Reverend James Kerr II (1749 – 1811) and Patience Wells Kerr (1759 – 1799). He was the seventh child and second son of the couple’s ten children born over a twenty year period from 1777 to 1797. The father, James, was a farmer and a Baptist minister, more accurately described as a circuit riding preacher. A descendant, James Kerr Crain, writes that Patience, the youngest of a large group of children, had eloped with her husband to be after her parents objected to the relationship, but the union lasted until her untimely death. The mother, Patience, died in 1799 after taking ill on a horseback trip to visit one of their older children. Her husband preached the funeral, which was said to be the first Protestant sermon preached in the sparsely populated Upper Louisiana Territory. Rev. Kerr married a widow by the name of Phoebe Bonham one year after the death of Patience. The family moved to St. Charles County, Missouri in 1808 and Rev. Kerr passed away there in 1811.