biography – Page 6 – Texas History Notebook

Ron Ely, Actor

Ronald Pierce Ely was born in Hereford, Texas on June 21, 1938 to Vernon Howard Ely and Sybil Ely. His father Vernon died at the age of 38 the following year, after which his mother raised Ron and his sister. A 1966 newspaper article in the Clay County Reader out of Henrietta, Texas noted that Ron was born and raised in Texas and that he had worked in the summers shoveling grain and working in the oilfield near Amarillo.

John and Cornelia Adair

John George Adair was born in the United Kingdom. His date of birth is thought to have been around 1823 in Ireland and his date of death was March 4, 1885 in St. Louis, Missouri at around the age of 62. Adair had started out as a land owner in Ireland, having invested in parcels that he acquired during and after the Irish potato famine drove real estate prices down. Adair continued in business there until he visited the United States in 1866 where he became engaged in a banking business, primarily making loans to American businesses with an expectation of earning higher interest rates than could be achieved in the United Kingdom.

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.