history – TEXAS HISTORY NOTEBOOK

Sid Richardson

Sid Williams Richardson was born on April 25, 1891 to John Isidore Richardson (1856-1911) and Nancy Bradley Richardson (1860-1934) in Athens, Texas. His father was born and died in East Texas. His mother was born in Mississippi, survived his father by about 23 years and died in Wichita Falls

One of his obituaries says that he earned $3,500 by trading cattle while he was still in high school in 1908. He briefly attended college at Baylor University and Simmons College (now Hardin-Simmons University) for about eighteen months during 1910, 1911 and 1912 until his funds ran out and went to work in the early days of the oil industry. He stated at the ground level, first working as a salesman for an oilfield supply company, then as an oil scout and lease purchaser.

Richardson struck out on his own in the late teens as an independent oil producer. During the next decade or so, he was said to have made and lost “fortunes” several times, weathering the Great Depression and the years leading up to it. He participated an a huge oil find called the Keystone field out in Winkler County (West Texas). The Keystone discovery is located between Kermit and Goldsmith. The image below is from a postcard of Wink, Texas. At the time of the Keystone field’s development beginning in 1935, Wink was already an oilfield boom town with oil having been discovered in the 1920s. The image below appears to date back to the twenties, based on the ages of the vehicles.

The West Texas oil find is said to have established his financial security and Richardson began to expand into ranching and other businesses, including radio and refining. Some of his companies were the Sid Richardson Gasoline Company, the Sid Richardson Carbon Company and Sid Richardson, Inc.

Over the years, he is known to have been associated in business with other Texas individuals like Clint Murchison and Amon Carter. At various times, he was also associated with politicians including Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, but is not known to have run for office himself.

He was personally philanthropic for a number of years and then established the Sid W. Richardson Foundation when he was in his upper 50s in 1947. His foundation widely supported organizations of many types, including Texas colleges and universities. Although many students might not have known who Richardson was, they attended classes in buildings named the Sid Richardson Building or that otherwise bore his name.

He was a life long bachelor, though at least one author maintains that while in college he had a love interest who later married someone else, after he left school. Richardson is related to the Fort Worth Bass family through his sister Anne Cecilia Richardson Bass (1886-1970) who married E. Perry Bass. There were two other siblings, Jack William Richardson (1893-1947) and Berta Fayrene Richarson (1898-1974). All of his siblings had families. Anne and Sid resided in Fort Worth and may have been the better known of the four in North Texas.

Over the years, Richardson accumulated many fine works of western art. These became the nucleus of the collection of the Sid Richardson Museum which opened in 1982 in downtown Fort Worth. Richardson is also one of three individuals whose names are usually associated with the conservation effort to prevent the Texas longhorn from becoming extinct. The other two persons were rancher Graves Peeler and author J. Frank Dobie.

Richardson had built a vacation home down on St. Joseph Island (also known as San Jose Island) on the Gulf Coast, which he had purchased about 1936. He owned the entire small island. It was there that he died in the fall of 1959 of an apparent heart attack. Richardson is interred in Athens Cemetery along with siblings Berta Fayrene and William Jack. Anne is interred in Wichita Falls.

Buildings named for Sid Richardson include structures on the campuses of Texas Christian University, Baylor University, Austin College, Texas Wesleyan University, Fort Worth Country Day School, Hardin-Simmons University, Howard Payne University, University of Texas at Austin and the Sid Richardson Museum. Also named for him is Sid Richardson College at Rice University and the Sid Richardson Scout Ranch and portions of other buildings at Trinity University, Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital and Texas Southmost College.

Anahuac Disturbances

Anahuac, Texas is located a little less than an hour’s drive due east of downtown Houston. Early inhabitants are said to have included Native tribes such as the Caddo and Atakapan followed by European explorers. There were other European settlers living there by 1824 after which Mexican dictator Santa Anna overthrew the constitutional government of Mexico, leading to rising tensions in the area. The conflict and tension in Mexico between those who favored either the federalist or the centralist form of government was an undercurrent of the Texas Revolution and a complication for the Mexican government while trying to hold on to Texas.

Coronado (Francisco Vázquez de Coronado)

In 1936, as Texans were nearing the 100th anniversary of the winning of its independence from Mexico, the anniversary of a much older event was also approaching, namely the 400th anniversary of the expedition of Coronado. The Texas Centennial took place in 1936 and this so called quad-centennial or quatro-centennial concerns the events that occurred three hundred years before the Texas Revolution and a full eighty years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.

Johnny Horton

John Gale Horton was a country and western singer. He was the son of John Loly Horton (1890-1959) and Ella Claudia Robinson Horton (1892-1966) in Los Angeles, California. He was raised in East Texas. In the 1930 census, Johnny was the youngest of five children (three sons and two daughters) and his father John listed his occupation as farmer, probably a sharecropper. In the census form, Johnny is called “Gayle.” By 1940, the family was living in Cherokee County, Texas, Johnny’s father’s occupation was listed as farmer and by that time, the family consisted of the parents, Johnny’s older sister and himself. His name was spelled “Gale” in this census form.

David and Hannah Burnet

David Gouverneur Burnet was born on April 14, 1788 in Newark, New Jersey to Dr. William Russell Burnet (1730-1791) and Gertrude Gouverneur Burnet (1725-1791). Dr. Burnet had been married twice, first to Mary Camp (1737-1781) with whom he had at least eleven children. After Mary died, Dr. Burnet married Gertrude, with whom he had another three children of which David was the youngest. The Burnet family was quite well known and influential in the early days of New Jersey. Many of the adult sons enlisted in the militia upon learning of the Battle of Lexington. Dr. Burnet had previously opened a medical office in Newark. During the Revolutionary War, he became surgeon general of the eastern army. One account stated that Dr. Burnet was stationed at West Point and was in the room with former patriot and traitor Benedict Arnold when he received a letter from a messenger that a British officer, a Major Andre, had been captured. Arnold knew that his activities in cooperation with the British were about to be exposed. During the war, the Burnet family hosted George and Martha Washington. Dr. Burnet and Mrs. Burnet died rather suddenly in 1791. Both of David’s parents having died when he was three years old, he went to live with two of his half brothers, Jacob and Isaac, in Cincinnati, Ohio.