texas – Page 44 – Texas History Notebook

Holland Coffee and Coffee’s Station

Holland Coffee was born in 1807 to James Ambrose Coffee (1762-1818) and Mildred Moore Coffee (1770-1812). He was the youngest of twelve children. Both parents had died, apparently of natural causes, by the time he was eleven years old and Holland was taken in by his uncle Jesse Coffee in McMinnville, Tennessee. By 1829, Coffee had found his way to Fort Smith, Arkansas. There he, Silas Check Colville, James Mayberry Randolph other individuals founded Coffee, Colville and Company, to supply local settlers, local tribes and trappers with provisions. Around this time, Coffee is believed to have become acquainted with Sam Houston, an acquaintance that would be revisited later.

Gordon “Tex” Beneke

Gordon Lee Beneke was born February 12, 1914 in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas to Frank Snyder Beneke (1890-1966) and Dixie L. Delmage Beneke (1895-1988). Dixie’s parents were Edgar and Ella Delmage. Her parents had been born in France and Germany, respectively, and in the 1900 census, Edgar’s profession was listed as cigar maker and their small family was living in Huntsville, Walker County, Texas. Sometimes very interesting comes out in the census reports. In the 1910 census, Edgar Delmage’s birthplace was shown to be “Atlantic Ocean” as though he were born at sea, perhaps when his family was en route to the United States. Frank’s family tree indicates that his family had been in the United States a bit longer. His own grandfather Beneke had been born in Germany (Prussia). Frank’s profession was listed as pressman, which is to say that he worked in the printing department around the time that Tex was born. He eventually ran the press for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Zale Corporation

Morris Bernard Zale (1901 – 1995) came to Texas with his brother William and their parents Samuel and Libby Kruger Zalefsky (spelled Zalessky in some accounts) in the early 1900s from Shereshov, Russia. Samuel emigrated first and brought his family a few years later, first to New York and later to Texas. The family name Zale was “Americanized” from the name Zalefsky. The family initially settled in Fort Worth, where Morris’ uncle Sam Kruger was already established. Morris attended school in Fort Worth for a few years before he left to work in the jewelry store of his uncle Sam. In the early 1920s, Morris later managed a Kruger jewelry store in Burkburnett, Texas before he opened his own first store in a rented section of a drug store in Graham. There were few Jews in town, but Zale left Graham shortly afterward due to local Klan activity, eventually settling in Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Texas. The Zale brothers and Ben Lipshy (1910 – 1985) founded the company and opened their own store in 1924 at 8th Street and Ohio Avenue on the edge of downtown Wichita Falls. The building that housed their original store, formerly a Kruger outlet, is still standing in Wichita Falls.

Henry O. Flipper

Henry Ossian Flipper was born March 21, 1856 to Festus Flipper (1832 – 1918) and Isabella Buckhalter Flipper (1837 – 1887) in Thomasville, Georga, both of mixed race. Accordingly, he was born a slave. In the 1870 census, Festus was shown to be a cobbler or shoemaker. Henry entered Atlanta University, a historically Black college, in 1873. While still a freshman there, he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, said to be the the fifth such appointment of a person of African American descent. Though his time at West Point was difficult due to prejudice, he graduated in 1877 as a 2nd Lieutenant. Accordingly, Flipper was the first African American graduate of West Point and the first African American commissioned officer in the United States Army.

Mary Jane Harris Briscoe

Mary Jane Harris Briscoe (1819 – 1903) was the daughter of John Richardson Harris (1790 – 1829) and Jane Birdsall Harris (1791 – 1869). She was the sister of three other children, DeWitt Clinton Harris, Lewis Birdsall Harris and John Birdsall Harris. Her father John R. Harris is credited for being the founder of Harrisburg (now Houston), Texas.