Thursday, March 28, 2024 Mar 28, 2024
59° F Dallas, TX
Advertisement
Publications

DALLAS’ FIRST FAMILIES

Old money still survives
By Ruth Miller Fitzgibbons |

WHEN YOU’RE TALKING about old Dallas money, the first logical question is, how old is old? Antiques are not considered precious until a century has gone by. Dallas was barely a trading post 100 years ago.

But even though our oldest money isn’t old, our early wealth appears to have been substantial. Comparing today’s dollars with turn-of-the-century dollars is like gauging wooden nickels against gold coins. All the same, most historians would agree that in 1900, a man with a quarter of a million dollars was a wealthy man indeed. For that matter, a family with indoor plumbing was conspicuously blessed. Judging by the lavish houses, the social revelry and the philanthropy, early Dallas had many families that would qualify as rich.

And, no surprise, a great many of those families are still around. For example: The Schoellkopfs- Buddy Schoellkopf (two generations removed from a fortune in saddles) flies orange helicopters from place to place with his wife, a Hunt heiress who renovated the Mansion. The Carpenters-Ben Carpenter and his brother-in-law, Dan Williams, are building Las Colinas atop the ranchland where their father liked to ride and hunt. The Exalls-the original Henry Exall raised and bred thoroughbred racehorses on a multi-acre farm near Lomo Alto, not far from the neighborhood where several generations of Exalls now reside.

And there are others. Some prefer to keep quiet. Others are obscured by generations of married names. Even the Trammell Crows-current beneficiaries of the real-estate boom-can trace their lineage six generations through Margaret Doggett Crow’s family tree. Her great-great-grandfather, James A. Smith, who built the first cotton gin in town, was a contemporary of John Neely Bryan.

You may find Dallas’ old-money heirs elusive, but rest assured that they know who they are. A certain smugness marks descendants of Dallas’ early elite. It’s that feeling of belonging in a city where homegrown roots are rare.



THE FIRST fortunes in Dallas were amassed by the men and women who had the fortitude to stick around a town that had no real reason to be. Unlike other cities that grew because of a natural harbor or a gold mine or superior land resources, Dallas had little going for it besides the hype of its founders. John Neely Bryan was described by Leon Harris in The Merchant Princes as “the first in a long line of expert promoters reluctant to use hyperbole if an outright lie might prove more effective.”

Whether they bought the PR or not, settlers came, and for many of those who stayed, it paid off. Some farmed the fertile soil or herded cattle on the vast ranch-lands nearby. Others prospered by providing essential services such as saddlery or dry goods or ferry trips across the Trinity River. But Dallas’ premier commodity was, and probably still is, land. Those who invested in real estate quickly grew rich.

Once the railroads came, the banking community grew, the merchants set up shop and the ranks began to swell. Fine houses, lavishly designed and furnished, began to appear. The first fancy residential “suburb” was in South Dallas, a few blocks from downtown and the present site of the new city hall. Two of the most elaborate mansions belonged to Philip and Alex Sanger of the Sanger Bros, department store. One was more grand than the other – fine French furniture, Oriental rugs, priceless chandeliers and woodwork carved by craftsmen imported to the frontier for the task. Down the road lived District Judge George N. Aldredge, an incomparable orator and ancestor to a long line of Dallas gentry.

These rambling houses had liveries, ballrooms for the galas and, in the case of the Sangers, conservatories for year-round blooms. One house built on Ross Avenue in 1894 boasted the only private art gallery in the Southwest.

This pre-establishment of Dallas was interested in the arts-but not terribly. Historians have noted that a production of Hamlet drew a healthy crowd, but so did a premier fight that pitted two prize-winning cocks. The Metropolitan Opera played Wagner’s Parsifal in 1905-then packed its bags and didn’t return for 30 years. The Jewish elite was well-known for its courting of visiting artists and intellectuals-from Horowitz to Margaret Sanger to Sinclair Lewis. Mrs. Elias Sanger particularly, is said to have owned the first – and perhaps the only-true French-style salon in town.

All the comings and goings of the beautiful people were duly recorded in one frothy, exuberant, hysterically archaic journal called Beau Monde. Edited by Alice Parsons Fitzgerald, the paper was known for its effusive reporting, liberally sprinkled with French phrases and occasionally beset by linguistic errors. To wit: In describing a Dallas doyenne’s vacation at a golf resort, Fitzgerald described her as having been spotted “gracefully swinging her caddy.”

Dallas women were already cultivating a taste for fashion, which was nurtured by the city’s clothiers. Carrie Neiman, co-founder of Neiman-Marcus, is remembered as a lady of exceptional style, with a natural gift for imparting it to others. Clothes were her passion. There are women in Dallas today who can remember the thrill of taking the train to New York with Carrie Neiman to handpick their gowns.

Dallas’ old money fled town during the hot summer months. Frances Mossiker, novelist and granddaughter of Alex Sang-er, recalls summers in Europe or in California or in the family “cabin” in Maine. The journeys north, she remembers, were long and hard, made more bearable by the porter hanging wet sheets at the windows to filter the dust and soot.

But leisure was not their only pursuit. These families cared deeply about Dallas, and they gave generously to every avenue of its development. Hospitals, schools, parks, transportation systems, the state fair-all were conceived and supported by these early Dallasites.

For the most part, their fortunes – though substantial-have been eclipsed by the overwhelming oil money of the Coxes, Hunts and Murchisons; the electronic wizardry of the Texas Instruments crowd and Ross Perot; the real-estate bravado of Trammell Crow (who turned his wife’s old money into new money), John Eulich and Bob Folsom.

Some, like Ben Carpenter and his son John, are still in the game, playing for high stakes, going as strong as the first John Carpenter ever did. Others, like Frances Mossiker (a Sanger) are writers, which is another form of risk-taking. The consummate Dallas showmanship of Stanley Marcus has given way to the national managerial scope of his son, Richard. Will Caruth has seen his beloved land dramatically transformed. While others have come and gone, the Higgin-bothams and Schoellkopfs have endured. The Cockrells and Aldredges have moved gracefully into history. Having made it, they now preserve it-both their heritage and their inheritance. They show us what stable wealth can mean in the exhilarating land of the fast buck.

The Cockrells. The oldest money in Dallas belongs to a family whose name few 0people recognize. What’s more, it dates back to a fortune amassed almost entirely by a woman.

Sarah Horton Cockrell and Alexander Cockrell came to Dallas for an important reason: They owned it. For $7,000, the Cockrells had purchased Dallas’ unsold building lots and the ferry concession from John Neely Bryan. They seemed to know just what to do with their new town. They quickly opened its first steam sawmill, began a brickyard and contracting business, put a toll bridge across the Trinity and began building a three-story brick hotel. Then young Alexander was shot in the back on Main Street by a town deputy who owed him $200 and, presumably, didn’t want to pay.

Though she was left to raise four young children alone, Sarah Cockrell carried on with the family enterprises, adding many ventures of her own. All of the Cockrell businesses, including the town’s pride and joy-its “skyscraper” hotel-flourished under Sarah’s meticulous, energetic control.

One of Sarah’s largest undertakings was the erection of the first iron bridge to link Dallas with what later would become Oak Cliff. Just months after her husband’s death, the red-cedar bridge he had built collapsed. Sarah immediately reopened the ferry charter, then formulated a plan that would solve the problem for good. What was needed was a toll bridge, she said, but many of Dallas’ leading businessmen disagreed. They drew up a lengthy petition asking the state Legislature to deny Sarah’s franchise request. Undaunted, Sarah traveled on horseback and by carriage to appear before the legislators in person – the first woman in Texas ever to do so. It worked. The toll franchise was granted. Sarah ordered her bridge through a mail-order catalog, and her victory was complete.

When Sarah Horton Cockrell died, her real-estate holdings were so vast that her will was printed in a 24-page pamphlet. The precise value of her estate is not known, but one of her descendants, Mackie Cockrell Dealey, has lived “very comfortably” on her inheritance for the past 13 years-and she estimates her share at about one-twenty-fourth of the original sum.

The Cockrell clan is scattered all over the United States. Those descendants that remain in Dallas-and there are few that bear the name-were honored in 1976 by the placement of a historical marker at the site of the Cockrell homestead downtown. It should serve as a reminder that our city’s first wealthy businessman was not a man at all.

The Sangers. This story begins in a little hamlet in German Bavaria, from which the five Sanger brothers immigrated to the United States at two-year intervals in the 1850s. These sons of Elias Sanger begar their new lives working in and around New York City. All five ended up in retailing.

Isaac, the eldest, migrated to Texas in 1857 or 1858, and with some assistance from a New York merchant, opened a store in McKinney. He was soon joined by his brother, Lehman, and they added two more stores-in Weatherford, then De catur. When the Civil War intervened Isaac and Lehman-plus a third brother Philip-joined the Confederate fight.

After the war, the brothers continued to open a string of stores, tracking the Houston and Central Railroad’s expansion north. In 1872, they arrived in Dallas, built a two-story brick building on Courthouse Square and began to concentrate their efforts here. By the 1890s, Sanger Bros, was earning $3 million annually.

While Lehman and Samuel Sanger managed the store in Waco and Isaac became buyer for the firm in New York, Philip and Alex cut a wide swath through Dallas.

Though they lived frugally while struggling to launch their business, once success came, they indulged themselves in luxury. Writer Leon Harris, himself the scion of a Dallas department-store family (A. Harris, which later merged with Sanger’s), offers this rationale: “The storekeeper’s family had to set the style for how families should live-how they should build, furnish and decorate their houses; train and costume their servants; and how they should entertain.”

Their extravagant homes in “The Cedars” (a posh residential area in South Dallas) were showplaces. No expense was spared. Philip’s turreted, verandahed mansion, a copy of a summer estate he had seen on the Jersey shore, was so grand that writer Edna Ferber is said to have remarked, “It’s worth a trip to Texas just to see it!”

Philip was a formal, dignified man – the brains behind the business-who reportedly enjoyed extravagance. It has been said that he sent his white linen collars to be laundered in New York!

Philip’s daughter, Lois, in what was considered a most fortunate match, married into another of Dallas’ distinguished families, the Linzes, founders of the jewelry store. Their son, Joe Linz, and his family are still in Dallas today.

Alex was the outgoing brother, whose geniality and compassion are remembered with tremendous fondness by his granddaughter, author Frances Mossiker, who recalls growing up in the stately brick house downtown, equipped with three separate dining rooms, hothouses, chandeliers from Louis Comfort Tiffany, and her favorite room: a voluminous library in which an ivory board was hung to record the comings and goings of the books.

The Sanger brothers’ mystique began to fade in the Twenties when the stores were sold. The families moved from South Dallas, and the houses were left to decay. Many of the magnificent furnishings were sold, with only remnants left to Sanger heirs-remembrances of an era of lost elegance.

The Schoellkopfs. The Schoellkopfs’ money dates back to 1869, when Gottlieb Heinrich Schoellkopf was sent to Texas to carry buffalo hides back to Buffalo, New York. German-born Gottlieb had joined his uncle’s tanning business in the East several years before. He never made it home.

Gottlieb stayed in Dallas and established the G.H. Schoellkopf Company, which was for a long time the only saddlery in the state. When the horse lost out to the automobile in the early 1900s, the firm diversified. Gottlieb’s two sons, J. Fred and Hugo, made sure the Schoellkopf Co. kept pace with the times.

Buddy Schoellkopf, whose wife, Caroline (a Hunt), bought the Mansion and brought the 21 Club to Dallas, is Hugo’s son. A rift in the family business years back sent Buddy off in his own direction, marketing sporting equipment and leather goods and running a charter helicopter service called Pumpkin Air.

J. Fred Schoellkopf married another Dallas fortune. His bride, Bess, was one of five daughters of J.B. Wilson, a Canadian-born cattleman turned banker, who at one time was chairman of City National

Bank. Wilson grew rich in Dallas through shrewd investments-mostly real estate. One of them was the downtown Wilson Building, now empty and the subject of a classic save it/raze it debate.

J. Fred and Bess, who incidentally and ironically were born in the same East Dallas house, had two sons-Wilson and J. Fred Jr.-both now retired. Of the fourth-generation Schoellkopfs, the best-known is Wilson’s son John – who ran for mayor in 1975 and was defeated by Wes Wise. He retreated to his Athens farm to raise blueberries, but now is back in Dallas. We probably haven’t heard the last from the Schoellkopfs.

The Caruths. It’s impossible for some to drive through North Dallas and not think of the Caruths. If you’re locked in a traffic jam on Central, gaze in either direction and you’ll see what is, or once was, Caruth land.

William and Walter Caruth came to Texas in 1848 and founded a general store on the banks of the Trinity as a means of getting started. At the same time, they began buying acreage to the north of town. The Caruths weren’t guided by any urgent vision of future growth. They were interested in the soil-soil that Walter Caruth called “the most fertile black earth in Dallas County.” By the turn of the century, they owned some 30,000 acres extending roughly from just north of downtown to the present-day Forest Lane, bounded on the east by Abrams and on the west by Inwood Road.

One of the properties had a little frontier farmhouse with hand-hewn wood shingles and oak logs for joists. In this house, which still stands on the Caruth homestead, William Walter Caruth was born.

Will Caruth Sr. inherited more property in Dallas than any other man here had ever owned, but he never thought of harvesting it for development. His crops were cotton, cattle and dairy products.

So the huge legacy fell into the hands of the third generation – Will Caruth Jr. Acting almost as an instrument of destiny, he released the family holdings and let Dallas sprawl through. (Some of this land is still the subject of intense zoning fights at City Hall.)

In the process, Will Caruth Jr. put millions of dollars into the family trust, but cut himself out of his parents’ will. “All I inherited from my mother and father was a grand piano,” he says in his whisper-soft but still commanding voice.

The vast inheritance will hopscotch past Caruth to his four sons. But not one of them will carry on their father’s work. “I once asked my second son, George, if he wanted Caruth Building Services,” Will says. “It would have provided him with an easy $25-$40,000 a month. He shook his head and said, ’Dad, you’re an awful hard act to follow.’ “

Instead, George lives quietly with his family in the plantation-style house his grandmother built. John Clark Caruth is involved with making guitars, and the youngest son, Bob, is recovering from the loss of his bride of eight months in a boating accident.

The Higginbothams. It was 1913 when the Rufus Higginbothams moved to a grand new house on Swiss Avenue. Dallas’ high-society style of life was in full swing. Why, then, does it seem that the Higgin-bothams are among the oldest of the old money? Because when they got here, they were already rich.

Rufus and Joe Higginbotham were two of 12 children who left Mississippi to settle in Dublin, Texas, after the Civil War. In this little town southwest of Fort Worth, the Higginbothams launched a variety of businesses – from dry goods to undertaking. The brothers were canny businessmen, and before long they felt it was time to take on Dallas.

Rufus’ wife, Hattie Smith, was far from thrilled at the prospect of relocating from Dublin to Munger Place. She told her husband that she wouldn’t budge until the mortgage had been paid on the old Dublin Baptist Church. So he paid it.

The Higginbotham house had been designed, constructed and fitted with all new furniture from Grand Rapids, Michigan, before Hattie Smith ever laid eyes on it. To her granddaughters, Laura Trim and Mary Jane Wilson, who live in Dallas today, it seems incredible that the lady of the house would have so little say in its development.

Once the family was settled in, Rufus turned to the task of educating his three boys and five girls. The boys were enrolled at The Terrill School and the girls at Hock-aday, which at the time was limited to an enrollment of 50. The family has continued its support of Hockaday through the years, counting seven direct descendants of Rufus who have served as president of the alumni association. There have been more, too, if you include in-laws. A board member once remarked to a newcomer in town, “You have to watch for hidden Hig-ginbothams around Hockaday.”

Though Rufus was a generous philanthropist, he also loved extravagance. Once while shopping for a fur for his wife, he became enamored of silver snapping foxes – and bought seven more for his daughters and daughters-in-law.

Joseph Morton Higginbotham joined his brother in Dallas seven years later, ensconcing his household in a pink stucco villa on Lakeside Drive. His descendants have been the mainstays of the Higginbotham interests-all of which, according to Lanham Higginbotham, are still going strong.

There are literally scores of Higginboth-ams around Dallas, and they’re a close-knit clan. Rufus’ granddaughter, Laura Trim, is the author of a local guidebook, North Texas, Every Nook and Cranny. Louise Mosely Smith, a great-granddaughter, heads the theater division of the Arts Magnet School. Another of that generation, Peggy Oglesby, is a recent president of the Junior League and one-time designer of puzzles for D Magazine. Several years ago, the Higginbothams published a cookbook of family recipes for their friends, entitled This Little Higgy Went To Market. The Higginbothams have been doing well in this market for most of this century.

The Aldredges. If there’s a thread that runs through the Aldredge family, it’s a sense of Dallas history and an interest in preserving it. That’s probably because the Aldredges were central to shaping Dallas.

The original Aldredge was George Nathan, a Georgia-born lawyer who came to Dallas to practice in 1873. He was named attorney for Dallas County in 1875, and in 1878, he became a district judge. George is remembered as a man with a brilliant wit and a gift for words; a prime example is a telegram he shot off to his son when he was away at school. It seems that young George was an accomplished athlete, who had let his grades slide. In response to a letter that included the son’s report card and a batch of newspaper clippings detailing his sports triumphs, Judge Aldredge wrote back: “Feet seem fine. Send head home.”

George’s half brother, Jefferson Davis Aldredge, made his mark on Dallas, too. He built a popular public bath and fountain, tapping mineral pools beneath the spot where Cobb Stadium once stood. The wells were finally plugged years later when the minerals clogged the pipes.

The judge and his wife raised three sons in Dallas. George N., the athlete, became a prominent banker and served as a director of Texaco for 30 years. He married Rena Munger, daughter of the wealthy cotton-gin genius and developer of ritzy Munger Place in East Dallas. It was George and Rena who purchased the house on Swiss Avenue known as Al-dredge House. Many of their offspring – products of two old-moneyed clans – live in Dallas today.

Son Sawnie Aldredge followed his father into law practice. He moved his family to Oak Cliff-until twice he couldn’t get across the flooded Trinity River to court. Then they moved to Highland Park. Before that, Sawnie was the second-youngest man to be elected mayor of Dallas, and it was his administration that hired the first city planner and drove the Ku Klux Klan out of town.

Sawnie’s wife, Mary Batts, was the first president of the Dallas County Heritage Society. It was she who began the fight to save some of Dallas’ finest mansions, including Millermore, which is now in Old City Park. Mary Batts’ daughter, Mary Lynn McEntire, and her daughter, Lynn Vogt, are active today in the city’s struggle to preserve its past.

The Carpenters. To include the Carpenters in a story on old money is to put the accent more on money than on old. At the turn of the century, John W. Carpenter was in Corsicana working his way up the ranks of the local gas and electric company. Having risen from post-hole digger to president in a mere seven years, he left Corsicana at the age of 26 to become general manager of Dallas Power & Light.

That was 1918. The Carpenters bought a house in Highland Park, and John W. began an incredible ascent in Dallas business and industry that culminated in the development of the Southland Life Insurance Company.

John W. was a natural empire builder, and his entrepreneurial instincts helped shape the future of utilities, insurance and steel in Texas. When he died in 1959, the mammoth Southland Center had just been completed.

John Carpenter was also a man who loved the land. Among other parcels of Texas earth that he bought along the way were several hundred acres to the north and west of Dallas.

It was here that the Carpenters built a country retreat where they could go on weekends to live among the cattle and horses that John Carpenter loved. And it was here that John’s son Ben would found the self-contained city of Las Colinas.

Carolyn Carpenter Williams recalls that her brother Ben was always happiest at the ranch. He spent most of his boyhood there helping his father with the cattle, riding horseback and staging rodeos with his friends.

When Ben Carpenter grew up, he had visions as vast as his dad’s. He left the life insurance legacy to Carolyn’s husband, Dan Williams, while he turned a tiny real-estate firm into the billion-dollar Southland Financial Corp. In the early Seventies the two brothers-in-law gave birth to a dream of their own planned community – with the multifunctions and amenities of a full-blown urban center. When it is completed in the Nineties, Las Colinas will be a new world and another empire for a future generation of Carpenters to look back on.

The Marcuses. If all goes as planned, the history of the Marcus family (and its inextricable subplot, the Neiman-Marcus story) will soon be sung and danced on the Broadway stage. Stanley Marcus’ book, Minding the Store, is going to be a musical.

The plot unfolds as three young southerners-a brother, sister and brother-in-law, are contemplating investing the sum of their savings in a new company called Coca-Cola. “It’ll never go,” says one of the three. Instead, they decide to open a store in Dallas.

One of the young men, Herbert Marcus, had experience in retailing: He was a shoe clerk at Sanger Bros. His talents were quickly apparent, and he was promoted to buyer. Herbert thought a raise was due. Alex Sanger responded by offering him an additional $1.50a week. Insulted, Herbert left the firm.

The rest is history. The history of a man with a prophetic vision of Dallas as fashion capital of the Southwest. The history of his sister, Carrie Neiman, whose superb taste and sense of fashion were to imprint generations of Dallas women.

The second generation of Marcuses had even more impact than the first. It was Stanley Marcus, in fact, who really put Neiman’s on the map. He conceived of the fortnights and the Christmas catalog and the advertising in Vogue. He and his three brothers built Neiman-Marcus into a store of international renown.

The Marcus boys were born on South Boulevard, but in the Twenties they moved to East Dallas. Theirs was an enclave a little further east than the established neighborhoods. Says Stanley’s daughter, Jerrie Smith, “I guess they wanted to go one further than the families on Swiss.”

The store was sold in the Sixties, but Richard Marcus, Stanley’s son, remains the chairman and chief operating officer. Stanley is writing and publishing books. His brother Edward’s wife, Betty Marcus, serves on the park board, having been president of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. Richard is president of the Dallas Theater Center. Jerrie furthers her grandfather’s interest in the Dallas Historical Society as a trustee.

The importance of the Neiman-Marcus legend to Dallas is hard to overstate. Chances are the show will hit Broadway the same way.

More Old Money

Win Davis. A fortune built on land and oil; he was chairman of the Republic National Bank of Dallas and a founder of the Texas Country Day School, a forerunner to St. Mark’s.

Ballard Burgher. Powerful member of the banking community and an early railway entrepreneur. The Burgher home stood at the present site of the Melrose Hotel.

Col. Henry Exall. An early exponent of creating a landscaped parkway along Turtle Creek; his extensive acreage in that area was sold in 1906 to J.S. Armstrong for development as Highland Park.

Albert & Ben Linz. The first jewelers in town.

Harold Volk. Early pioneer merchant and the first to locate a downtown store in a suburban shopping village.

J.B. Wilson. Wealthy cattleman and banker; builder of earliest surviving skyscraper in Dallas-the Wilson Building.

Capt. William H. Gaston. Owned the 400-acre tract of land that eventually became fashionable East Dallas.

William Brown Miller. One of Texas’ cotton kings and builder of the antebellum mansion Millermore, which is now at Old City Park.

C.C. Slaughter. Cattleman and philanthropist, for years the largest taxpayer in the state; gave more than half a million dollars to build what is now Baylor Medical College.

Thomas Field. Early developer of real estate, founder of Dallas’ first opera house and builder of “Field’s Folly,” the colorful Oriental Hotel. He was forced to sell the hotel during the Depression; it eventually burned.

Robert Munger. Cotton-gin genius and developer of Munger Place, a residential enclave governed by deed restrictions and served by the city’s most modern conveniences.

Col. John M. Stemmons. Tennessee lawyer, developer of North Dallas residential plots and original supporter of the massive and successful Trinity River Reclamation Project.

E.O. Tenison. Financial leader, first organizer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and builder of one of the early showplaces on Turtle Creek.

Hugh Prather. Son-in-law of J.S. Armstrong; Prather and Edgar Flippen were developers of Highland Park.

Charles McKamy. He owned the land on which the city of Carrollton grew; the family homestead was on the present site of the Preston Trails Golf Club.

L. Craddock. Pioneer Dallas businessman and investor; donated land for Craddock Park.

Gen. Richard M. Cano. Livestock breeder, Christian minister, Texas legislator and one of Dallas’ leading citizens in the late 1800s.

Judge William Clark. Youngest president of the Texas Bar; son Tom was an associate justice of the Supreme Court; grandson Ramsey was U.S. attorney general in 1967.

Jules Schneider. Wholesale grocer, known for his lavish “musicales.” Schneider founded the fire department and brought gas to Dallas; Mrs. Schneider was a grand dame who founded the Dallas Symphony Club.

Henry Coke. Virginia-born attorney and founder of the law firm Coke & Coke; he and his wife were early supporters of the Dallas YWCA.

Christian Weichsel. One of Dallas’ early bankers, a supporter of the Museum of Fine Arts and a founder of Dallas Country Club.

E.J. “Ward” Gannon. Prominent banker with First National Bank of Dallas, and an early backer of Love Field, Dallas’ first airport.

Henry D. Lindsley. Millionaire mayor, religious scholar and the head of Dallas’ first Citizens Association.

Obadiah Knight. Pioneer farm patriarch with land in what is now Oak Lawn. Knight descendants abound and are interwoven through marriage with Hughes, Cochran and Field families.

Arthur Kramer. One of the city’s leading retail merchants (A. Harris) and theforce behind Dallas’ early efforts to form asymphony. R.M.F.

Related Articles

Image
Travel

Is Fort Worth Really ‘The New Austin’?

The Times of London tells us it's now the coolest city in Texas.
Image
Dallas 500

Meet the Dallas 500: Chakri Gottemukkala, o9 Solutions

The o9 solutions leader talks about garnering a $3.7 billion valuation, growing 10x over the next few years, and how the company is innovating.
Image
Local News

An Early Look at 2026 FIFA World Cup Logistics

The World Cup matches will be held in Arlington, but Dallas will be home to a great deal of team and fan experiences. We're getting an early look at what that will look like.
Advertisement