Biographies
We are accepting biographies for this section. We prefer bios authored by our visitors, please do not not submit biographies that are copyrighted by other folks. Be sure to check The Handbook of Texas Online, sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin and compiled by Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).Excerpts from Articles at the Handbook of Texas Online
Sidney Sherman
(1805-1873)Sidney Sherman, soldier and entrepreneur, came to Texas in 1835 with a company of fifty-two volunteers for the Texas Revolution. At the battle of San Jacinto, Sherman commanded the left wing of the Texas army, opened the attack, and has been credited with the battle cry, "Remember the Alamo." When the fighting was over, he brought his wife to Texas and settled near San Jacinto Bay. When the town of Harrisburg was laid out, he organized the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway Company, which constructed the first rail line in the state. Sherman spent his last years in Galveston, where he died in 1873. Sherman County and the city of Sherman in Grayson County are named in his honor.
Adapted from: "SHERMAN, SIDNEY." The Handbook of Texas Online.
Charles Francis Rudolph
(1859-1929)Charles Francis Rudolph, newspaper editor, was born in Ohio and moved to Texas at the age of sixteen. In 1882, at the age of twenty-three, Rudolph began a successful weekly newspaper that he turned into a daily three years later. Stories of the fertile, sparsely-settled Panhandle, with its prospects for development by the approaching Fort Worth and Denver City Railway, intrigued Rudolph and influenced his decision to move there.
In the summer of 1886 Rudolph moved his family and his newspaper plant to Tascosa, where he established the region's second paper, the Tascosa Pioneer. In 1889 he expanded his printing facilities to Amarillo, where he began the Amarillo Daily Northwest. He discontinued the Tascosa Pioneer in 1891 and moved to Hartley, where he started the Hartley County Citizen.
Rudolph and his family remained in Hartley County until 1896, when they filed on land in the southwestern corner of Sherman County. There they established a ranch on which they grew much of their food, opened a rural school, and ran cattle bearing a C Bar N brand. Rudolph continued editing various area newspapers, most notably the Sherman County Banner, which he published at Coldwater; he also served there for several years as county clerk. In 1901 he moved his family to Stratford. Rudolph died on June 8, 1929, and was buried in El Reno, Oklahoma.
Adapted from: "RUDOLPH, CHARLES FRANCIS." The Handbook of Texas Online.
William Baxter Slaughter
(1852-1929)William Baxter (Bill) Slaughter, pioneer rancher, spent his boyhood in Palo Pinto County and made his first trail drive at the age of fifteen. As early as 1889 Slaughter had begun leasing and buying up tracts of land along Coldwater Creek and in 1895 built a spacious ranch house near the community of Coldwater. Appointed Sherman County judge by the commissioners' court in 1901, he was ever after known locally as Judge Slaughter. Slaughter and his son Coney organized Stratford's first bank and operated a dry goods store. In 1905 he moved to Dalhart to open a new bank there.
After living briefly at Texline, where they established another bank, the Slaughters moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where Bill was installed as president of its Mercantile National Bank and Coney as cashier. In March 1915 the bank in Pueblo folded under a cloud of embezzlement charges. Coney resigned his position and fled to Chicago. Bill Slaughter was tried in court for his alleged role in the bank's fatal losses but was acquitted. After the trials, Bill and his wife resided in Dallas and later moved to San Antonio. Bill Slaughter died on March 28, 1929, and was buried in the old family cemetery at Palo Pinto.
Coney Slaughter evaded the law for eight years before finally being discovered in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania in April 1923. He was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to six years in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. Coney served two years before escaping from prison, but was later arrested at Englewood, Colorado and sent back to Leavenworth to complete his term. After finishing his jail sentence, Coney lived for a time in Dallas before moving to San Antonio in 1931 to be near his widowed mother. Coney Slaughter died by his own hand on March 18, 1932.
Adapted from: "SLAUGHTER, WILLIAM BAXTER." The Handbook of Texas Online.
Cordelia Jane Sloan Duke
(1877-1966)Cordelia (Cordia) Duke, rancher, writer, and game warden, was born near Belton, Missouri. She attended school in Overbrook, Kansas, passed the teachers' examination at the age of sixteen, and taught school for several years in the Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma Territory, before moving to Sherman County, Texas. In September 1906 she began teaching in a four-pupil school on a strip of Texas land between Oklahoma and the XIT Ranch. There she met Robert L. Duke, then foreman of the Buffalo Springs division of the XIT, whom she married on January 9, 1907.
During her years as a ranch wife, Cordia Duke kept a diary in which she noted details of a rapidly vanishing way of life. She used these and reminiscences of the ranchhands in articles for such newspapers and magazines as the Cattleman. Later, excerpts from this diary were used as the basis for a book entitled 6,000 Miles of Fence, which she coauthored with Joe B. Frantz. This book, published in 1961, was the first in the M. K. Brown Range Life Series of the University of Texas Press.
In the 1920s, when the land around the Duke homestead was designated a wildlife sanctuary, Mrs. Duke was appointed game warden, the first woman to hold that job in Texas. She was warden for a number of years and became legendary for her rapport with the thousands of wild ducks that found refuge on the sanctuary during their annual migrations. After her husband's death in 1933, Cordia Duke moved to Dalhart, where she died on July 23, 1966, and was buried.
Adapted from: "DUKE, CORDELIA JANE SLOAN." The Handbook of Texas Online.