Quanah, Texas

Welborn Barton Griffith, Jr., was a United States Army officer, recognized for his heroics in Chartres, France, during World War II in saving Chartres Cathedral. Griffith was born in Quanah, Texas, in a family of five children to Welborn B. Griffith, Sr., and Lula Love (Smith) Griffith on November 10, 1901. Griffith attended Texas A&M University and the United States Military Academy at West Point where he played tackle on the Army football team. He also earned a reputation for his skills as a horseman, a rifle sharpshooter, and a pistol marksman. Before graduating from West Point in 1925, Griffith also participated in boxing, wrestling, and lacrosse. In 1929 Griffith married Alice Torrey, the daughter of an army officer, at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he had graduated from Infantry School. The couple’s only child Alice was born in 1931. In the 1930s Griffith was sent to the Philippine Islands for a short time and then to Shanghai, China, where he was assigned to the Chinese Army as an observer. During his tour in China, Griffith traveled to Japan where he backpacked across the country and took photographs. Suspicious of his activities, Japanese authorities briefly jailed him. After his first marriage ended in divorce, Griffith married Nell Humphrey of Brooklyn, New York, in 1940. With the United States entering World War II in late 1941, Griffith devoted the rest of his life to preparing soldiers for combat. After serving as an instructor at the Command and General Staff School in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Colonel Griffith was assigned as the operations officer (G-3) to the IV Armored Corps Headquarters at the Desert Training Center in California in 1943. He worked with battle operations and training exercises for the organization that prepared it for desert warfare in North Africa. The Corps devoted most of 1943 to battle training first in the California desert and then at Camp Campbell, Kentucky. With the end of the desert war in North Africa, Griffith shifted his focus on military training and operations for the invasion of Western Europe. The organization also changed its name from the IV Armored Corps to the XX Corps, because it included armored and infantry divisions as well as other units. In February 1944, XX Corps departed for England on the Queen Mary and arrived in five days. From its new camp in Wiltshire County in southern England, the Corps devoted the next several months training for D-Day. On July 22, 1944, XX Corps landed on the beaches of Utah beach in the French province of Normandy. By August, XX Corps was attached to the Third Army commanded by Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. In early August the XX Corps entered combat and succeeded in pushing German forces in northern France back to the city of Chartres, where the American Seventh Armored Division encountered fierce resistance from the Germans. On the morning of August 16, 1944, Colonel Griffith, XX Corps commander Gen. Walton Walker , and other officers were informed about German machine gun and mortar emplacements occupying strategic spots in Chartres. During this briefing, Griffith learned that XX Corps Artillery had orders to destroy the medieval Chartres Cathedral. Situated in the city of Chartres southwest of Paris, Notre-Dame de Chartres Cathedral has been heralded as a masterpiece of architecture and sculpture. The cathedral’s original construction dates back to the 1140s, and major reconstruction after a fire occurred mostly between 1194 and 1223. The World Heritage Centre has described it as “the high point of French Gothic art.” Consecrated in 1260, the cathedral combines elements of both Romanesque and Gothic architecture in its twin towers. On August 16, 1944, the XX Corps, believing the Germans were occupying the twin towers, ordered the edifice destroyed. After the staff meeting, Colonel Griffith decided to go to Chartres and determine if German forces occupied Chartres Cathedral. Along with his jeep driver, he entered the city and drove to th

William Jesse McDonald, Texas Ranger captain, was born in Kemper County, Mississippi, on September 28, 1852. He was the son of Enoch McDonald and Eunice (Durham) McDonald and grew up on a cotton farm that included at least six slaves. During the Civil War his father, while serving as a major in the Fortieth Mississippi Infantry Regiment, was killed at the battle of Corinth in Mississippi in 1862. His death left Eunice McDonald and her children, ten-year-old "Bill Jess" and his sister Mary, to manage their farm. After the wartime decimation of the plantation economy, McDonald moved to Texas with his family and settled near Henderson in Rusk County on a farm owned by his maternal uncle about 1866. He spent the remainder of his youth in East Texas and received limited schooling as he worked on the family farm. At sixteen, according to his 1909 biography by Albert Bigelow Paine, McDonald participated in a clash with Union authorities who came to Rusk County to investigate the lynching of several Black men. Townspeople accused the men of lynching McDonald's relative, Col. Peter Green. A mob removed the men from prison and hanged them in retribution. McDonald's biographer later speculated that McDonald took part in the lynching. When federal soldiers arrived in Rusk County to investigate the crime, McDonald and Charley Green, the brother of the colonel, went to the courthouse, where Green shot out windows and eventually tried to take over the building in protest of the federal intervention. The soldiers arrested Green and later apprehended McDonald and tried him for treason, but with the legal defense of David B. Culberson , the military court acquitted him of the charges. McDonald graduated from Soule's Commercial College, New Orleans, in 1872 and, after he returned to Texas, taught penmanship in Henderson. He started a small store at Brown's Bluff near a ferry operation on the Sabine River in Gregg County a year or so later. Around 1875 he established a dry goods and grocery store in Mineola, where he met James Stephen Hogg , then justice of the peace at Quitman. Through Hogg, McDonald met Rhoda Isabel Carter, and they married in January 1876. They had no children. His career as a police officer began in Mineola and spanned nearly four decades. In the early 1880s he served as deputy sheriff of Wood County. Even with his authority as deputy sheriff, a few years later McDonald faced indictments for working outside of his jurisdiction and wounding a man in an attempted illegal arrest. James Hogg, at the time a district attorney, told the grand jury he would refuse to prosecute. McDonald left law enforcement and East Texas after a financial crisis hit Mineola, and he also gave up the grocery business. In 1883 he briefly invested in cattle and drove them west to Wichita County. A year later he sold the cattle and invested in lumber in Wichita Falls. After reinvesting in cattle about two years later, he filed on school land in Hardeman County, where he soon became deputy sheriff, special Ranger, and United States deputy marshal of the Northern District of Texas and the Southern District of Kansas. His bold tactics drove the Brooken (or Brookins) gang from Hardeman, and his raids on cattle thieves and train robbers in No Man's Land and the Cherokee Strip gained him notoriety. In January 1891 newly-elected Governor James Hogg selected McDonald to replace Samuel A. McMurry as captain of Company B of the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers . As a Ranger captain from 1891 to 1907, McDonald played two key roles: investigating crime and carrying out administrative work. His administrative duties ranged from hiring and firing personnel to handling citizen complaints and sending reports to superiors. Early in his career as a Ranger, McDonald engaged in a gunfight with Sheriff John P. Matthews of Childress County in December 1893 in Quanah, Texas. McDonald accused Matthews of conspiring to kill him, but in a statement to the press, Matthews d

Hardeman County is on U.S. Highway 287 west of Wichita Falls in the Rolling Plains region of northwest Texas. The county is bordered on the north by Oklahoma, on the east by Wilbarger County, on the south by Foard County, and on the west by Cottle and Childress counties. Its center is at 34°15' north latitude and 99°45' west longitude. Quanah is the county seat and the largest town. In addition to U.S. 287 the county's transportation needs are also served by State Highway 6 and the Burlington Northern and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads. Hardeman County embraces 688 square miles of grassy, rolling prairies. The elevation ranges from 1,300 to 1,700 feet. The northern two-thirds is drained by the Red River, which forms the northern boundary, and the southern part is drained by the Pease River. Soils range from red to brown, with loamy surface layers and clayey or loamy subsoils. Between 31 and 40 percent of the land in the county is considered prime farmland. The vegetation is typical of the Rolling Prairies, with tall to medium-tall grasses and mesquite or shinnery oak trees. The climate is generally dry, with cool winters and hot summers. Temperatures range in January from an average low of 24° F to an average high of 52°, and in July from 72° to 98°. The average annual rainfall is 23 inches, the average annual snowfall is 7 inches, and the growing season averages 220 days a year, with the last freeze in late March and the first freeze in early November. Lipan Apaches dominated the region in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later the semisedentary Wichita Indians settled along the Red River. After 1700 the Comanches and Kiowas also migrated from the north to hunt buffalo and other game. The county was formed in 1858 from Fannin County and named for early Matagorda legislators Bailey and Thomas Jones Hardeman . Because of its isolation and the continued threat of Indian attack, however, the area remained unsettled during the Civil War and Reconstruction . After the Civil War a few buffalo hunters and ranchers moved to the region, but it was still only very sparsely settled when the county was organized in 1884. In the 1870s and 1880s rustling was among the principal industries, as thieves headed for Indian Territory crossed Hardeman County to reach the Red River. From 1881 to 1884 Wilbarger County administered Hardeman County's legal affairs, though its handful of settlers had few administrative needs. The 1880 population of Hardeman and Foard counties together totaled only fifty, but population increases in Hardeman County and adjacent regions justified organization in 1884 and a change in county lines some years later. Margaret, first called Argurita, was the original county seat. In 1885 the Fort Worth and Denver Railway made a survey through the area, and the site of Quanah was laid out. Since Margaret was across the Pease River from other settlements and from the railroad, an election held in 1890 made Quanah the county seat. As it was decided that a voter could establish residence by having his laundry done in a town for six weeks, all the railroad crews are said to have become citizens in time to vote for Quanah. In 1891 Foard County was formed from Hardeman, Cottle, King, and Knox counties, a division that left Margaret in Foard County. From 1875 to 1890 Hardeman County was principally a ranching area. In early years, before the construction of the railroad, cattlemen of the R2 Ranch, which covered thirty-five square miles of Hardeman County, and other ranchers drove their herds to Dodge City, Kansas. Cowboys picked up the Western (or Dodge City) Trail at Doan's Crossing of the Red River, near Vernon. After the completion of the railroad in 1887, Quanah emerged as an important shipping point for the surrounding area. By 1890 there were some 25,000 cattle on the county's ranches. The arrival of the railroad brought other dramatic changes in the area. Lured by the promise of abu

Built by Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railway as passenger and freight station, in area where Chief Quanah Parker's Comanches prayed and rolled in gypsum, believing it was healing dust. Later Santa Fe Station. Site of holdups and shootings. Has bullet holes, but escaped a 1935 fire that burned entire town. Retired from use, 1959; was moved via Highway 287 to its present site. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1964

After serving as manager of the Cameron lumberyard in Quanah and then as a general manager in Waco, L. Simpson began his own lumber company and returned to Quanah in 1906. In 1910, Simpson had this three-story commercial building constructed to house his offices; other local businesses, including the corner drug store from 1920 until 1998; and the elks lodge, which occupied the top floor. Featuring decorative brick detailing and a corner entry, the Simpson building is a significant part of Quanah's architectural heritage. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2001

The Rt. Rev. Alexander C. Garrett (1832-1924), first missionary bishop of northern Texas, preached to local Episcopalians in a schoolroom when he first visited Quanah in 1887. The property for this church building was donated in 1890 by G. M. Dodge, developer of the Fort Worth & Denver City Railroad. The frame Victorian Gothic structure was consecrated on December 21, 1913, during the Episcopacy of the Rt. Rev. Edward Arthur Temple (1867-1924), Bishop of North Texas. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1976