Recently I had to write several biographical sketches of family members, to be included in a county-genealogy mugbook that’s to come out next year. No one but Mother is still living in Comanche County, but for more than a hundred years both my parents’ families were significant in the county’s history, and I thought someone ought to acknowledge and recognize that. Mother didn’t have the time to write anything and my brother had neither the patience nor the skill to do it, so the job fell to me. And now I think someone besides county families and their descendants ought to get to read about it, so I’m going to post them here. The first one is my mother’s paternal grandfather.
John Franklin Tate was born 21 September 1865, near Fort Payne, Alabama, and came to Comanche County in 1871, along with his parents and ten brothers and sisters still living at home. After a short residence in the Newburg community, near his aunt and uncle Susie and James Cunningham, the Tates settled in the Board Church community, farming a quarter-section of land which they claimed under the Homestead Act of 1873. John married Martha (Mattie) Wetzel 16 January 1890 at Board Church.
John and Mattie first owned and lived in one room of a cotton gin in the Dingler community, but after the gin burned in 1895 along with all their belongings, they moved to Comanche and John opened a general mercantile store on the East side of the square in 1896. Long-time Tate Brothers employee C. E. Straley said that John started out in a wooden stand on the square, and during his first months in business Mattie often threatened to come down, clear the stand out and carry off the stock in her apron—and that she could have done it!
John and Mattie first lived on East Central Street, where their two sons, Karl Franklin (1897–1989, married Angeline (Angie) Slack), George Preston (1900–1979, married Nima McArthur) were born. In 1903 they built a large new house at 705 N. Lane, where Flossie Minerva (1907–1974, married J. V. Carter) was born.
After a fire in 1902 that claimed much of the east side of the square, John and his brother George bought the vacant corner at the south end and expanded Tate Brothers. They divided the stock in 1918; George took the dry goods and moved to a new location, while John kept the grocery and hardware part of the business and remained at the southeast corner. John took his son Preston into the business about 1920, renaming it J. F. Tate & Son. In the early 1930s Tate & Son became a tobacco wholesale business, and in 1937 John sold the corner location to C. B. Baxter, moving into a space at the rear of the building. Several businesses operated from that small storefront: J. V. and Flossie (Tate) Carter, who owned several movie theaters including both the Old and New Majestic Theaters in Comanche, and Preston’s long-time friend and associate J. Vasco Lee, who ran a tobacco and vending machine business.
John continued to “mind the store” while Preston traveled several routes, serving customers throughout North Central Texas. He died at home 25 January 1949, after putting in a full day’s work.
Don’t let me be fnord tonight.
