Fort Worth Characters

Chapter 9: Wayward Policeman Thomas Finch

174 There is a big difference between dying while a police officer and dying in the line of duty. Ever since 9/11 there has been a wave of popular sentiment nationally to honor fallen peace officers, including those who died decades ago and have been forgotten. Thomas Finch was a commissioned, badge-wearing Niles City policeman when he died, but he did not fall in the line of duty. He was a victim of the unwritten law that has governed marriage since ancient times. The only question is whether he violated that commandment or was set up. Thomas E. Finch was born in Wise County, Texas, in July 1877 to Amos and Emma Boyd Finch. The Finches came to Texas from Mississippi during Reconstruction, and Thomas was the first of four children born to them in Texas. His brother Jessie came along in 1879, sister, Stella, two years after that, and brother Drew on January 7, 1885. That was a date Thomas never forgot because Emma Finch died giving birth to Drew. Papa, who was a Wise County justice of the peace, was left to raise three young children and an infant on his own.1 All of Wise County in 1880 had only 579 people. The small hamlet of Decatur was the county seat. The last Indian raid had occurred three years before Thomas was born. Before 1882, regular stage service linked Decatur to Fort Worth, forty miles away. In that year, the Fort ChapTeR 9 Wayward Policeman Thomas Finch Wayward Policeman Thomas Finch / 175 Worth and Denver City Railway reached Decatur on its way north, making travel between the two towns much easier and faster. Because of Amos Finch’s work the family lived in town. He carried out his JP duties in what was generously called “the courthouse,” a forty-byforty foot, two-story frame building with weatherboard siding erected in 1861. The little town’s population jumped to 1,746 by 1890, and it built a beautiful granite courthouse that rivaled Fort Worth’s, but it still lagged behind Fort Worth in all important measures.2 What is known of Thomas’ upbringing is that the apple did not fall far from the tree. Like his father, he was drawn to law enforcement although in a different capacity; he preferred to put his faith in a Colt and a Winchester rather than a set of law books. Also, he did not answer the calling until relatively late in life. His personal life, what little is known about it, was quite conventional. He married a Wise County girl, May, and they had two children. The youngest, born in 1898, was named for his brother Drew. Something unfortunate happened because soon after the turn of the century Thomas was single again, and his children were living with their maternal grandfather. While still living in Decatur he met Leona Helm, older by one year, and they married in December 1904. Thereafter, he did not speak of May nor acknowledge their children, leaving the impression that Leona was the only wife he had ever had. He started a new family with her that eventually grew to four children: William (b. 1908), Mary Emma (b. 1910), Ruth (b. 1912), and Lundy (b. 1914).3 Looking to make a better life for himself and his family, Thomas brought them to Fort Worth in 1911 where there were more opportunities for an ambitious young man with a growing family to support. He was not interested in either farming or ranching, which were still the principal occupations back in Wise County. He had struggled trying to sell life and casualty insurance to his friends and neighbors; now he hoped to parlay that experience into a better position in the same field in Fort Worth. He went to work as an agent with Southland Life Insurance Company and did well enough to buy a small house in the Diamond Hill Addition of North Fort Worth, three-quarters of a mile from the stockyards. He and Leona got used to the unpleasant smells emanating from the stockyards and packing plants, which were not so very different from the smells of the farming community where they grew up. The following year, after Ruth was born, he moved the fam- Fort Worth Characters / 176 ily into a larger house on North Main, still within smelling distance of the stockyards, however. His brother Drew came down from...