Rudder: From Leader to Legend

Notes

PROLOGUE 1. Thomas M. DeFrank, commencement address, Texas A&M University, May 11, 2007, copy in the possession of the author; Thomas M. DeFrank, telephone interview with the author, January 12, 2009. CHAPTER 1. EDEN, TEXAS 1. Eden Echo, Friday, July 29, 1921. The public timetable for the Santa Fe Railroad dated March 1, 1921, shows the scheduled arrival time in Eden as 5:20 pm on train number 53. A copy is in the Railroad and Heritage Museum, Temple, Texas. 2. Texas Almanac and State Industrial Guide, 1926 (Dallas: A. H. Belo, 1926), 241. According to this source, the population of Eden in 1920 was 593. 3. “John Lapp’s Body Returns,” Eden Echo, Friday, July 29, 1921. 4. San Angelo Standard-Times, July 29, 1921; “The Ministry of Pastor Ludwig Karcher: History of Lutheran Church, Eden, Texas, 1916–1966,” collection of Margaret Loveless, Eden, Texas, and copy in the possession of the author. Karcher wrote in his diary that more than two thousand people attended the funeral of John Lapp. 5. Margaret Rose Loveless, interview with the author, September 17, 2004. 6. For an extensive discussion of the boundaries and influences of the Great American Desert, see W. Eugene Hollon, The Great American Desert: Then and Now. 7. The quotation about the fields of bluebonnets was made often by Mallie Jones, born in 1898, to her daughter, Clara Dobson, of San Angelo, Texas. Clara Dobson, telephone interview with the author, October 5, 2007. 8. Eden Echo, September 9, 1937; Ron Tyler et al., eds., New Handbook of Texas (Austin : Texas State Historical Association, 1996), 2:217, s.v. “Concho County,” and Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/hcc21 .html (accessed July 2, 2010). McCall quote from Hazie Davis LeFevre, Concho County History, 1858–1958. 9. Dallas Morning News, January 9, 1955; quoted in the Texas Aggie, March 1955. 10. San Angelo Standard-Times, May 24, 1970. 11. Eden Echo, 1923 (month and day illegible). 12. LeFevre. Concho County History, 37. NOTES 394 NOTES TO PAGES 913 13. Edward Earl Rudder, Sr., “Rudder Family Genealogy,” copy in the possession of the author. The masculine form, “Francis,” was the actual, if misspelled, spelling of the name given to the girl, Francis Jane Tyler Rudder. 14. Francis Tyler Rudder, “Widow’s Application for Confederate Pension,” January 14, 1925, Texas State Library and Archives. 15. New Handbook of Texas, 6:565–67, s.v “Trinity County,” and Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/hct9.html (accessed July 2, 2010); Rudder, “Rudder Family Genealogy.” Annie Clark (Powell) Rudder was born in 1871 and died in 1952. 16. Rudder, “Rudder Family Genealogy.” In chronological order of birth, the children who lived to adulthood were Francis Simmie (1893), J.D. (1899), A.P. (1902), John (1905), James Earl (1910), and Marshall (1913). During April 8–10, 1905, Annie Francis Rudder gave birth to four children (quadruplets), of whom only John survived. Edward Earl Rudder Sr., son of Marshall Rudder and a student of his family’s lineage, found no documents stating names for J.D. and A.P. other than their initials. 17. Petition filed by Annie C. Rudder, March 21, 1939, Records of Concho County Probate Court, 6:151, Estate of D. F. Rudder, deceased. D. F. Rudder died intestate. 18. “City upon a hill” is a phrase associated with John Winthrop’s sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” given in 1630. The phrase is derived from the metaphor of Salt and Light in the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus given in the Gospel of Matthew. Winthrop warned the Puritan colonists of New England who were to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony that their new community would be a “city upon a hill” watched by the world. 19. Rudder, “Rudder Family Genealogy.” 20. Thomas M. Cable, interview with the author, March 5, 2006. Cable is coauthor of A History of the English Language, the standard and most frequently quoted textbook in the field. 21. Evelyn Whitfield Hendricks, interviews with the author, August 14 and September 17, 2004. Evelyn Whitfield was born in Concho County in 1912 and has lived in or near Eden for her entire life. Two years younger than Earl Rudder, Hendricks was his fellow student at Eden High School, where she graduated in 1930. At the time of the interviews, Mrs. Hendricks possessed a remarkably lucid and detailed memory of the Rudder family and Eden during the 1920s. Stephens...