Clayton W. Williams, Sr.

Clayton Wheat Williams, Sr. (April 15, 1895 – September 9, 1983),^[1] was an engineer, a geologist, an oilman, a World War I military officer, a rancher, a county commissioner and civic leader, an historian, and a philanthropist from Fort Stockton, Texas.

Early years, family, education, military

Williams was the fourth child of Oscar Waldo Williams, a Harvard University-educated lawyer who would serve for a decade as the Pecos county judge, and the former Sallie Wheat, hence his middle name. Williams was born in an officers’ building of the former Fort Stockton Army base, which had housed the famous Buffalo soldiers of the American West from 1867-1886.^[2] The Kentucky-born O.W. Williams had prospected for gold and silver in Silver City, New Mexico, before he came to Fort Stockton. O.W. was in New Mexico during the heyday of Geronimo and Billy the Kid. He was also a suspect in the shotgun death of a "rogue" sheriff named A.J. Royal, but the killer was never apprehended, and Clayton Williams, Sr., said that his father was not the culprit.^[3]

After attending Fort Stockton public schools, Williams enrolled in 1911 at Texas A&M University in College Station. To reach TAMU, he travelled by stagecoach north to Monahans (known for its sand dunes) and then took the railroad north-east to Dallas and south to College Station. In 1915, Williams received a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering.^[4]

He was then employed for two years in New Mexico as an electrician for a mining company. In 1917, he joined the officers’ training camp at Leon Springs in Bexar County, and soon procured a commission as a second lieutenant from the artillery school at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. He volunteered for duty in France. Until the end of the war, he was an instructor in military schools in Langres and Cleremont-Ferrand, France.^[4] In 1919, Williams was in Paris, where he joined a group of veterans who formed the American Legion.^[5]

Marriage to Chicora Graham

On September 10, 1928, Williams married the former Chicora Lee Graham (December 17, 1905 – April 13, 1998)^[1] of Sterling City near San Angelo, Texas. Chicora, known as "Chic", was the daughter of Oscar H. Graham (died 1949) and Evie Lee "Mernie" Graham^[6] (1878–1972).^[1] Chicora attended Trinity University, then in Waxahachie, Texas, and graduated from Sul Ross State University in Alpine. She taught school in Gail, the seat of Borden County in the South Plains even before she obtained her degree. Chicora was named for an Indian girl, who slipped food to Chicora’s paternal grandfather, Captain Joe Graham of the Confederate Army, while he was a Union prisoner of war. Chicora’s aunt was the first to bear the name, and Chicora’s granddaughter, known as "Chim", is the third Chicora in three generations of the Williams family.^[7]

Clayton and Chicora married immediately after her graduation from Sul Ross, and the couple honeymooned in the Grand Canyon of Arizona, with Chicora’s mother, "Mernie", accompanying them. Mernie lived with the Williamses after her husband's death and later with their only son, Clayton Wheat Williams, Jr. (born 1931), an oilman who was the 1990 Texas Republican gubernatorial nominee. Clayton, Jr., is wed to the former Modesta Simpson, and he has five children from two marriages. Clayton and Chicora also had a daughter, Janet W. Pollard (born 1935), the widow of Midland oilman Robert W. “Bob” Pollard (1935–2004),^[1] and the mother of four sons.^[8]

Business ventures

From 1919 to 1920, Williams worked as an engineer for the Oil Belt Power Company in Eastland, the seat of Eastland County east of Abilene, Texas. For four years, he was a surveyor and an engineer for the Texas and New Mexico state highway departments. In 1924, he became the chief engineer for the Texon Oil and Land Company, in which position he developed an interest in geology though he had no formal training in the field. He became one of the earliest licensed geologists in Texas,^[4] having taken the lead in the discovery of the Settles and Harding oilfields in Howard County near Big Spring and the first discovery well in the Ellenburger field. Upon Williams’ recommendation, Texon in 1926 drilled the deepest well in the United States until that time, the University 1-B well.^[9] In 1927, he established a water and ice works plant in Crane, Texas, which he operated until 1935, having resigned from Texon.^[4]

In the late 1920s, Williams enrolled for a year of law school at the University of Texas at Austin^[10] but returned to his independent oil and ranching business.^[4]

Outside Fort Stocktown, where the family had an in-town residence, Williams maintained a ranch of thirty-five sections and an irrigated farm of about three hundred to four hundred acres.^[11]

Civic contributions

Active in community affairs, Williams served for eighteen years as an elected Pecos county commissioner,^[10] having been elected in 1936. He was defeated in the 1954 Democratic primary in a contest that focused on declining water resources in the Trans-Pecos country.^[12] For several years, Williams served on the Fort Stockton School Board.^[4] He was a member of the Methodist Church and the Masonic lodge in Fort Stockton.^[4]

Williams achieved distinction as a historian of West Texas. His publications include several scholarly articles and five books: Never Again (3 vols., 1969), Animal Tales of the West (1974), and Texas' Last Frontier: Fort Stockton and the Trans-Pecos, 1861-1895 (1982). The latter work was edited by Ernest Wallace, former professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.^[4] Janet Pollard said that her father "not only wrote history, he made history."^[10]

Williams gave generously to charitable and civic organizations in Fort Stockton, to his alma mater, Texas A&M, and the Permian Historical Society, of which he was a fellow. He also contributed to the Fort Stockton Historical Society and the West Texas Historical Association, both of which he served as president. In addition to his role in the establishment of the national organization, Williams was the commander in Fort Stockton of the American Legion. He was also active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars. His name is engraved on a plaque on the battleship Texas and at the Alamo in San Antonio. In 1974 he was named Fort Stockton's "Outstanding Citizen". In 1982, the year before his death, the West Texas Historical Association dedicated its Yearbook in his honor.

Death and legacy

Janet Pollard often compares her father to the Atticus Finch character, the compassionate lawyer portrayed by Gregory Peck in the novel and the film, To Kill a Mockingbird.^[13] She says that her mother, "Chic", reminds her of the actress Claudette Colbert: “uplifting, happy, inspirational, the kind of person you wanted to be around all the time."^[13]

In 1983, Williams was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He reacted "stoically. ... All is well. I am not afraid." Shortly before his death, the family attended a cattle auction and barbecue at their ranch near Alpine, the seat of Brewster County. A photograph of the couple then taken, presumably their last in public together, is included in the Mike Cochran 2007 book, Claytie: The Roller-Coaster Life of a Texas Wildcatter. The picture is also displayed in the J. Evetts Haley Museum in Midland.^[14] Williams died a few days later the day before their 55th wedding anniversary. Chicora lived another fifteen years. They are interred at East Hill Cemetery in Fort Stockton.^[4]

Clayton Williams, Jr., summed up his father's philosophy as it pertained to Claytie's life: "Heights one day, depths the next. Are you a general today or a corporal?".^[15]

References