Concerning the “Tap” Railroad just referred to, I cannot better explain the trials and difficulties of that time than by reprinting an article which I wrote, some years ago, at the request of one of the Waxahachie papers, which was anxious to clear up the seeming mystery which enshrouded the building of the “Tap.”
Dallas, Texas, Sept. 4th, 1912.
Editor Ellis County Herald,
Waxahachie, Texas.
My Dear Sir—Your valued favor of the 26th ult., requesting a history of the Waxahachie Tap Railroad is at hand.
Complying with your courteous request, permit me to assure you and my old friends that it is not my purpose in this to ventilate old grievances at the hands of people who were the greatest beneficiaries of the building of the road, but simply to state facts and to keep the record straight. Carefully considering conditions existing at that time, my board of directors were not so much to blame for their want of confidence in the feasibility and possibility of the enterprise, as this feeling was shared largely by some of the best business men of Houston and Galveston, but were to blame for allowing one or two of their members to control their action in opposing me. I incurred the enmity of these directors through people’s expression of approval of my efforts to accomplish what seemed to them an impossible undertaking.
Entering into this labor of love, without promise of fee or reward, with my board of directors (composed of the principal business men of the town) depreciating my business character by expressions well calculated to bring about ruin, which they accomplished in about two years, it required about all the moral courage in my composition to determine not to recognize such word as “failure.”
Have said this much in defense of this article, which may prove hurtful to the feelings of friends and descendants of the men who have claimed the credit of building the road, but I cannot do otherwise than adhere strictly to facts and truths, as all fair-minded men who were then citizens of Ellis County, still living, will bear me witness. I have never had a public expression of thanks for the enormous sacrifice to me then of ruining my splendid prospect in business to save your town from isolation and ruin.
The object in going into these details is only to emphasize the claim of friends at that time that I was the only man connected with it who did any work, and if the “board” would quit meddling with it, I would soon have the road built. These expressions I tried my best to hold down, knowing well it would increase their opposition to me. Another object: There are few people now in your city who know that I ever had anything to do with it, but I consider it due my children to inscribe in my own history one of the proudest acts of my business career, representing two years of the best labor of my life.
Please do not fail to note that I had to depend on memory altogether for this article, hence its disconnected character, and am entirely unable to supply dates, which, however, is immaterial. I moved to Waxahachie in 1873.