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William
Perry Herring
McFaddin,
cattleman and
capitalist,
son of Rachel
(Williams) and
William
McFaddin,qv
was born in
Beaumont,
Texas, on
February 5,
1856. He
attended Texas
Military
Instituteqv
at Austin for
one year and
also took a
business
course in St.
Louis,
Missouri. He
entered the
cattle-raising
business with
his father and
at twenty-two
started to
acquire land
with his first
purchase of
4,428 acres.
His ranching
interests at
their largest
extent
comprised
approximately
120,000 acres
in Jefferson
County and
48,000 acres
in Knox and
King counties.
With his
father,
Obadiah Kyle,
and Valentine
Wiess, he
formed several
companies-land,
rice-milling,
canal and
irrigation,
and oil-of
which he was
the managing
partner.
Arthur Edward
Stilwellqv
bought the
townsite for
Port Arthur
from the
McFaddin's
Beaumont
Pasture
Company, and
it was on land
leased from
the McFaddins
that Anthony
F. Lucasqv
drilled the
Lucas Gusher,
the discovery
well of the
Spindletop
oilfield.qv
The McFaddins'
canal and
irrigation
company built
thirty miles
of canals and
a
200,000-gallon
capacity
pumping plant.
The system,
capable of
watering up to
18,000 acres
of land,
facilitated
the first
large-scale
rice-growing
in the area.
McFaddin
diversified
his family's
holdings,
doubling them
in the
process. He
built downtown
office
buildings in
Beaumont,
bought the
Crosby Hotel,
famous during
the Spindletop
boom, started
a
cattle-feeding
and
meat-packing
operation, and
started one of
the South's
largest
muskrat farms,
producing over
200,000 pelts
a year. He
participated
in early
cattle drives
to Louisiana
and later
shipped by
rail to Kansas
City. The
McFaddin
family was one
of the first
to bring
Brahman cattleqv
into Texas.
McFaddin was
vice president
of the First
National Bank
of Beaumont,
vice president
of the Beatty
Oil Company, a
director of
the J. M.
Guffey
Petroleum
Company, and a
director of
the Beaumont
Board of Trade
and Oil
Exchange. In
1928 his
holdings were
placed in the
McFaddin
Trust, managed
by his sons,
W. P. H.
McFaddin, Jr.,
and J. L. C.
McFaddin.
McFaddin
married Emma
Janes of
Beaumont, with
whom he had
three
children;
after her
death he
married Ida
Regina
Caldwell (see
MCFADDIN, IDA)
of Huntington,
West Virginia,
with whom he
had three more
children. He
died on
November 6,
1935.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Ellis A. Davis
and Edwin H.
Grobe, comps.,
The New
Encyclopedia
of Texas
(2 vols.,
1925?). Judith
Walker Linsley
and Ellen
Walker
Rienstra,
Beaumont:
A Chronicle of
Promise
(Woodland
Hills,
California:
Windsor,
1982). William
P. H. McFaddin
Papers,
McFaddin-Ward
House Museum,
Beaumont.
Rosine
McFaddin
Wilson
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