Does the name “Lawrence Gibbons Alexander Steel” ring a bell?
It would if you had lived in Fort Worth 160 years ago.
Steel was born in Virginia in 1820. His father, an Episcopal minister, moved the family to Texas in 1839 and settled in Harrison County.
In the 1840s young Lawrence farmed in Harrison County, growing cotton and corn.
In 1843 he married Elizabeth Beatty in Louisiana.
By 1850 the Steels had moved south to Panola County.
In 1854 they moved west to Fort Worth. Here Steel and Julian Feild opened a general store on the southwest corner of the public square.
In 1855 Steel and Feild were founding members of Fort Worth’s first Masonic lodge. The lodge’s first meetings were held in a room above the store.
In 1857 Steel sold his interest in the store and moved to the northwest corner of the public square, where, according to historian Oliver Knight, he bought from E. M. Daggett a former stable of the abandoned Army fort and converted it into Fort Worth’s first hotel.
The hotel officially was the “Fort Worth Hotel,” but because it had a bar, it unofficially was known as “Steel’s Tavern.”
Steel bought a sixteen-inch bell, cast in London in 1782, and mounted it on a log scaffold in front of his hotel.
He originally rang the bell to announce meal times for hotel guests.
But the bell soon was drafted for other duties. Fort Worth pioneer J. C. Terrell wrote of the bell: “It rang out the old year and rang in the new. It sounded the fire alarm, called to divine service, rang out merrily for weddings, and tolled dirges for the dead.”
In 1856 the bell got one more duty: to announce arrival of stage coaches. The first stage coach, carrying mail between Dallas and Fort Belknap, arrived in July. The hotel served as the stage coach depot. Passengers could buy tickets in the hotel and wait for the stage.
Beside the hotel were three ancient live oak trees growing in a tight cluster. Stage coaches parked in their ample shade.
Two years later Fort Worth’s world expanded even more. Fort Belknap became a stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail stage line. Now Fort Worth residents could depart Steel’s Tavern for Fort Belknap and from there travel to Memphis, Tennessee or to San Francisco.
Steel’s Tavern was Fort Worth’s first gateway to the world, the DFW International Airport of its day.
In 1858 Steel advertised his hotel for sale. But he had added one more improvement: a two-story concrete extension, said to have been the first concrete building in Fort Worth. On the first floor the hotel had a dining room, a tavern, a sitting room for women. and a lounge for men. Bedrooms were on the second floor.
In 1859 Steel found a buyer for his hotel: A. T. Andrews.
And here the histories of Lawrence Steel and his hotel and his bell diverge. Let’s follow Lawrence Steel’s footsteps first.
Lawrence Steel
After selling his hotel Steel served as justice of the peace.
The 1877 Fort Worth city directory has a profile of Steel that says: “He then purchased a large stock of cattle, located them in Palo Pinto County, and removed with his family to a farm ten miles west of Fort Worth, which business of farming and stock-raising was pursued with marked success.”
In 1859 Birdville demanded a second do-over election to determine the county seat. Steel was among Fort Worth boosters who signed a bond promising that if Fort Worth remained the county seat in the 1860 do-over election, a new courthouse would be built here at no cost to taxpayers.
The 1877 city directory continues: “In 1861 the call of his beloved South required his services in defense of her rights and to the call he promptly responded and was elected first lieutenant in Company K of Colonel [William] Steele’s regiment [7th Texas Mounted Rifles], Sibley’s Brigade, which did good service in Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana. After the battle at Galveston, and the capture of the Union [revenue cutter] Harriet Lane, he at Houston was taken sick and sent home, and general bad health prevented him joining the army afterwards.”
Steel’s wife Elizabeth had died in 1860. In 1862 he married Mrs. Elizabeth Angeline Milliken, a daughter of Richard Gholson, governor of Washington Territory.
After the Civil War Steel served as a county commissioner.
And in 1868 he and his wife were among six founders of New Prospect Baptist Church. The church still exists as “First Baptist Church of White Settlement.” The original church stood where today is a runway of the Naval Air Station/Joint Reserve Base (Carswell Air Force Base).
About 1870 Steel sold his farm and returned to the mercantile business in Fort Worth.
By 1880 he had retired. He and his wife lived on Throckmorton Street.
Lawrence Steel died in 1894. I can find no obituary for him except this mortuary notice in a Dallas newspaper for “Samuel” Steel. But the age, date of death, place of death, and last name indicate it’s Lawrence Steel. Fort Worth city directories of the 1890s list no Samuel Steel.
The Bell
During the Civil War Lawrence Steel’s bell—unlike many others in the South—escaped being “drafted” and melted down to make cannon for the Confederacy.
In 1871 Steel donated the bell to his Masonic lodge to use at its hall, built in 1855 at Jones and Belknap streets. Now the bell had two new duties: to call Masons to lodge meetings and to call students to classes held in the lodge hall.
The Hotel
By 1873 the hotel founded by Lawrence Steel had become the “Trans-Continental Hotel,” operated by Cyrus King Fairfax.
In 1875 the Trans-Continental was bustling, most of its guests arriving in town on six stage lines.
But with the arrival of the railroad in 1876 Fort Worth needed many more hotel rooms. Hotels, such as the Clark House, were built near the passenger depot.
In 1877 King and the Trans-Continental hosted a wine supper celebrating Fort Worth’s victory over Dallas in baseball. Among the Fort Worth players was Charles James Swasey, who had played baseball just after the Civil War before fielders wore gloves.
Another guest in 1877 was John Henry (“Doc”) Holliday. Holliday had briefly practiced dentistry in Dallas in the early 1870s before moving on to Dodge City. In 1873 he and partner Dr. John A. Segar won awards at the county fair.
On July 4, 1877 Holliday was gambling with Henry Kahn in Breckenridge, Texas when the two men disagreed. Holliday beat Kahn with his walking stick. Both men were arrested, fined, and released. As so often happened, later that day the two men renewed hostilities. This time Kahn shot Holliday, who was seriously wounded. In fact, the July 7 Dallas Weekly Herald reported that Holliday had been killed.
But Doc had not died. He had merely gone to Fort Worth.
According to the University of Maryland’s National Museum of Dentistry, Doc Holliday, to recuperate, checked into the Trans-Continental Hotel with cousin George Henry Holliday. George was the son of Dr. John Stiles Holliday, for whom Doc had been named.
Note the mention of General J. J. Bryne, who in 1880 would foresee his own death. (Photo from Wikipedia; thanks to Frank Gossett for the tip.)
Later in 1877 Fairfax left the Trans-Continental to build and operate the magnificent (three stories!) El Paso Hotel on Main Street at West 4th Street.
But the Trans-Continental Hotel survived, still served by at least two stage lines, including William Harper’s daily hack line to Decatur . . .
and Charles Bain’s stage line. Note that Bain boarded at the Trans-Continental. At least three stage drivers served the hotel, including one driver who boarded there.
In those days hotels weren’t for just travelers. Boarders at the Trans-Continental included banker Alfred M. Britton, a cattle dealer, merchant B. C. Evans, William T. Fakes of the Fakes furniture family, a livery stable owner, a newspaper editor, and liquor wholesaler Swasey.
By 1878, two years after the railroad arrived, the Trans-Continental had even more competition. In fact, there were two other hotels on the courthouse square, which was located a mile from the train depot.
By 1885 the hotel had been renamed the “Lindell Hotel.”
A 1907 Telegram article says that the hotel was destroyed by fire—probably in the early 1890s—and that for years only the stone steps leading from the street up to the front gallery remained. Those steps were the “loafing place of oldtimers” until the steps, too, were removed later in 1907.
Over its long lifetime the hotel founded by Lawrence Steel hosted some notable guests, including General Edward Tarrant, Middleton Tate Johnson, Sam Houston, and governors James Throckmorton, Sul Ross, and Oran Roberts.
Today what tangibles remind us of the days of Lawrence Gibbons Alexander Steel, his hotel, and his bell?
For starters, Steel has a star on the Texas Trail of Fame on West Exchange Avenue at the stockyards.
His tombstone is in City Greenwood Cemetery in Weatherford. (Photo from Find a Grave.)
His bell—affectionately named “Mason”—remains just where Steel left it in 1871: in the safekeeping of Masonic lodge 148, which today meets in the lodge’s 1932 fortress of fraternity. The bell—cast when the United States was only six years old—is easily one of the oldest relics of Fort Worth. And it still finds work. For example, it was rung at the dedication of the Fort Worth Police and Firefighters Memorial in 2009 and at the wedding of a Lawrence Steel descendant in 2010.
And today on the bluff just east of the Criminal Justice Building three ancient live oaks—“Steel’s trees”—mark the location of the fort that became a city and of that city’s first hotel.
