The surname was everywhere.
In fact, there was a time in this town when, if you mentioned “Mr. Maddox” in a conversation, your listeners might respond with, “Which one?”
And if you clarified with “The lawman,” your listeners might again respond with, “Which one?”
Because there were four.
And if you mentioned, “Maddox the clerk,” your listeners might respond with, “Which one?”
Because there were two.
And if you said, “Maddox the traveling salesman,” your listeners would know you meant Edward Perryman Maddox.
And if you said, “Maddox the real estate and livestock dealer,” your listeners would know you meant Robert E. Maddox—one of eight brothers who were ubiquitous in Fort Worth in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
R. E. Maddox was the third-born son of Colonel William A. and Mary Mays Maddox. R. E. was born when the Maddoxes lived on a plantation in Louisiana. In 1870 R. E. was a young dry goods merchant in Homer, Louisiana.
The Maddoxes moved here in 1873, and R. E. continued to work in the mercantile business, clerking for S. P. Tucker in his grocery store. But in 1876 Maddox was elected city tax assessor-collector.
He would be reelected several times into the 1880s.
Maddox in 1877 was president of the Middleton Tate Johnson Hook and Ladder Company of the volunteer fire department.
By 1881 Maddox was beginning to buy and sell real estate.
By 1887 he was buying heavily in the Daggett addition, which was land that had been owned by Ephraim Merrell Daggett. Note other early Fort Worth wheeler-dealers: Walter A. Huffman, Frank W. Ball, Richard L. Vickery, Ephraim Beck Daggett.
Maddox prospered in real estate enough to allow him to indulge in his real passion: breeding, buying, and selling livestock, especially horses.
Eight months after Luke Short the gambler finished first in a “shootout” with Jim Courtright, Luke Short the horse—owned by R. E. Maddox—finished fourth to Run-After-Him in a race at the “colored state fair,” probably held at the driving park.
In 1890 the Gazette reported that work was under way on Maddox’s Maddoxia Park stock farm, also known as “Grand Palace Stables.” The 1896 city directory (see above) locates Maddoxia three miles east of the courthouse.
This 1895 map shows Palace Stables about three miles east of the courthouse. By whatever name, the stock farm was also Maddox’s home. Note that Palace Stables was in the E. M. Daggett survey.
This tiny section of map is rich in East Side history: Tyler’s Lake, Polytechnic College, Glenwood, Manchester Mills, the home of George Tandy.
In 1891 the Gazette wrote that Maddox “has long been known as a raiser of fine stock” at Maddoxia Place.
Meanwhile, R. E. Maddox the horseman was not a one-trick pony. Like most capitalists in early Fort Worth, he was diversified. Fort Worth was booming after the arrival of the railroad. In 1881 R. E. and brother Edward Perryman Maddox operated one of the town’s first ice factories.
In 1885 R. E. Maddox and two partners in the ice plant—W. H. Little and N. Wallerich—built Fort Worth Light and Power Company at Cherry and Lancaster streets. The company began lighting city streets in 1890. In 1895 the company contracted to light city buildings for $97.50 a month. But the city soon built its own municipal power plant.
Maddox also was one of the pioneers of the North Side’s stockyards-packing plant complex.
In 1887 Maddox, John Peter Smith, and other local entrepreneurs chartered the Fort Worth Union Stock Yards Company. North of town they built a stockyards and a two-story wooden building to house a hotel for one hundred guests, a livestock exchange, and a bank.
Three years later, in 1890 Maddox, John Peter Smith, E. M. Daggett, Robert McCart, M. G. Ellis, A. T. Byers, and others founded the Fort Worth Dressed Meat and Packing Company.
Right about now I hear you say, “Enough already, Hometown, with the horses and cows and the Daggetts and the Tylers and Tandys. When I was knee high to a line drive, I played Little League baseball at Del Murray Field on Maddox Avenue. Was that street named for R. E. Maddox?”
Glad you asked, Knee High.
The top map shows that Maddox Avenue has existed since at least 1890.
In the bottom map (1907), note that Maddox Avenue ran along the southern edge of the E. M. Daggett homestead (today’s Hillside Park) on the near East Side. By 1907 that was all that was left of the original homestead.
I feel sure that Maddox Avenue is named for R. E. Maddox, but I can’t prove it. But I can offer a few facts in support of that supposition.
First, streets (and additions) were often named/self-named for landowners and/or developers (for example, Evans, Boaz, Burchill). Maddox was a major real estate wheeler-dealer and developed at least one addition.
That addition was Maddox South. In 1894 Maddox advertised twelve hundred acres platted into multiacre lots for sale southeast of the courthouse and a quarter-mile beyond the city limit. As for direction, Maddox Avenue certainly is southeast of the courthouse. (Later in 1894 Maddox proposed donating to the city part of Maddox South addition for a city park that would include, naturally, a race track. He said Sycamore Creek passed through the land. Del Murray Field was located where Maddox Avenue crosses over Sycamore Creek.)
As for distance, unfortunately I can’t find Maddox South addition on any old map or current TAD map, but a map of 1901 shows that the southern city limit then was only two blocks south of Maddox Avenue. So, in 1894 the city limit surely was farther north, making it very possible that a quarter-mile south of the city limit in 1894 would place Maddox South addition approximately where Maddox Avenue is today.
Robert E. Maddox died in St. Joseph’s Infirmary in 1906.
Not in 1907, as his tombstone claims. Robert E. Maddox’s final real estate transaction was a small plot in Oakwood Cemetery.
