When Lemuel and Elizabeth Overton Edwards settled on a 640-acre Peters Colony land grant on the Clear Fork in 1848 they were among the first one hundred Anglo settlers in Tarrant County. The Army had not yet established its Fort Worth six miles downstream. The first census of the county had not yet been taken.
Three years later when son Caswell Overton Edwards was born, he was said to be the fourth Anglo child born in the county. Young Cass was named for an uncle who had been killed by Native Americans in California in the early days of Anglo settlement.
Like many a boy growing up in the mid-nineteenth century, Cass Edwards spent as much time atop a cow pony as behind a school desk.
Years later he recalled his youth riding over the prairie southwest of town with boys of Native American tribes.
“I suppose I would have made a good Indian for I always liked them, and some of my best chums were among the Indian boys. I spoke the Indian language, that is, I spoke a language which they understand, and they were always very friendly toward me and my family.”
Meanwhile father Lemuel was buying adjacent land grants to enlarge his cattle ranch.
In 1869 Cass, then eighteen, became manager of that ranch and the man of the house the hard way: His brother-in-law murdered his father.
By 1870 widow Elizabeth and four children remained on the ranch. Cass was the oldest child.
While managing and enlarging his father’s ranch, in 1875 Cass began to buy ranchland elsewhere:
Brown County in 1875, Shackelford County in 1876, Crosby County in 1879.
But Edwards continued to live on the Edwards property in Tarrant County. By 1880 he had married Sallie Weddington. She had a son of sixteen. She and Cass had a son, Crawford Overton, age two in 1880.
In 1882 Edwards sold his Crosby County land to C. C. Slaughter and bought out Frank and Will Porter’s herd of three hundred head and their ranch in Lynn County south of Lubbock. Edwards named his new ranch “T-Bar.”
During that era many ranchers leased land for grazing. Cass Edwards preferred to own land. The state had set aside huge tracts of land, the sale of which benefited public schools. Such land could be bought at a reasonable price. Edwards paid his cowboys to buy up to four sections (2,560 acres) of school land at a time—the maximum allowed by state law. Edwards then bought the land from the cowboys.
In 1883 Edwards was among Tarrant County ranchers, including George B. Loving and Ephraim Merrell Daggett, offering a $250 ($7,000 today) reward for information on cattle thieves.
Also in 1883 Edwards, with W. C. Young and Jasper Hays, formed the Tahoka Cattle Company (misprinted as “Topeka” in the clip). Tahoka is a Native American word meaning “fresh water.” The cattle company began to acquire land in Lynn County, and by the end of the 1880s the T-Bar ranch contained about seventy thousand acres.
This 1895 map shows Cass Edwards’s Tarrant County ranch to the east of his father’s original land grant.
In 1903 the town of Tahoka was laid out near the T-Bar ranch. One of the organizers of the new town was W. T. Petty, manager of the T-Bar ranch. Another town in Lynn County is named for Petty.
By the early twentieth century the T-Bar ranch contained about eighty-seven thousand acres, was among the largest of the South Plains ranches, and had become a major contributor to the local economy.
Eventually Edwards bought out his partners and formed the C. O. Edwards and Son Cattle Company with son Crawford Overton Edwards.
In 1918 Edwards, as befit a cattle baron, bought the mansion at 556 Summit Avenue on Quality Hill.
Call it the “Steakhouse”: As far as I know, the mansion at 556 Summit Avenue was unique in that three cattle barons lived there. John Bunyan Slaughter built it in 1898. The next cattle baron owner was W. T. Waggoner. After Waggoner moved to a still larger mansion farther north on Summit, his son Edward Paul occupied the mansion until Edwards bought it. The mansion was demolished in 1949 to make way for the Westchester House, which was imploded in 2018.
Cass Edwards divided his time between his mansion and the T-Bar ranch. In 1933 at age eighty-two he was still able to rope and brand calves. The only ranch task he no longer felt equal to was breaking horses.
The 1935 city directory listed Edwards as a “cattleman,” but in 1936 a stroke took him out of the saddle at age eighty-six.
Caswell Overton Edwards died in 1941 at age ninety.
He is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
His son Crawford Overton died the next year. That double loss left Caswell Overton Edwards II (Crawford’s son and Cass’s grandson) as a primary heir of both the T-Bar ranch and the Edwards property in Fort Worth.
In 1955 C. O. Edwards II and others formed Cassco Land Company to develop the Edwards Fort Worth property, which had grown to four thousand acres since Lemuel Edwards had settled on his 640 acres in 1848. The Star-Telegram described the property as “a rural island surrounded by suburban development.” Five hundred cattle still grazed on the land.
According to the Star-Telegram in 1955, “the sprawling ranch once extended into what is now part of Trinity and Forest Parks, Mistletoe Heights, Park Place, and as far east as 8th Avenue.”
In 2012 the Star-Telegram wrote: “At one time the family owned about four thousand acres, roughly from Vickery Boulevard to south of Interstate 20 and between Bryant Irvin Road and South Hulen Street. About 850 acres remain for development.”
Today the sixth generation of the Edwards family manages the land company.
In rural terms four thousand acres is tiny, a ranchette, but in urban terms it’s a big chunk of dirt. Four thousand acres is the equivalent of six square miles, enough for a small town (Bowie, Alvarado, and Rhome are smaller). This satellite photo shows six square miles overlaid roughly where the Edwards property was.
On the Edwards property were built the Clearfork, Hulen Mall, and Trinity Commons commercial developments. Also the upscale housing additions of Tanglewood, Overton Park, Overton Crest, and Overton Woods.
Just suppose that the spirit of Caswell Overton Edwards were to rise from his mausoleum at Mount Olivet today and fly across town to southwest Fort Worth. If he flew along the Hulen Street corridor at one thousand feet, perhaps humming “Oh, give me land, lots of land,” he would not recognize much. Not after eighty years. Concrete and asphalt, not pastures and prairie. But if he flew lower, say ten feet, he would see these signs:
And perhaps he would realize that he had come home again.
I was fortunate to know Cass casually. He was a most polite and humble man and would always take the time to visit awhile. For a number of years he attended Bible Study Fellowship, meeting at Sagamore Hill Baptist Church on Monday nights.
Are you related to the original Van Zandt family of Fort Worth?
Now THERE’S a story… fascinating and so Ft Worth!
Indeed it is. The Edwards family was Fort Worth before there was a Fort Worth.
The story of white America after stealing land from the Natives!!
You are not wrong.
I knew Cass very well and what a great person. In life you would never know of his wealth as he was as common as could be. He could afford any vehicle but drove a raggedy black Chevrolet Suburban diesel which was a problem vehicle but he drove it anyway. He once ordered several Ford trucks and stated that they could not have a/c or radios. He said ranch hands would not sit around in a hot truck nor have a radio to give them reason to sit around.
Mr. McMeen, thank you for your personal remembrance of an important figure in Fort Worth history.