For whom were these streets near TCU named?
Egbert Railey Cockrell (1872-1934)
Cockrell was born in Missouri. He earned his law degree from Iowa College of Law at Des Moines in 1898. In 1899 he joined the faculty of Add-Ran College in Waco before the college became “Texas Christian University” in 1902. At Add-Ran Cockrell taught history and political and social science. (Photo from History of Texas Christian University by Colby Hall.)
When TCU relocated to Fort Worth in 1910 Cockrell came along to teach government, economics, and history. Cockrell was dean of the school of law for eighteen years.
In 1921 Cockrell ran for mayor on his background in government and economics and was elected.
The next year the city began its “Greater Fort Worth” campaign to annex several unincorporated suburbs, including the eastern and southern parts of “TCU Hill.” On July 22 voters approved annexation of Polytechnic Heights, Arlington Heights, Washington Heights, Mistletoe Heights, and the TCU Hill area. The “Greater Fort Worth” annexation almost doubled Fort Worth’s area and added an estimated forty thousand to fifty thousand people to its population.
During Cockrell’s tenure as mayor the city also created its Recreation Department and bought land for its first municipal golf course—Worth Hills—which abutted the TCU campus.
Mayor Cockrell was elected to a second term in 1923 but in 1924 gave up the mayorship to become president of William Woods College in his home state of Missouri.
In 1925 Cockrell sold his house at the corner of Cantey Street and University Drive to University Christian Church, whose congregation heretofore had met in TCU buildings. The Cockrell house was moved across the street, where it served as a TCU women’s dormitory.
In 1929 the church began building its new home, designed by Wiley Clarkson, on the Cockrell site.
E. M. Waits (see below) was among those officiating at Cockrell’s funeral.
Robert Lee Greene (1863-1930)
The first of TCU’s two “Robert Lee” benefactors, Greene was born in Kentucky. He received his medical training at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and in London and Vienna. But soon after moving to Fort Worth about 1900 he gave up his medical practice to enter the business world: loans and real estate.
In 1910 after TCU announced that it would relocate to Fort Worth and open in temporary quarters downtown at 1st and Commerce streets, Greene—along with E. M. Waits—was added to TCU’s advisory board.
Greene later sold to the university—at a below-market price—the land on which the TCU library was built.
Greene came to the aid of TCU again after the city annexed the eastern and southern areas of TCU Hill in 1922. This map of 1920 shows that most of the TCU campus was in the city, but the areas to the east and south were not until annexation. The city and TCU had agreed to share the cost of paving newly annexed streets adjacent to the campus and of widening the stretch of University Drive (then the southern part of Forest Park Boulevard) that fronted the campus.
Greene and TCU’s second Robert Lee benefactor, Robert Lee Rogers, owned a lot of land surrounding TCU. The two Robert Lees sold some of their land and donated the proceeds to TCU to pay its assessment for the street improvements.
Greene lived on Princeton Street, which is now part of the TCU campus.
E. M. Waits was among those officiating at Greene’s funeral.
Greene willed to TCU much of his estate, which included lots east of University Drive, as well his home on Princeton Street, which was used by the TCU Speech and Hearing Department into the 1970s.
Chalmers McPherson (1850-1927)
McPherson was born in Canada but grew up in Kentucky. He attended Georgetown College in Kentucky, Asbury (now DePaul) University in Indiana, and Eastman’s Commercial College in New York. After teaching school and practicing law, in 1877 he was ordained a minister of the Disciples of Christ denomination. In 1879 McPherson became pastor of a church in Waxahachie. (Photo from History of Texas Christian University by Colby Hall.)
McPherson’s ties to TCU, like Cockrell’s, predated the Fort Worth campus. He became a trustee of Add-Ran College in 1884.
From 1899 to 1904 he was minister of Fort Worth’s First Christian Church.
In 1908 McPherson became endowment secretary for TCU and was involved in the debate over whether TCU would remain in Waco after TCU’s main building burned in March 1910. After the decision to relocate was made, McPherson was involved in the selection of the new location.
After TCU relocated to Fort Worth, McPherson was named university lecturer on the Bible and in 1915 was named professor of New Testament studies at TCU’s new Brite College of the Bible. The college was named for L. C. Brite of Marfa, who donated $30,000 ($780,000 today) to TCU.
E. M. Waits was among those officiating at McPherson’s funeral.
Robert Lee Rogers (1872-1932)
TCU’s second Robert Lee was born in Grapevine but grew up near Jacksboro “in territory,” the Star-Telegram wrote, “often raided by Indians.”
His first business in Fort Worth was a wagon yard and grocery store on Belknap Street downtown.
Rogers was county clerk from 1902 until 1906 and then operated a livery stable until the advent of the automobile forced livery stables to adapt or close. He then began to deal in real estate.
He was on the city’s board of park commissioners when the city bought land for Forest and Sycamore parks.
Rogers owned lots in two additions near TCU: University Place and Berkeley Place. He, like the other Robert Lee, sold lots and donated the proceeds to TCU to pay for its assessment for the street improvements.
Rogers died at his home on University Drive two blocks from the TCU campus.
Thornton Edgar Shirley (1849-1938)
Shirley was born in Kentucky but grew up in Collin County, Texas.
He worked most of his career as a ticket and claims agent for the Houston & Texas Central railroad. (Photo from Find A Grave.)
Shirley’s ties to TCU, like those of Cockrell and McPherson, predated the Fort Worth campus. In 1898 he was named a trustee of Add-Ran College in Waco before the college became “Texas Christian University.” Also named a trustee was James Jones Jarvis, another future TCU benefactor. Shirley became chairman of the board of trustees in 1899 and served on the board until 1917.
In 1899 a motion was made to close the school because of its heavy indebtedness. Shirley refused to honor the motion and instead worked full-time to raise money for Add-Ran, contributing $1,000 ($31,000 today) out of his own pocket.
In 1910, after Fort Worth persuaded TCU to relocate from Waco, Shirley was a member of the locating board that selected the southwest Fort Worth site for the new campus.
Shirley’s family (some members spelling their surname “Sherley”) had a long association with TCU. T. E. Shirley’s nephew Andrew Sherley was a board member from 1920 to 1945. Andrew’s son W. M. Sherley was a board member from 1949 to 1965. And Andrew’s niece Lorraine Sherley was a member of the English Department faculty from 1927 through 1971. By 1968 twenty-seven members of the family had graduated from TCU.
Edward McShane Waits (1871-1949)
Waits, like Shirley, was born in Kentucky. In 1896 he received his A.B. degree from the Bible college of Transylvania University in Lexington and was ordained as a Disciples of Christ minister. (Star-Telegram photo from University of Texas at Arlington Libraries.)
In 1907 Waits came to Fort Worth as pastor of Tabernacle Christian Church, which stood opposite First Christian Church downtown. Waits moved his congregation to Magnolia Avenue, where the church became “Magnolia Avenue Christian Church.”
In 1916 Waits resigned from the church and was named president of TCU. During his quarter-century tenure he led campaigns to improve the financial and educational status of the university. During the Depression he personally knocked on the doors of Fort Worth’s business community to solicit funds to keep TCU open.
During his tenure TCU’s enrollment increased from 367 to more than 2,000 and its faculty from twenty members to more than one hundred. The university’s endowment fund grew from $200,000 to more than $5 million.
Waits received honorary LL.D. degrees from Transylvania University in 1923, TCU in 1923, and Austin College in Sherman in 1924.
Waits was named “Fort Worth’s Outstanding Citizen of 1937” by the Exchange Club and praised as an educator, character builder, loyal friend, and sympathetic adviser. Amon Carter (left) presented the award. (Photo from University of Texas at Arlington Libraries.)
Mike Brumbelow was a TCU assistant football coach during Waits’s tenure. At that time Brumbelow called Waits the team’s “twelfth man.”
“He tries to keep athletics from running the school,” Brumbelow said, “and the school from running our athletics.”
Waits, like Robert Lee Greene, lived on Princeton Street.
E. M. Waits was a university president, but he remained a man of the cloth. During his tenure Waits led most of the chapel services at TCU. He also officiated at many funerals. For example, in 1936 Waits and Amon Carter eulogized their friend Will Rogers. The next year Waits eulogized Evan Stanley Farrington, the Fort Worth school district’s director of physical education. Farrington lived on . . . wait for it . . . Waits Avenue.
Edward McShane Waits officiated at the funerals of three of the Frogland street gang members profiled in this post.
When his time came, his funeral was officiated by Reverend Granville Walker of University Christian Church.
Fort Worth’s Street Gang
Posts About Education in Fort Worth
