Montague County is not a large county. Its population has never exceeded forty thousand. Yet across a century and a half of settlement, enterprise, and public life, the county has produced a governor, a media titan who reshaped the Southwest, a state attorney general who built the Texas Department of Public Safety, a holder of the Texas Senate filibuster record, a perfect-game pitcher in the major leagues, a world champion rodeo cowgirl, and a nationally recognized western artist — among others. The figures profiled here are drawn from TSHA Handbook of Texas entries, the Portal to Texas History, and documented local historical sources. None duplicates the individuals who have dedicated biographical files elsewhere in this collection.
James V. Allred (1899–1959) — Texas Governor
James Burr V Allred was born in Bowie, Montague County, on March 29, 1899, the son of Renne and Mary (Henson) Allred. After graduating Bowie High School in 1917 he served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, then read law in Wichita Falls before receiving his LL.B. from Cumberland University in 1921.
Allred earned the nickname “the fighting district attorney” for his outspoken opposition to the Ku Klux Klan while serving as Thirtieth District D.A. from 1923. He was elected Texas Attorney General in 1930 and governor of Texas in 1934, serving two terms (1935–39).
His administration’s most lasting structural contribution was the creation of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which unified the Texas Rangers and the Highway Patrol under one command — a reform that defined how Texas polices itself to the present day. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to a federal judgeship in 1939. Allred died in Laredo on September 24, 1959.
A governor born in Bowie — the county’s largest city — is the most direct expression of what Montague County has contributed to Texas public life.
Source: TSHA Handbook of Texas, “Allred, James Burr V” — tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/allred-james-burr-v
Amon G. Carter Sr. (1879–1955) — Fort Worth Star-Telegram Publisher
Giles Amon Carter was born on December 11, 1879, in Crafton, a small Montague County hamlet. He spent his early working years doing odd jobs in Bowie before heading to Fort Worth in 1905. He transformed the struggling Fort Worth Star into the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, one of the most influential newspapers in the Southwest, and became arguably the most powerful civic booster Texas ever produced. His broadcasting ventures included WBAP radio.
Oil wealth — his first significant well came in New Mexico in 1935 — fueled large-scale philanthropy through the Amon G. Carter Foundation (established 1945), which endowed the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. Lake Amon G. Carter, impounded on Big Sandy Creek six miles south of Bowie in Montague County, was named in his memory shortly after his death on June 23, 1955.
Carter’s rise from a Montague County farm to national prominence remains one of the county’s most storied success stories.
Source: TSHA Handbook of Texas, “Carter, Amon G. Sr.” — tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/carter-amon-g-sr
Avery L. Matlock (c. 1845–1933) — Lawyer, Legislator, XIT Investigator
Avery L. Matlock served as county attorney from 1875 to 1878 — a period of intense frontier violence — and earned a regional reputation for tenacity through the successful prosecution of multiple gangs of murderers. He was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1881 and to the Texas Senate in 1883.
Later he was dispatched to the XIT Ranch as a legal investigator for the Capitol Freehold Land and Investment Company, helping clear the sprawling Panhandle property of desperadoes and establish sound management. He eventually relocated to San Antonio, served as city attorney there, and moved between San Antonio and Fort Worth in his final years. He died in Fort Worth on July 14, 1933.
The overlap between Matlock’s county attorney years and the England murder trials makes him one of the central figures in Montague County’s most significant legal episode of the frontier era.
Source: TSHA Handbook of Texas, “Matlock, Avery L.” — tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/matlock-avery-l
Mabel Gilbert (1797–1870) — County’s First Chief Justice
Captain Mabel Gilbert — so called from his years piloting Mississippi River steamboats — was born March 4, 1797, in Dickson County, Tennessee, and came to Texas with his wife Charity and seven children in 1837. After decades of service in Fannin County, Gilbert relocated in 1857 to 1,280 acres in Montague County to escape intensifying Indian raids in his previous home.
He served as chief justice of Montague County until 1867 — making him one of the county’s earliest recorded public officials and the first to hold that office. He died of pneumonia on March 1, 1870. Charity delivered his twenty-first child after his death. A creek in the county bears the Gilbert name.
Gilbert’s career traces the arc of North Texas frontier institution-building across three decades.
Source: TSHA Handbook of Texas, “Gilbert, Mabel” — tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/gilbert-mabel
Wayne Warren Wagonseller (1921–1955) — Record Senate Filibuster
Born in Nocona on February 1, 1921, Wayne Wagonseller became one of Montague County’s most accomplished mid-century politicians. An attorney and rancher, he represented District 47 (Montague County) in the Texas House of Representatives for two terms beginning in 1947, then won election to the Texas Senate for District 22.
His Senate career was marked by a record filibuster lasting twenty-eight hours and five minutes. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II before returning to pursue his legal and political career. His death on August 13, 1955, in a Fort Worth automobile collision cut short a rapidly ascending career.
Source: TSHA Handbook of Texas, “Wagonseller, Wayne Warren” — tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/wagonseller-wayne-warren
Charles Francis Rudolph (1859–1929) — Pioneer Newspaper Editor
Ohio-born Charles Rudolph moved to Texas as a teenager before coming to Saint Jo, Montague County, where he taught school and then — at just twenty-three — launched a weekly newspaper in 1882. He grew it into a daily within three years. In the summer of 1886 he moved his newspaper plant to Tascosa in the Panhandle, where he established the Tascosa Pioneer, only the second paper in that region. He subsequently founded the Amarillo Daily Northwest (Christmas Day 1889).
Rudolph’s Saint Jo period gave Montague County one of its first regular newspapers and trained the reader networks that supported community identity in the young county seat.
Source: TSHA Handbook of Texas, “Rudolph, Charles Francis” — tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/rudolph-charles-francis
Robert Bean (c. 1830s–1911) — Confederate Officer, Legislator
Robert Bean was a Confederate officer who, after the Civil War, took up farming in Montague County and won election to the Texas state legislature. He resided in the county until 1901, when he moved back to Gainesville in Cooke County, and died there on July 30, 1911.
Bean’s trajectory — Confederate service, post-war frontier farming, brief public office — was representative of many Reconstruction-era settlers who gave Montague County its first generation of Anglo political leadership.
Source: TSHA Handbook of Texas, “Bean, Robert” — tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/bean-robert
Charlie Robertson (1896–1984) — Perfect Game Pitcher
Charles Culbertson Robertson was born January 31, 1896, in Dexter, Texas, but grew up in Nocona, where he graduated from Nocona High School in 1915. Playing for the Chicago White Sox, on April 30, 1922 — in just his fourth career major league start — Robertson pitched a perfect game against the Detroit Tigers at Navin Field, a 2–0 victory. It was one of only seventeen perfect games in American major league history at the time. Robertson went on to pitch for the St. Louis Browns and Boston Braves. He died August 23, 1984.
Nocona’s claim on Robertson is firm: his formative school years were spent in the county.
Sources: Baseball Almanac; Nocona Economic Development Corporation, “Western Heritage”
Jack “Jackrabbit” Crain (1920–1994) — All-American Halfback
Born in Nocona on January 7, 1920, Jack Crain became one of the most electrifying football players of his generation. Playing halfback for the University of Texas Longhorns, he earned the nickname “Jackrabbit” and was named to the All-Southwest Conference team in 1939 and 1941, achieving two-time All-American recognition. He also served four terms as a Texas state representative for District 61. A football field in Nocona bears his name. He died October 22, 1994.
Sources: Portal to Texas History, “Jack Crain — All American Rancher from Montague County”; Nocona EDC
Ruth Roach Salmon (1896–1986) — World Champion Rodeo Cowgirl
Ruth Scantlin was born in Missouri in 1896 but made Nocona, Montague County, her retirement home after a storied twenty-four-year career in professional rodeo (1914–1938). A champion bronc rider and trick roper, she held titles as World’s Champion All Around Cowgirl, World’s Champion Trick Rider, and World’s Champion Girl Bronc Rider.
She was inducted into the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame (1989), the National Rodeo Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum (1989), and the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum (2011). A portrait photograph taken with her horse in Nocona is preserved in the Portal to Texas History.
Sources: Portal to Texas History, “Ruth Scantlin Roach Salmon Collection”; National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum
Donna Howell-Sickles (b. c. 1950s) — Western Artist
Donna Howell-Sickles is a contemporary western artist from Saint Jo, Montague County, whose work has achieved national and international recognition for its distinctive contemporary take on cowgirl imagery. She was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth in 2007. Her art galleries are noted among Saint Jo’s cultural attractions.
Howell-Sickles represents the living cultural dimension of Montague County’s identity — a place where western heritage is not merely historical but actively expressed through contemporary art.
Source: Nocona Economic Development Corporation; National Cowgirl Museum
Other Documented Figures
Jay Taylor (1902–1980s) — born on the Suggs Ranch near Bowie, Taylor became a Panhandle oil-company executive and served as president of the American National Cattlemen’s Association in 1954.
Joe Harris (active 1880s–1890s) — owned the land where two rail lines intersected in northern Montague County and laid out the townsite that was initially named Harrisonia before becoming Ringgold.
Austin Perryman (active 1850s) — one of the original cattlemen who settled the Forestburg area alongside Wash Williams and Bob Clark, representing the county’s earliest Anglo ranching pioneers.
Sam Smith (active 1870s–1880s) — applied for a post office in 1880 that formally established Sunset as a recognized settlement; anchored the commercial presence that the Fort Worth and Denver Railway later built through.
James Carrol Loving (1836–1902) — organized the meeting that formed what became the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (1877), serving as its first secretary-treasurer; the North Texas ranching culture Montague County was part of was the same world Loving organized into the state’s most powerful stockmen’s association.
For individual biographical files, see: Daniel Montague, Levi Perryman, D.C. Jordan, H.J. Justin, Enid Justin.