How D.H. Byrd's Uncle and Cousins Met G.H. Walker

Abraham (Abe) Ruddell Byrd (born 1851) operated Stephen  Byrd's farm in Jackson County, Mo., at least until 1878, when he began to engage in other business pursuits, particularly flour milling. He and his wife Sallie Hunter Byrd lived in Cape Girardeau in the "bootheel" of Missouri, described as follows:

gum and bald cypress

Before a series of large levees were constructed by the federal government to harness the Mississippi River, its flood waters regularly spilled across much of southeast Missouri. The Missouri Bootheel once was a natural basin to catch all of this water, a swamp unsuitable for any kind of habitation.

Abe Byrd had four sons, the two eldest of whom entered business with their father in 1904. The next eldest, Carlisle Oliver (likely named for the head of Carlisle Training School in Jackson where the older boys received their preparatory education), was almost six years younger than A.R. Jr. and the youngest, Edward Russell, was not born until 1897. By 1910 A.R. had relocated his wife and younger children to San Antonio.

Joseph Hunter Byrd, was at the University of Texas by 1900, where he was elected to the Cactus staff. The second son, A.R. Byrd, Jr., began in 1899, graduating from U.T. in 1903. The brothers then left Austin to take up ranching and mining near El Paso, Texas--on lands in both Old and New Mexico. Returning to Missouri after only a year, the brothers became serious about assisting their father in his two businesses: (1) flour milling; and (2) the sawmill or lumber road business. The mining business in which these elder sons and their younger brothers were involved in is more mysterious and will be dealt with later.

As early as 1900 Abe Byrd had owned Cape County Milling Co. along with a nephew, Ruddell Monroe McCombs, son of his sister, Elizabeth "Betty" Byrd McCombs, who died when her son was only a boy. In 1905 Cape Co. Milling was said to have "luxurious offices" located "near the [Gould-owned] St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway station in the eastern part of Jackson," less than ten miles northwest of Cape Girardeau. After the college-educated sons went into business with him, A.R. Byrd organized the Alsop Process Co. of St. Louis, Inc. to acquire from James N. Alsop flour patents the inventor had obtained from Great Britain in 1904, and subsequently from the United States, covering machinery to bleach flour.

A.R. Jr. worked as sales agent for Alsop, but quickly became an officer within the St. Louis Alsop Process Company. While they began manufacturing the patented machines, they also sold franchises to other flour mills to use the Alsop Process. The company's first St. Louis office in 1904 was on S. 7th Street near railroad loading docks and warehouses, but by 1912, the company had moved its headquarters to the heart of St. Louis' financial district--506 Olive Street, today within the block called Metropolitan Square. Although still associated with the Alsop Process at that time, A.R. Jr. had joined his brother in their own brokerage company at 420 Olive, a block east of the Alsop office. Today the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis takes up the entire block at N. 4th and Locust, only a block to the north. Near their offices was another notable St. Louis stockbroker, G.H. Walker & Co. at 307 N. 7th Street.[1] We will hear more about him below.

Under the corporate name of American Forest Co., Abe Byrd, also owned timber in the swampy area around Cape Girardeau, employing his son J. Hunter Byrd as president. Working in 1911, Byrd met with promoters who wished to construct the "sawmill and lumber" infrastructure of the Portland & Southeastern railway from a point on Gould's St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railroad in southeastern Arkansas to link with the old Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific, as shown in the Engineering and Contracting magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 15 (at page 32). One court case indicated that American Forest had been incorporated in New York, and that certain financing came from the St. Louis Union Trust Co. Intriguingly, QJ revealed previously that the original builder of the Vicksburg line had been Charles G. Young, ancestor of David Atlee Phillips! [2]

Read full article.

Houck's consolidated system was owned by a syndicate of investors from southeastern Missouri, who sold the St. Louis & Gulf Railroad to the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway (the Frisco) in 1905. As one of Houck's large investors, A. R. Byrd got a tiny Missouri town named for him:

At the urging of Abe R. Byrd, who owned a sizable tract of land south of Senath, Missouri, and in part with Byrd's financial backing, Louis incorporated the Kennett and Osceola Railroad to extend south from Kennett toward Osceola, Arkansas, running roughly parallel to the St. Francis River in the Bootheel's most remote corner. Inside of a year, crews painstakingly carved out a line nearly fifteen miles long through Senath to a junction point with the Paragould and Eastern Railroad that Louis simply called Arbyrd.[3]

Click map to enlarge. See original at website.

       

American Forest Co.

Houck had therefore managed to build a series of railway lines connecting Cape Girardeau to St. Louis, as one part of a dream that envisioned a railroad which would span from St. Louis directly south to the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps Abe convinced his eldest son to take over construction where Houck left off, partly we assume because such a project would provide a constant market for railroad ties milled by the American Forest Co.

J. Hunter Byrd, as president of the lumber mill, had become ever more involved in the securities business. Even before 1913, when, according to Louis Houck's biographer, Byrd "stepped forward to help facilitate the sale" of his father's friend's railroad interests. J. Hunter first approached the Goulds' Missouri Pacific without success.

Jay Gould of MoPac had died in 1892, leaving control of his railroad interests in the hands of an inept son, George J. Gould and his crew of advisers, including three directors and numerous executives who lived in St. Louis (E.B. Pryor, Sam F. Pryor, and Charles S. Clarke). When Pryor left St. Louis for the New York area, he rose quickly in the business world, according to Karin Crooks:

(Sam) Frazier Pryor (1865-1934), arrived in Greenwich to start a new career, uprooting his family from their life near St. Louis, Missouri. At 48, Sam Pryor was a self-made man who, after high school, had worked his way up through the railroad supply business to become president of Southern Wheel Company. Sam’s new employer, the family of William Rockefeller (1841-1922), was already established in Greenwich and famous worldwide for its wealth. In his new position as General Manager and Vice President of Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridges Co. (Remington), Sam would report to two bosses: William’s second son, Percy A. Rockefeller (1878-1934), the young head of the family business; and William’s son-in-law, Marcellus (Marcy) Hartley Dodge (1888-1963), the sole stockholder of Remington.

Hunter Byrd then approached the Frisco and, according to biographer, Joel P. Rhodes, he had the following results:

By deftly maneuvering himself into the Frisco camp [composed of B.F. Yoakum, B.L. Winchell and Thomas West], the young entrepreneur ultimately acted as the big railroad's proxy in the execution of a familiar contract with Louis in February 1913. Immediately after consolidating the Gape Girardeau and Thebes Bridge Terminal Railroad, the Chester, Perryville and Ste. Genevieve, and the Saline Valley Railroads into one Cape Girardeau Northern, Houck sold this entire new corporation and all his interest in it to a syndicate headed by J. H. Byrd.[4]

A. R. Byrd, Jr., Secretary

A bond issued by the Cape Giardeau Northern, shown here, contains the signature of A.R. Byrd, Jr. as the secretary. Louis Houck clearly believed that J. Hunter Byrd was acting on behalf of the Frisco Railroad at the time Byrd formed the corporation and merged Houck's lines into it. When, in 1913 the Frisco went into receivership and the receiver refused to take over maintenance of Houck's former railroads, Houck sued on behalf of the bondholders.

The Texas & Pacific at first had leased its existing lines to Jay Gould's Missouri Pacific network, but, after Gould acquired a majority of stock in the T&P in 1885, the two roads simply continued to work together as a system through Gould holdings in both companies.

However, in 1911 the Gould-owned Missouri Pacific made a high-dollar deal with B.F. Yoakum, of the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway (Frisco) Company. Yoakum had purchased a huge estate in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York two years earlier and used his profit to improve his farms. In 1913 the Frisco was placed in receivership by its major creditor, the St. Louis Union Trust, which selected an investment banker from St. Louis as receiver. George Herbert (Bert) Walker, whose bank had invested $60,000 in the syndicate which bought from Gould, had grown up in St. Louis among the other members of the syndicate whose secret hope was to sell out to the Frisco in short order. A U.S. Senate investigation revealed the insider trade in 1913. By 1920 Walker, too, had moved to Long Island--to Old Westbury--about twelve miles west of Yoakum's rustic farm, into the heart of horse breeders and bankers who had more money than St. Louisans could dream of. Doug Wead's biography of Bert's grandson, The Raising of a President, indicated the move may have begun as early as 1919.

The Byrds Fly to Texas

In 1907 A.R. Byrd, Jr. married Elise, a daughter of Hungarian-born engineer, Otto Kochtitzky, who had formed the Little River Drainage District in Southeastern Missouri to drain the wetlands where hardwood cypress proliferated.

Southern Merchant

As a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity at the University of Texas, A.R. Jr. may have had contact with its sponsors, Walter Bremond and T.W. Gregory, who were close friends of Colonel Edward M. House, the man who had elected numerous governors in Texas before turning his sights toward electing U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Alpha Tau Omega sponsor, Thomas Watt Gregory, became Attorney General in 1914 in President Woodrow Wilson's Cabinet, which was mostly hand-picked by Col House. One man selected to work with Wilson's Attorney General in gathering intelligence information was the banker, railroad receiver, G. H. Walker of St. Louis, who was Chief of the St. Louis division of the American Protective League, which reported directly to the Department of Justice.[5] We only mention this fact in passing to show Walker's powerful political and intelligence connections to the Democratic establishment of that era.

Louis Houck "constructed a network of five hundred miles of track through the wilderness of wetlands known as 'Swampeast Missouri'." The first railroad Houck built connected Cape Girardeau to the Iron Mountain Railroad, and by 1902 many of Houck's lines had been sold to the Frisco. Access into the rail network was of great importance to the Byrds, who sought an affordable distribution medium for their processed flour.

As a consequence the value of the lands within the district, including not only Abe Byrd's timber land, but Houck's railroad land as well, increased dramatically, as did the taxes assessed on the land by the drainage district. Louis Houck's railroad sued Kochtitzky's district, contesting its taxing authority. Houck lost in the Missouri Supreme Court in 1911, forcing him to either pay his ever-rising taxes or lose his lands. In desperation Houck sought a buyer for his railroads. Houck was approached by Abe Byrd's eldest son, J. Hunter Byrd, mentioned earlier, who was a financier as well as the brother-in-law of Otto Kochtitzky's daughter, Mrs. A.R. Byrd, Jr., nee Elise Westmore Kochtitzky. (Note: It is possible Houck did not know that Kochtitsky's daughter was in fact the sister-in-law of the man who sought to rescue him from this desperate situation. They did remain married until 1925, when they divorced without children.)

It was a somewhat intricate plan. They set up a new corporation Byrd had formed, Cape Girardeau & Northern Railroad Co., of which Hunter Byrd was president. The new corporation absorbed the five existing railroads through a purchase from Louis Houck, paying for them with proceeds of bonds issued by the new company and guaranteed by the St. Louis & San Francisco (Frisco) Railroad. At least $1,200,000 of the $2,500,000 in bonds were sold to innocent purchasers in reliance upon the guarantee, and it was that fact which influenced the Court in its final decision to hold the railroad liable in the amount of $1,200,000.

However, when Houck had not received payment by February 1914, he sued the Frisco, which had guaranteed the bonds in 1913, which had almost immediately been placed in receivership by its creditors, chief among them being another St. Louis investment banker, George Herbert Walker. One lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and heard in June 1918 (253 F. 123), in which the Frisco intervened to prevent plaintiff, J. M. McElvain, from pursuing a claim against for a debt he claimed predated the appointment of receivers.

Morton & Co., Inc. - 1920

Attorneys for the Frisco included Cravath & Henderson, the firm which a few years later would employ John J. McCloy. It is interesting to note that Carl A. DeGersdorff, a future partner in the firm, was a director of a subsidiary railroad at the same time as G.H. Walker, Benjamin Yoakum and Robert J. Kleberg. Another subsidiary of the Frisco had Walker on the board with lumbermen J. H. Kirby and J. F. Keith of Beaumont. Keith's daughter Olga married Houston oil tycoon Harry C. Wiess.

As early as March 1920 Walker was named as president of Morton and Company, Inc., a Guaranty Trust investment bank subsidiary, along with Averell Harriman, Sam Pryor and Percy Rockefeller.

We will end this segment at this point. Studying the Byrd family's deep roots has helped to reveal something we never dreamed we would find. In hoping to explain how D. Harold Byrd became such a close friend of Lyndon Johnson, instead we learned how closely tied his father's family was to the grandfather of George H.W. Bush. Small world!

END NOTES:

1. See also J. Hunter Byrd's biography in St. Louis, the Fourth City, published in 1909.

2. Young had moved to Texas and chartered the Houston and Great Northern railway before his tragic accidental death in 1871. The HGN would later continue to build north in Texas, connecting to the Shreveport line at Mineola, and in 1873 became part of the International & Great Northern Railroad, acquired by Jay Gould in 1880 for his Missouri Pacific Railroad. Gould would also acquire the Texas and Pacific and the St. Louis Southwestern (Cotton Belt) and owned "one-half of the mileage in the Southwest" by the time he died in 1892. Gould's biggest competitor in the region was the Frisco, which attempted to merge in 1922 but the purchase was refused by the ICC.

3. Joel P. Rhodes, A Missouri Railroad Pioneer: The Life of Louis Houck, p. 190.  University of Missouri Press: "In telling the story of his railroading enterprise, Rhodes chronicles Houck’s battle with the Jay Gould railroad empire and offers key insight into the development of America’s railway system, from the cutthroat practices of ruthless entrepreneurs to the often-comic ineptness of start-up rail lines."

4.  Joel P. Rhodes, A Missouri Railroad Pioneer: The Life of Louis Houck, p. 252.

5. Emerson Hough, The Web (Reilly & Lee Company, 1919), p. 293.]

Would the Real Edward Byrd Please Stand Up

Our search for D. Harold Byrd's father's history has been time consuming, if not actually enlightening. Quite possibly not even Harold himself could have provided answers about his father's past.

Edward Byrd's obituary in 1943 stated:

HEART STROKE TAKES PIONEER ON DALLAS VISIT

Funeral Services Set for Edward Byrd, 88, Oilman's Father. 

MIDLOTHIAN, TX--Edward Byrd, 88, Midlothian, long-time resident of Texas and father of D. Harold Byrd, Dallas Oilman and Texas wing commander of the Civil Air Patrol, died of a heart attack here Thursday.

Mr. Byrd was stricken as he walked along St. Paul in front of the Federal Building shortly before noon Thursday and was dead on arrival at Parkland Hospital. A native of Missouri, Mr. Byrd was the grandson of pioneers who had pushed westward in 1799 into Missouri while it still was part of the Louisiana Territory. He was born at the Old Stone House, still standing on Byrd's Creek, Byrd Township, Cape Girardeau County, Mo.

Covered Wagon Traveler.

As a youth of 19, he came to Texas for the first time in 1873 in a covered wagon and stayed at Starkville [sic], Lamar County, two months before returning to Missouri by pony, a trip that required a month. His next trip to Texas was by rail, and he settled at Blossom, Lamar County. There in 1877 he joined the Presbyterian Church, became a ruling elder three weeks later, and since then had represented the church at various times from the assemblies of the Red River Presbytery to the General Assembly.

Owned Early Day Store.

He married, in 1879, Mollie Easley, daughter of a farmer in the community. There he built a small home, and later added a gin and mill, then several houses and finally a store. The community was named Byrd Town [Byrdtown?]. Later he moved his family to Detroit [Texas] where he engaged in the mercantile business for a time, and then in 1901 moved to Ardmore, Oklahoma where he lived until 1913, moving to Midlothian. He and his wife celebrated their golden wedding anniversary there in 1929. In Midlothian he was active in the Presbyterian Church and was chairman of its board of elders, a position he had held for nearly thirty years.

He is survived by his wife, three sons, D. Harold Byrd; R. J. Byrd, Irving; and B. E. Byrd, Midlothian; two daughters, Mrs. R. T. Gidley and Mrs. R. B. McDonald, both of Dallas; seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. Friday at the Midlothian Presbyterian Church, with Dr. Jasper Manton, pastor of the Trinity Presbyterian Church of Dallas, officiating. Years ago while Dr. Manton's father was pastor of a Presbyterian Church at Paris, Dr. Manton was ordained there and later became pastor of the same church. Mr. Byrd attended Dr. Manton's ordination service and many years ago requested that he conduct his funeral.

Burial will be at 4:30 p.m. in the family burial plot at Blossom. Pallbearers will be Tom H. Dees [for many years chairman of the board of directors of Republic National Bank, Dallas], W.H. Price, J.P. Sewell, J.G. Oliver, R R. McElroy and Dr. H.G. Williams, all of Midlothian. (Source: Dallas Morning News, January 8, 1943)

D.H. Byrd suggested in his 1978 autobiography (written with research assistance from Mickey Herskowitz, among others) that his father was "likely" the same "Edward Byrd" involved in the discovery of an oil well in the Indian Territory near Chelsea. It is the attempt to either verify or refute that claim which has led this blogger into a study of Oklahoma history and the Indian Territory, despite which effort a question still remains. After revealing the results of my research, I leave it to the reader to form his or her own conclusion.

Oil Prospector Edward Byrd

One Byrd genealogist posted specific details about the Edward Byrd who found oil near Chelsea in northeast Oklahoma in a public family tree at Ancestry.com:

Clues in the above story help to establish the following facts:

1. Edward Byrd incorporated a company in Kansas, and in 1891 he began to prospect for oil on Cochran property. 
2. United States Oil Company ultimately drilled eleven wells in the area, the output of which was carried from the well through a pipeline running downhill to the Frisco side track in Chelsea. 
3. In 1893 this drilling company was reorganized as Cherokee Oil & Gas Company (CO&G), which drilled 14 wells before passage of the Curtis Bill in 1898. 
4. Oil production ceased at that point until treaties with the Indian nations could be put in place. CO&G first applied in June 1901 for a drilling lease covering 98,000 acres through the Department of the Interior, an action opposed by the Cherokee Nation because, according to the attorney for the Cherokees in documents filed with the court in October 1901, CO&G was "alleged to be a branch of the Standard Oil Company."
5. "Ed. Byrd" had been the fourth mayor of Chelsea in the days prior to statehood, according to a "condensed history" of the "thriving town" set out in Chelsea Commercial newspaper in Oklahoma, possibly the same politically minded Edward Byrd who in 1906 announced as candidate for delegate to Oklahoma's Constitutional Convention. The agreement dissolving the Creek Nation became law on June 25, 1901, and tribe members were granted U.S. citizenship. Within a few years, the Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory were combined into one state and admitted to statehood. Ed Byrd was an alternate delegate to the Statehood Convention held in 1903.
6. 1900 and 1910 census records show an Edward Byrd, born in about 1845, living in Chelsea but conflict concerning his birthplace: 1900 census gives Indiana; 1910 census gives Missouri. 
7. In 1910 Byrd's name appeared on the same census page with widow Elizabeth Byrd's large family, all of whom worked in an oil production company. Elizabeth's deceased husband, Lafayette Byrd, had been the brother of an Edward Byrd from Roane County, Tennessee.

The oil company founder had married a half-Cherokee Indian named Jane Nelms, who had been born born in the Indian Territory in 1855, and their two children were born in Chelsea: Henry Harrison Byrd in 1877, who died in Abilene, Texas in 1945; and Daisy Dean Byrd in 1879. Jane Byrd died intestate in 1910, and in October of that same year Edward Byrd deeded their Cherokee-allotted land to daughter Daisy Byrd Corah, the wife of 28-year-old Edward Milton Corah, who was listed in 1910 census records as a single man engaged in oil refining in Chelsea, and both he and his brother Edgar Leroy Corah had come west from Warren, Pennsylvania, where they had worked for what would become a division of the Pure Oil Company, controlled by the Dawes family, who were also heavily involved in the commission set up by President Grover Cleveland in 1888 to oversee the Indian lands previously set aside by treaties in what would become Oklahoma. Strangely enough, Edward Corah was in 1913 engaged to be married to a different woman in his hometown.

As part of the Dawes Commission we find in the Memorial of the Delaware Indians (Cherokee Nation) that hearings took place in 1903 relating to segregation of certain lands to members of the Cherokee Nation. Daisy D. Byrd, as a part-Cherokee Indian, was allotted lands she chose (see page 24). Edward Byrd claimed other lands on behalf of his wife Jane, who had asthma as was unable to testify (at page 31). Ed. Byrd (aka Edward H. Byrd) also witnessed a deed executed in 1899 by Henry H. Byrd, Jr. of lands Henry had selected as his allotted acreage (see page 46). As a notary public Edward Byrd also witnessed other deeds (pages 53, 59). Note: The Edward Byrd from Tennessee had a brother named Henry Harrison Byrd, for whom he named his son. Daisy Byrd Corah's husband incorporated a plethora of companies in the area, one of which was Bernice Oil Co. in 1913 with millionaire, John T. Milliken, who lived at 35 Portland Place in St. Louis. A chemist in control of a mouthwash company called Pasteurine, Milliken was more notable as the brother-in-law of Albert Patrick, the Texas attorney who wrote a second will for railroad financier William Marsh Rice, murdered in 1900. Milliken spent much of his fortune attempting to prove Patrick innocent of the crime.

Mrs. E.M. Corah, (Daisy?) in 1913 was present with other "society people" at the wedding of her friend Maude Greer to Harry Swarts. After their marriage the Swarts moved to Tulsa, where Harry worked as an attorney while Maude had her own tea shop/cafe. Also present were several attorneys: William Thomas Rye, who had a probate practice in Vinita, and "Uncle Jack" Kendall, gave away the bride. E.M. had connections to Vinita Refining Co., built in 1910, and his brother Edgar was also in the refining business, and would spend at least the last two decades of his life working in San Antonio, Texas. Edward and Daisy did relocated to Houston around 1920, when he was named manager and vice president of Transatlantic Refining Company's new plant built at Houston Heights Blvd. at Washington Avenue by Hugh Hamilton, a brewing and hotel magnate, who was a client of the Baker & Botts law firm.

Further documentation suggests that the Kansas prospector named Ed. Byrd, referred to in Endangered Species, lived in  Chelsea as early as May 1884, owning a Chelsea boarding house in 1889, the same year he began "boring for oil, coal or something."

Edward Byrd of Ardmore, OK

According to D.H. Byrd, his father moved from Texas to Ardmore, Oklahoma, in 1901 two years before statehood was approved. Ardmore had first opened up to white settlement when the Santa Fe Railroad began building north from Gainesville, Texas in 1885 across the Indian country, establishing towns as it went.

In his autobiography at page 6, Harold Byrd bragged that his father in Texas had established a town called "Byrd Town," south of Blossom in Lamar County, which was totally destroyed by a "raging fire." It was the fire, Byrd says, that prompted Ed to move the family to Ardmore, Oklahoma, probably in 1901. However, we have not been able to verify that a fire occurred or that Ed Byrd was founder of such a town, which was actually called Byrdtown.

It can be confirmed, however, that in Ardmore Ed did temporarily agree to operate the Crown Bottling corporation and a candy factory after the owner, Morgan J. Hays, died in 1910. (See clipping to the left.)

That year's Ardmore city directory showed Ed Byrd having a real estate office, involved with farm and  "mining" lands, located at 17-1/2 N. Washington, while he resided at 439 H Street, N.W., a less than impressive neighborhood. We know from the Ardmoreite news that Ed in 1906 had an interest in rock asphalt mines in nearby Overbrook, OK, which he used to make asphalt bricks for paving roads.

The same year Ed Byrd acquired his asphalt mines, he sent son Ruddell Jones Byrd (called "Leo," for unapparent reasons) to San Antonio's Peacock Military Academy, where he received awards along with fellow student Dolph Briscoe, Sr. , a man whose son would later become a most unassuming Governor of the State of Texas.

After graduation, Leo began working in Missouri, overseeing properties owned by an uncle, one of Ed's brothers pictured at the top of this page. While young Ed Byrd had been off in Texas and the Indian Territory, his brothers had continued their farming and other enterprises in Missouri, though both eventually followed his lead, relocating to Texas. As we saw in a previous post, A.R. Byrd took his flour milling process to San Antonio and settled for a time in the King William district of that city, while William C. Byrd moved to southwest Texas. Their  move only occurred, however, at the instigation of their sons, who had reached adulthood and took their fathers into investments in what was then believed to be the transportation technology of the future.

Etiology of the Red Bird Getaway Plane Story

Researched and written

by Linda Minor

D.H. Byrd's CAP outfit flew from Red Bird.

This post is a sidenote to research I've been doing previously, but it relates only tangentially to the DC-3 plane which Wayne January was selling at the time he was told in advance about the assassination of President Kennedy. January himself had no knowledge of or connection to the group planning the assassination, but the story he revealed to author Matthew Smith sheds light on one small piece in the puzzle as a whole. Possibly the reason so many of us "conspiracy buffs" spend so many years of our lives digging into the 1963 Kennedy assassination is that we can dedicate years of study to it and never solve the puzzle to anyone's satisfaction. It is my opinion that we may be trying to solve the wrong puzzle. We have to broaden our context.

The FAA Report to FBI--1967

I began delving into a simple question asked me by a reader about the Wayne January incident, not remembering that Daniel Hopsicker had dealt with one aspect of that question in his book Barry & 'the Boys', originally published in 2001. Daniel has also mentioned what has been referred to as the "getaway plane" at Red Bird Airport at his website, The MadCowNews, under the subheading, "Three men in suits at Redbird Airport," dated November 20, 2013. Keep in mind, however, he was not talking about N-17888, but a different aircraft from the one we have been investigating. Nevertheless, the "getaway plane" was also part of what had been of interest to Matthew Smith in describing events that took place at Red Bird Airport in 1963.

Ferrie's mugshot

Garrison's New Orleans investigation had zeroed in on David Ferrie, and he sent an employee to Dallas with Ferrie's photograph (possibly his mugshot) to inquire whether anyone at Red Bird Airport had seen him there in November 1963. Louis Gaudin had not seen Ferrie, but he did disclose a separate suspicious incident he witnessed the afternoon of the assassination. Three men in suits boarded a "Comanche-type aircraft" just over an hour after President Kennedy had been gunned down. Gaudin had not called the FBI at the time because by then Lee Harvey Oswald was in custody, with officials claiming he was the "lone" assassin. Why did Gaudin and Bowles wait to contact the FBI until two weeks after Ferrie's dead body had been found on February 22?

Daniel Hopsicker tracked down Gaudin, 37 years after the FBI report (dated March 10, 1967), and recounted in his book what the FAA air traffic controller told him:

“The FAA had its general aviation headquarters there, said Gaudin. “Howard Hughes had a huge old WWII hanger there, with heavy security. People from Wackenhut all over the place. And there were the Porter planes from General Harry Byrd’s outfit.”

General D. Harry Byrd’s links to the Kennedy assassination begin with the fact that he owned the building, the Texas School Book Depository, from which Kennedy was supposedly gunned down.

Then, too, he founded an aircraft company that became one of the largest U.S. defense contractors during the Vietnam War, Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), which also—and perhaps not coincidentally?—tested missiles at the Venice Airport in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.

“What had happened was this,” he continued. “I was an air traffic controller working in the tower at Redbird [sic] that day. When I came on shift at 2 PM, we received a bulletin to report any suspicious activity immediately to an FAA Security number. And we kept calling that number all afternoon, but got nothing but a busy signal. And then, after we heard they had caught the ‘lone gunman,’ I guess they called it, we stopped calling, and let the matter drop.”

From his perch atop the control tower, Mr. Gaudin, between handling twenty or thirty flights into and out of the airport an hour, had noticed something suspicious about three well-dressed men in business suits standing, along with several suitcase, beside a Comanche painted green-and-white.

So suspicious was he, Mr. Gaudin related, that when the plane took off on runway 17, he asked the pilot if he needed any assistance. The pilot said no. Gaudin asked which way the plane was heading. The pilot stated south.

Gaudin watched as the plane flew south for two miles, then made a hard left, and then flew north to Love Field.

The pilot had lied.

Suspicions aroused, Gaudin went over to the control tower’s receiver and listened as the plane made an approach and landed at Love Field, eight miles north of Redbird.

An hour later, the plane was back at Redbird. This time only two people were aboard. The third passenger—let’s call him the shooter–had been left at Love Field.

And that’s where the matter rested until Garrison’s investigator’s came calling.

Then, after Gaudin became alarmed at the death of a man whose picture he had just recently been shown, he called the FBI, and filed the report which, he said, became something of a burden to him for the rest of his life.

“There was no Freedom of Information Act back then,” he says today. “That’s what’s created some problems for me.”

This would be just a ‘suspicious sighting’ except for something that happened later, which clearly indicated to Gaudin that he was a witness to something he had no business seeing.

From the control tower, he says, he was too far away to be able to identify anyone who boarded the plane. But there was one person who could: Merrit Goble, who ran the fixed-wing operation, TexAir, at Redbird Field.

“Merrit and I were friends,” Gaudin relates. “So one day, after filing the FBI report, I went down to see if the FBI had been by to visit him as well. They hadn’t, he told me. So I asked him if he had anything, any gas receipts, any record of the fueling of the plane in question. And Merit acted very strangely. He told me, in effect, that it was none of my business. He said, ‘I will only answer questions from a bonafide law enforcement authority.’”

“I always thought that was strange: ‘I will only answer questions from a bonafide law enforcement authority.’ Because like I said, we were friends.”

Merrit Goble died last year, taking any secrets he possessed about the suspicious plane to his grave.

Bowles worked with LBJ's bro-in-law.

It is not clear to me from reading Hopsicker's work whether it was Gaudin who told him about Byrd's use of Red Bird for Civil Air Patrol planes, or whether he gleaned that information from another source. "Harry Byrd" usually refers to the Virginia Senator of that name, the brother of Admiral Richard Byrd, Jr., whom D. Harold Byrd claimed as his cousins.

I also have to ask whether, before calling the FBI, Bowles may first have contacted his own superior at the FAA, who, by 1967 was the President's brother-in-law, Birge D. Alexander, husband of Lucia Huffman Johnson since 1933. Birge rose to the position of Area Manager for the Southwest Region of the F.A.A. not long after brother-in-law Lyndon was himself "promoted". Bowles and Alexander had been officials together at C.A.A., later F.A.A., for many years.

Birge, Lucia and Rebekah (Libby Willis)

Birge and his siblings were reared in Sabinal, a tiny town in Uvalde County from 1908 until leaving for college in Austin. Before 1908, home had been at Manchaca Springs, in south Travis County, where Birge's grandfather is buried.

Robert Carogoes into more detail.

Alexander played center for the Sabinal football squad and was named all-district center in 1929. A few years later Birge was off to the University of Texas to study engineering. Graduating in 1939, he immediately went to work for the Lower Colorado River Authority, a job for which he unquestionably had his brother-in-law, the newly elected Congressman Johnson from the district, to thank.

Within a short time, however, Birge transferred to a different government job at the Civil Aeronautics Administration, in charge of building and inspecting airport runways. He would no doubt have come into contact with Bowles, who was in charge of air traffic control--both men with offices in the same building in Fort Worth.

Sabinal, coincidentally, where Birge grew up and where his father's siblings all lived, was where John Nance Garner's wife, Mariette "Ettie" Rheiner, was born in 1869. According to Ettie, she was taking a secretarial course in San Antonio when she met Garner on a train. They married as soon as she finished the course in 1895. His story was, with a big wink, that she was running for county judge, opposing him, so he married her to win the election.

Was Cactus Jack, as Garner was nicknamed, as prickly as his name implies? Was he just an innocent curmudgeon? Only more research will tell. We do know he had power, but all we ever saw of it was just the tip of an iceberg. What lay beneath that icy peak?

Tale about a Tail Number (Part II)

(Updated May 30, 2017. See highlights below.)

This is a story about how people involved in intelligence operations hide behind corporations, and about how corporations disguise covert ops behind the guise of business. When I began this research project, I had no pre-conceived notions about what I might find. After a few delays and one accidental deletion, things are finally becoming clearer. After years of doing this sort of research it has been my experience that accidents--such as inadvertently deleting material that was almost complete--are gifts rather than mistakes. Starting over without groaning, following new instincts, usually leads in a direction that would have been missed otherwise. In this case that new direction led me to David Harold Byrd, as you will see below.

In Part I we reviewed briefly the title to Tail Number N-17888, set out in documents provided to me by Alan Kent. Larry Hancock wrote that, according to what Wayne January told author Mitchell Smith, N-17888 was one of several airplanes he sold which were to be used in secret government projects, after "being processed through companies at Red Bird and Houston Air Center." Thus it appears someone within those companies was a witting accomplice with the Central Intelligence Agency. Our aim in this segment is to answer the question of who was involved in creating and operating Houston Air Center.

NAvion Aircraft History

Refer back in Part I to the section under the heading "Background Title on N-1788," where we reviewed the title to the Red Bird airplane. Before coming to Wayne January's company, its previous long-time owner had been Navion Aircraft Co., a division of TUSCO. Here we will explore who that was and what that fact represents.

The first airplanes called NAvions were built for the Air Force during the final years of WWII at the former Hensley Field, created in 1940 as a training base for Army and Navy pilots. North American Aviation was a defense plant operated by the federal government there, just east of Grand Prairie. Along with it was a housing development (called Avion Village) set up to provide housing for the almost 40,000 workers this plant and others in the area employed until 1945.

Eventually, this same Grand Prairie plant would be operated by Texas Engineering and Manufacturing Company, known by its acronym, TEMCO, a company which by 1947 was making B-25 bombers for South American countries, including Brazil and Mexico, under its president and general manager, Robert McCulloch. By the end of 1948, Temco would roll out its first "reconditioned" airplane for the Chinese Nationalist government, backed by the Office of Strategic Services during the closing days of WWII.

In a previous post at this blog, QJ reported on how the Nationalist Chinese army had financed its purchases of military hardware, using CIA bankers as middlemen in converting opium into airplanes by quoting from The Marcos Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave:

[Paul] Helliwell’s first major assignment after the war was to find a way for the CIA to subsidize the airline, Civil Air Transport, owned by Major General Claire L. Chennault, which had been used to furnish materiel to the anticommunist Chinese in Southeast Asia. In 1951 Helliwell set up Sea Supply as the CIA’s first proprietary company in order to transport weapons to the Nationalist Chinese troops in Burma and to Thailand police, whose Chief was involved in the opium trade. The planes were not returned empty after the guns were unloaded; they were filled with drugs destined for the United States — usually Florida. The money derived from the sale of the drugs had to be laundered for the CIA, and Helliwell figured out how to do it.

Neil Mallon of Dresser joined Temco Board.

At this same Grand Prairie plant, Temco would soon be building a variety of aircraft in the light twin market throughout the post-WWII and Korean War years, but NAvcon's single-engine four-seater "type certificate" had been sold in late 1948 to Ryan Aeronautical Co. Temco had ceased making this design for civilians in order to fulfill an Air Force contract awarded it that year for the military version (L-17) used in the Korean war.

Gerard P. Moran, at his website celticowboy, has written a concise history of Navion aircraft. The "type certificate," was the abstract design of the plane approved by CAA, and not the business entity authorized to manufacture the design. According to Moran:

By 1949 Ryan began introducing changes to improve the Navion (the capitalization of the 'A' was dropped as it was an abbreviation of North American). Auxiliary fuel tanks, improved instrumentation were popular options, as were colorful paint schemes. Ryan produced another 158 upgraded L-17Bs ordered in 1948 by the United States Air Force and a final order of 5 L-17Bs in 1949 for the Hellenic (Greek) Air Force....

Even though Ryan's order books were full, Ryan had to face an undeniable truth -- they lost money on every Navion they built. Each plane cost about $15,000 to make, and basic models were selling for as little as $9,500. At the end of 1952 Ryan ceased all Navion production. A total of 2,350 had been completed (1 prototype, 1,109 by NAA and 1,240 by Ryan).

While the Navion was still in production, the USAF returned (in 1948) to place another order, this time for 163 upgraded L-17Bs. A further 35 L-17As returned to the factory for the same upgrades, becoming L-17Cs. In 1952 the USAF deployed L-17s to the Orient in the first wave of the Korean War....

For some time, going back to the North American Aviation days, there had been interest in converting the single engine Navion into a more powerful twin engine version. Neither North American or Ryan were able to divert resources to such a project because of increasing military demands.... [O]n November 10, 1952, one full year after starting, with their Twin Navion, the plane, designated D-16 (D for Daubenberger) received its CAA certification. Interestingly, before the Twin Navion the Civil Aviation Authority had no way of certifying modifications as extensive as those done for Daubenberger (all were approved using the Major Repair and Alteration Form). This, plus a couple of other major conversions led the CAA to develop the Supplemental Type Certification [STC] process that is still in place today.

Almost immediately word of the D-16's existence spread across the United States, and in Florida, Jack Riley entered the Twin Navion story. Jack Riley was a self-made millionaire in the oil business and a natural salesman. He had formed a company, Riley Aircraft Corporation, to sell, refurbish, upgrade or modify general aviation aircraft in Florida. He obtained licensing and or certification from original manufacturers.... He took a trip to see the Navion manufacturing facility in California. After only a couple days in California, the businessman returned home with the Twin Navion's production rights....

Eager to sell his new twin Jack Riley took his plane to Dallas, Texas, where he demonstrated it to some 30 or 40 potential customers. Riley admitted that owners of single Navions were his primary customers, since they already knew the plane and could continue to expect the same performance, handling and ruggedness that they'd come to expect from their own planes. That tour resulted in the company's first sale, with two more following. Within a couple months the books were filled with orders for more than three dozen planes....

As production began, prices increased from $20,000 (initial sale price) to $24,850. This was nearly three times the price of a used single Navion but with Jack Riley's salesmanship there were always customers. In March 1953 a production agreement was entered with TEMCO Aircraft Corp., a well known subcontractor, maintenance provider for the USAF and small plane manufacturer. The next month, TEMCO purchased the exclusive production rights to the 'Riley Twins.' Jack Riley meanwhile returned to Florida where he remained responsible for marketing and sales. It also appears that Riley Aircraft served as a broker for Navions, buying them on the used market and then reselling them to TEMCO when an airframe was needed. [Italics added. Keep in mind the old type certificate (TC) for the single-engine Navion was still owned by Ryan.]

A new corporation was formed to purchase the single-engine design from Ryan Aeronautical. Navion Aircraft Co., later changed to NAV Corp., was initially set up in 1958 as a division of Tubular Service & Engineering Company (TUSCO).

Who Created TUSCO?

When I first saw this name, I was struck by its similarity with the name TEMCO, with capital letters used as an acronym for a descriptive name for what the company did. Could the two companies have been created by the same individuals perhaps? I decided to do some digging along this line, comparing the two acronymic manufacturers.

For Temco's history we look first at a chapter entitled "Byrds, Planes, and an Automobile" from Richard Bartholomew's classic work, Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used in the JFK Conspiracy - Part 4. The implication is there that Lyndon Johnson had enough influence over Temco's hiring practices to obtain a job with the company which would morph into E-Systems for his favorite assassin, Malcom Everett "Mac" Wallace. Temco began simply enough as a WWII era airplane manufacturer, helped along with financial backing from D. Harold Byrd, Dallas oilman. Byrd, who helped establish the Civilian Air Patrol (CAP), sought out electronics expert James Ling to turn Temco into a conglomerate which added electronics and missiles to balance military and civilian sales. Then Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) "sorta got outa control," as we say in Texas.

Back in 2011 QJ looked into D. Harold Byrd's foray into uranium mining, exploring his connections in that field, as well as his ownership of the building in Dallas which was to become known as the "Texas State Schoolbook Depository Building," even though it was only leased to that business six months prior to the November 1963 assassination. That curiosity ate up the next year while we examined connections to Israelis in Canada, Roy Cohn and eventually Florida real estate development, not to mention the history of the pseudononymous author of the Torbitt Document. Understanding history is a time-consuming endeavor!

Even though a photograph of D. H. Byrd appeared in numerous Texas newspapers in December 1932, showing him receiving a flag given him by his "cousin," Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Jr. of Virginia, genealogical records did not at first indicate there was any kinship between the two men. However, as I dug deeper into Byrd's family background, some amazing facts came to light.

ADDENDUM

Update: The above post was originally published here in March 2015. Since then, the "next installment" I intended to publish has sat in my draft folder not quite completed. However, as often happens, another seemingly irrelevant line of research has uncovered something that has brought it back to my attention. Yesterday (5/29/2017) Daniel Hopsicker posted on Facebook a link to an article that appeared at the website of The Economist. I decided to refresh my memory about the owner of that medium, recalling that the old Pearson Group had sold to someone else. As a comment, I posted the following:

In 2015 the Pearson Group sold its shares in The Economist to current owners, and Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Hillary's biggest donor, is now on its board of directors. Shares are controlled by those in control of the Bank of England. Alex Karp of Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company and intelligence contractor, is also on the board of the Economist. Lynn Forester ...

• 'Her third husband is Sir Evelyn de Rothschild (born August 29, 1931), whom she was introduced to by Henry Kissinger at the 1998 Bilderberg Group conference in Scotland.[22] They married on November 30, 2000 in London, England,[1] after de Rothschild divorced his wife in 2000.[23] She is his third wife.[1] On the announcement of the marriage, the Rothschild couple were invited to spend their honeymoon at the White House by the Clintons.[24] The couple divide their time between homes in New York and London, the summer home on Martha’s Vineyard and the Rothschild family’s historic country estate in England. By virtue of her marriage to a knight, she is known socially as Lady de Rothschild.[6]'
• 'Her first marriage was to Alexander Hartley Platt, a doctor's son from New Jersey, took place at Brick Presbyterian Church on May 20, 1978.' He was from the Hartley family, married into the gold-owning Dodge family and Remington Arms..."marriage of Lynn Forester, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Kenneth Forester of Oradell, N.J., to Alexander Hartley Platt, son of Dr. and Mrs. Adrian T. Platt of Madison, N.J."
• Her husband was a co-owner of the estate once owned by Marcellus Hartley Dodge, who was married to Geraldine Rockefeller.
• Lynn's father's obituary:Known among his Meridian colleagues as ‘Ken Sr.’ to distinguish him from his son of the same name, Mr. Forester had an illustrious career in aviation. It all began in December 1941 when he joined the US Army Air Corps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The following year, Forester earned his private pilot’s license at the age of 21. By 1943, his military training had led him to become an engineering test pilot for the US Army Air Force, the predecessor of today’s US Air Force.  From 1943 to 1946, he was flying fighters, bombers and transport aircraft.  He flew the nation’s first jet, the Bell Airacomet P-59, and the first operational jet fighter, the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star.
  

Forester attained a mechanic’s license while in the military and, after discharge in 1946, founded Mallard Air Service at Teterboro Airport. Mallard was a distributor for the Republic Seabee and the North American Navion and was a maintenance base and charter operator. [North American Aviation manufactured airplanes at Teterboro Airport during WWI.]

Mallard later converted C-47s from military to civilian aircraft. Ken Sr. left Mallard in 1951 to manage a wire machinery plant in Paterson, NJ and work part time selling and maintaining Navions at Teterboro Airport. He once flew a Navion under the George Washington Bridge in bad weather. In 1958, he was offered a location on the west side of the airport and started a new business that he called General Aviation Company. 

 ***

His son, Ken, a graduate of the US Air Force Academy and former F-102 pilot, took over full time management of the company in 1974. In 1986, the company became a Million Air franchise. In 2006, the company returned to being independently owned and operated, and rebranded itself under its current name of Meridian.

In 2002, the Federal Aviation Administration presented Ken Sr. with the Charles Taylor Master Mechanic award. Named after Charles Taylor, a mechanic for the Wright Brothers airplane, the award recognizes aviation maintenance personnel who have at least 50 years of experience in the industry. In 2008, he was inducted into the New Jersey Aviation Hall of Fame during the organization’s 35th annual induction dinner.

J. Kenneth Forester was a beloved husband for 67 years to the late Annabelle H. (nee Hewitt) and father of Ken and his wife Susan, Gary and his wife Lynne, Lynn and her husband Evelyn, David and his wife Mary, and grandfather to thirteen grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. He will be missed by family, friends, and colleagues alike.  

•  Meridian Aircraft history:

...In 2006, the company concluded a 20-year affiliation with Million Air. The four business units were combined as divisions of the Meridian Companies. Meridian Teterboro, the FBO, opened a new 30,000 sq. ft. passenger terminal and headquarters. The design of the new terminal harkened back to the art deco style of the 1930s and 1940s. A new 40,000 sq. ft. hangar for maintenance and storage was added in 2007. 

Forester did aircraft maintenance for Aramco 1949.

So, now we know that, through Mena Airport, the Clintons were said to be laundering drug profits made by CIA/Bush drug cartel through Arkansas development operations while Bill was governor after 1979, leading up to and beyond Iran Contra. We also now know that Hillary's favorite donor, Lynn Forester's father, Ken Forester, Sr., got into aviation through the Army Air Corps and afterwards moved to New Jersey to set up an affiliate of Navion Aircraft. Forester's background, however, leads us to much more than the airplane history; it also connects him to the oil network in Saudi Arabia--at least during one trip he made in 1949.As one can see, he was aboard the flight with some of Saudi Aramco's most important executives.

The Forester family genealogy tells us that Kenneth's parents were both of German descent. His father (Carl F. Forester) was born in North Dakota soon after his parents emigrated from Canada. His mother (Carolyn Heiner) married Carl in 1916 in Minneapolis. First living in North Dakota where Charles Francis and John Kenneth were born, before relocating to Alhambra, California, Carl worked as an accountant. The Foresters rented a large house at S. 8th Street near Atlantic Boulevard and had another son named Paul Leonard before Carl died in 1939, leaving his wife to support their sons by taking in lodgers. The two eldest sons joined the Army in 1941.

Ken may have met his wife, Annabelle Hewitt, after he joined the Army Air Corps. Her father, Ezra A. Hewitt, was a mining engineer and geologist, who had worked for Anaconda Copper, as well as other mining concerns, retiring in Park City, Utah. Annabelle's brother, Robert Marvin Hewitt, enlisted in the Army in 1942, soon after his graduation from college. At this point it is unknown why Ken and Annabelle's marriage took place in Arizona, but clearly the date indicates he was headed off to war only a couple of weeks after Pearl Harbor was attacked.

By 1961 Bob Hewitt was president of Riddle Airlines in Florida, which had strong connections to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City. A lawsuit brought in 1963 by the executor of the estate of Arthur Vining Davis against Hewitt and others indicated that Davis sold one million shares in the Miami-based all-cargo airline to Hewitt before his death, subject to a lien created to secure a significant purchase price which had not been paid.

With that, we will end this addendum and get back to other matters.