Henrietta “Etta” Booth Mayo
Henrietta “Etta” Booth Mayo (1869-1918) was born in Tennessee on Dec. 20, 1869, and died in Greenville Sept. 4, 1918. She was the wife of William L. Mayo (1861-1917), the founder of East Texas Normal College (now Texas A&M University-Commerce). Mayo contributed to the university as a music teacher. She and her daughter were also involved in the local and national Womens Christian Temperance Movement; she even brought Carrie Nation to speak in 1905 about her concern for Commerce’s saloons.
Her passion included the rights of women, especially Women’s Suffrage. On May 1, 1915, Mayo led a suffragist parade through Commerce. The marchers were all dressed in white, carrying banners in support of women’s right to vote.[1]
In late summer of 1916, in an act of civil disobedience, Mayo, along with her children, Liebling and Aileen, and nine Boy Scouts walked seventy-five miles to Dallas. Her daughters wore Boy Scout Uniforms and were notified by a Probation Officer in Dallas that they were not to wear “trousers.” It was against the law for women to wear male clothing. May, strong in her beliefs, told the Commerce Journal “I believe that men and women should be on an absolutely equal basis. Intellect, capacity for work and play and the right to do as one pleases is a thing absolutely without sex. It used to be that a man’s ideal of a woman was a languishing coquette with an 18-inch waist. They have been brought to admit the fact of waists and it won’t be long until they must confess that women have legs and shoulders.”[2]
[1] Sterling Hart, “Suffrage Parade,” The Portal to Texas History (Commerce, Texas, May 7, 1915), Vol. 26, No. 19, Ed. 1 edition, accessed June 21, 2022, https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1359319/m1/2/.
[2] Sterling Hart, “The Commerce Journal. (Commerce, Tex.), Vol. 27, No. 36, Ed. 1 Friday, September 8, 1916,” The Portal to Texas History (Commerce, Texas, September 8, 1916), accessed August 10, 2022, https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1359376/m1/1/zoom/.
Campbell Franklin “Cam” Dowell Jr.
Campbell Franklin “Cam” Dowell was born in Lone Oak on Sept. 9, 1912, and died on Nov. 7, 2002. He was the son of C.F. and Ollie Lynch Dowell. He graduated from The Terrell School in Dallas and later attended Wesley College in Greenville and the University of Texas at Austin.
Dowell was a longtime banker and rancher who trained under his father in the Lone Oak State Bank. He worked for the General Motors Acceptance Corporation from 1936 to 1940. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II in the Philippines, he returned to Greenville, where he had an insurance and loan business. Involved in various banks in North Texas, he moved to Dallas and became chairman of the board and president of the Hillcrest State Bank. Dowell later founded and managed a group of affiliated banks in the Dallas area in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. He was chairman and founder of the Casa Linda National Bank, First National Bank of Euless, First National Bank of Irving, Northwest National Bank and the Village National Bank. He was also chairman of the board of the First Greenville National Bank.
Dowell later became chairman of the board of Texas Commerce Bank Hillcrest in Dallas and advisory director of Texas Commerce Bank of Dallas and Texas Commerce Bancshares, Inc. of Houston. He was also owner of Cam F. Dowell Insurance of Dallas. Mr. Dowell served many years on the board of the Salvation Army in Dallas and was appointed by Governor Dolph Briscoe to the Board of Regents of East Texas State University in Commerce (now Texas A&M University-Commerce).
Recent Comments