Bishop's First Families

Bishop, Nueces County, Texas 1910 - 2010 One Hundred Years of South Texas Heritage!

[The following is from the Bishop News of 1960 in a series written by Mrs. Gail Tubbs for Bishop's

then upcoming Golden Jubilee celebration.]

~~J. F. Imken Family~~

The Imken family came to Bishop from Longworth, Texas in 1912. J. F.

Imken, the father, arrived June 11, 1912, and began working for the E. A.

Flinn Grocery, managed by G. R. Drury. On August 9, Mrs. Imken and

three sons Ira, Elmer and Melva, joined him.

"Through the drought and business failure in West Texas, we came here

peniless", Ira Imken writes, "but with good crops the first few years, and

hard work for all of us, we were able to build a new home".

As the town grew, and more business houses were opened, Mr. Imken

started working for Moore Dry Goods Co. After four years, this company

combined with the W. R. Sims Grocery to form the Farmers Supply

Company, and Mr. Imken continued to work for this firm until 1922, when

he opened a small business of his own under the name of J. F. Imken

Grocery.

"With both our mother and father working hard, and we three boys helping

in the store before and after school, doing a little farming, picking cotton

every year, milking four or five cows and delivering milk night and morning,

we accumulated enough money to buy both buildings we now occupy",

Ira Imken tells.

"We remodeled and enlarged our store four times during the time our father

operated it. After his death in 1950, Elmer and I bought the business and

began operating it under the name of Imken Grocery and Market, and in

1952 we remodeled and enlarged the store as it is today", Ira Imken

continues.

"With the help of God we have prospered and enjoyed living in Bishop all

these 48 years", he concludes.

~~Tubbs - W. L. Johnson Families~~

[The following is from the Bishop News of 1960 in a series written by Mrs. Gail Tubbs for Bishop's

then upcoming Golden Jubilee celebration.]

Gail L. Tubbs came to Bishop in January 1912 to work six weeks on the

first F. Z. Bishop home, and the six weeks stretched out to 1960, and he is

still working on homes.

"It was dark when we got off the train. There were electric lights all over

the place, and we thought we had landed in a real little city...until next

morning when we counted only about a dozen houses in town", he tells.

He and his friend, Bob Collins, had taken a carpenter job working on the

first F. Z. Bishop home (now belonging to S. P. Holmes). One job over-

lapped another, early houses, brick buildings, the Herron block, in 1913

the Methodist Church, in 1914 the three-story

brick school building.

Building slowed down by 1916 and Tubbs

started a bakery business and had regular

shipments of individual pies to the troop

encampments in the valley during the Villa

border trouble. The night of the 1916 storm he

had 1000 pies ready to catch the 4 a.m. train,

and by that time there were a lot of smashed

pies in the wrecked bakery building.

The hurricane put him back in the building

game and he and Edna May Johnson were

married the first of December. One of their

proud possessions was a "Little" roadster. It

was a car you could drive at night. There were

carbide headlights that you lighted with a

match. Later they took the "Little" up to the Hill Country, and the car would

not climb the hills, but it could be backed up them.

One of the Charter Members of the first Volunteer Fire Department, Gail

Tubbs served as chief for 30 years before he retired. One of the worst fires

he ever fought was the one he did not try to put out. Early one morning the

John T. Bartlett home caught fire, spread to the Methodist parsonage and

threatened the church building less than 10 feet away. With only one hose

line to use, the firemen let the houses go, much to the dismay of

spectators, and kept a blanket of water over the brick veneer wall of the

church.

"That early day fire equipment was a hand reel and 500 feet of hose, kept

in a shed two blocks west of the railroad", Gail recalls. "Mrs. L. B. Harden

reached the fire in her touring car about the time I did and volunteered for

service. We took off after the hose cart. It was hard pulling, hanging on to

the back of the car with one hand and the tongue of the reel with the other,

over the rought rutted streets". When they reached the fire hydrant, the cap

was stuck, and Mrs. Harden claims that she turned a discreetly deaf ear to

the firemen's remarks.

A charter member of the original Bishop volunteer fire Department, he put

out a lot of muscle pulling the old hand reels to fires in the early days, and

served as fire chief from the old hand reel days to present modern pumper

equipment, 37 years in all, until he retired as honorary chief. The muscle

also came in handy when he lugged the big bass drum in the first Bishop

Booster Band. He quit the building game for a time and went into the

bakery and cafe business, but soon went back to the hammer and saw.

Good newspaper advertising brought W. L. Johnson to Bishop in February

1913 to establish the first dry goods business. Mr. Johnson rented a brick

building under construction on the south side of the main street. When

goods arrived the building was still without doors, which they couldn't get

shipped, so he barred one door and moved in a cot to sleep across the

other. He was a small man, and a burglar wouldn't have had much trouble

tipping him off that cot.

In June he was joined by his wife and children, Edna May, Walter, Jr.,

Marvin and six-weeks old Vivian. En route here from Floresville, they had

to spend the night in a small hotel in Corpus Christi. They thought the

people very poor housekeepers because everything smelled so musty

and mildewy. They were soon to find that unpleasant condition a part of

life in the "Coast Country".

The house they had rented was still minus a roof, so the family lived in the

back of the store for several weeks, and the mother was quite embar-

rassed at hanging out certain baby

clothes right in the middle of

town.

From their back door the first

week here, they watched the

laying of the cornerstone of the

First Methodist Church, and had

the pleasure of attending the first

services held in that church the

third Sunday in June.

Mr. Johnson was appointed the

third mayor of Bishop and served

three terms. He served as

peacemaker between warring

factions during the tense Ku Klux

Klan days. There is on record a

proclamation he issued in May,

1918, during World War I, calling

on all stores to close two days a

week to "let all hands get out in

the country and do much-needed

work on the farms. "We can best help our government by putting aside our

personal business to help our farmers with their crops". Later he was city

secretary for 10 years, retiring two years before his death in 1947.

Eva Watson, left; unidentified seated; W.L. Johnson standing

behind; unidentified traveling salesman, right.