By David Gene Spear

Special to the Index



Editor’s note: Native Palo Pinto County residents David and Clara Spear will soon celebrate a milestone few married couples ever achieve – their 70th wedding anniversary. An announcement of and invitation to their celebration will appear in Sunday’s Index. But today we offer this article written by one of their four children that contains a lot of interesting and historical information on their lives, their lives together and their ancestors.



David Lavern Spear and Clara Gene Whatley – lifelong, hard-working, God-fearing, grassroots Palo Pinto County Democrats – were married at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 11, 1939, at the Parsonage for the First Baptist Church on West Hubbard of Mineral Wells, Texas, by Rev. W. W. Chancellor.

David (nicknamed Speedy) and Clara (nicknamed Toots) were both 20 years old. Texas marriage law at that time required that men had to be 21 and women had to be 18, so David’s mother, Bertie Spear (Granny Bert) had to sign permission for him to get the $2 marriage license.

Today they are both 90 years old and live within 20 miles of where each was born.

Attending that 1939 wedding were Sam and Louise Whatley, Everett Whatley and Sis Schillings (before they married), Marie Keller, and T.J. Scallin (they also married later). The reception and dinner was held at the Whatley farm. The wedding was on Saturday because David had the next day off from work. (He had every other Sunday off and earned $12 a week).

They did not have a honeymoon, but had one day before David reported for work at the bakery Sunday night at 11 p.m.

Clara lived at home with her parents, Samuel Quintus Whatley and Verna Tompkins Whatley, on the family’s farm 3 miles west of town on the east side of the Brazos River at Indian Creek.

David lived with his mother, Bertie Emeline Archer Spear, known as “Granny Bert,” in a second-floor apartment on North Oak Avenue above the Asburn Ice Cream Parlor. This building still exists (it is where Brian [Clara’s grand-nephew] and Lara Spears Marsh now live). Granny Bert owned and operated Bertie’s Café downstairs next door to the ice cream parlor. It was a small eatery with an eight-stool counter and two tables. Granny Bert prepared all the meals.

David worked at the City Bakery (located on North Oak Avenue – where “Bat World Sanctuary” is now located) – as a baker and deliveryman. Clara had worked in the kitchen of Mrs. Lawson’s Women’s Boarding House near the west side of the Crazy Hotel but was not working at the time they married. Mrs. Lawson served family-style meals.

How they met

David and Clara first met at the Mineral Wells skating rink on North Oak Avenue (next door to the old Grand Theater). That spot is now a parking lot. Clara says that she and her girlfriends noticed David because he was such a graceful skater. She said that he could skate backwards on one toe!

First date

They can’t recall but suspect that it was probably to a movie in one of the four theaters in Mineral Wells, all within three blocks of where the Crazy Sign used to hang over the intersection of North Oak Avenue and West Hubbard Street. They often met and spent time together at the skating rink or at Bertie’s Café.

Wedding proposal

David made an off-handed comment that they should get married someday so Clara, ever the detail accomplisher, made an appointment with Rev. Chancellor. This off-handed proposal led to a marriage that has lasted 70 years so far.

First home

They had a second-floor apartment in southeast Minerals Wells.

First car

They bought a maroon 1941 Chevy in 1946 after David returned from the Army. They had used Granny Bert’s 1935 Chevy Coupe when they first married until it caught fire while Granny Bert had left it running as she got out to open a gate. I never imagined that Granny Bert had ever driven a car in her life. Dad said that she never drove again after the Coupe caught fire and burned. The battery, which was under the driver’s seat, had ignited.

Where they have lived

• Mineral Wells, 1939–1946

• Newberry, Texas, 1946–1951

• Millsap, 1951–1954

• Middleton, Tenn., 1954-1956

• Mineral Wells, 1956–1964

• Peadenville, Texas, 1964–1973

• Salesville, Texas, 1973–present



Descendants

They have four children, seven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.

Four children

• David Gene Spear (wife Elgie Honda) living in San Diego, Calif.

• Sam Whatley Spear (wife Dovie Spangler) living in Las Vegas, Nev.

• Verna Clare (Veecee) Spear Reynolds, living in Austin, Texas.

• Bette Kay Spear Robertson (husband Norman) living in Alvin, Texas.

Seven grandchildren

• David Chantz Spear (wife Cindy Louderback) living in Sacramento, Calif.

• Devin Honda Spear living in Seattle, Wash.

• Sammy Spear living in North Dakota.

• David Shane Spear (wife Trena Hafer) living in Weatherford.

• John Russell Reynolds, living in Perrin.

• Angela Kay Robertson Lesser (husband Joe Robert Lesser) living in Houston.

• Travis Daniel Roberson (wife Sarah Smith) living in Houston.



Eight great-grandchildren

Jason Spear and Zack Spear, of North Dakota; Kyle Spear, Sam Taylor Spear and Ashley Jordan Spear, all of Jacksboro; and Tyler Robertson, Katherine Robertson and Elizabeth Robertson, all of Houston.



Their bios

David Lavern Spear

David was born in Gordon, Texas, on May 22, 1919, as the second child of Louis David Spear and Bertie Emeline Archer (Granny Bert). Siblings were Vera Varue Spear Rogers and Archer Thomas (Tommy) Spear. He attended school in Gordon. At age 16 he joined Roosevelt’s CC (Conservation Corps) and worked in Santa Paula, Calif., for the U.S. Forestry Dept. Park Service and in Dallas on the White Rock Lake Project.

He left the CC and moved back to Gordon in 1938. He was drafted in U.S. Army in 1944 and served in World War II in the occupation of the Philippines in anticipation of the invasion of Japan. Dropping the A-bomb on Japan to end WW II in the Pacific probably saved his life. Discharged in January 1946, he came home to his wife and two children in Mineral Wells. Partnered with his brother Tommy they bought a farm in Newberry and farmed.

After six years farming, Tommy became the Millsap postmaster and David started work as an aircraft mechanic for Consolidated Aircraft Company (which became Convair, later General Dynamics, and finally bought by Lockheed Martin). He also worked for Southern Airways (at Camp Wolters). He became self employed in 1964 when he and Clara bought and operated Spear’s Conoco Service Station and Grocery Store in Peadenville (crossroads of U.S. Highway 281 and U.S. 254/FM1885) which they operated until 1973. They then moved to their current home in Salesville. Afterward he owned and operated a Conoco station on North Oak Avenue in Mineral Wells. Lastly, he worked for Clarence Adams at the Knife Store in Fort Worth before retiring for good.

Notable ancestors are William and Mary James Reasoner David’s maternal great-great-grandparents who were Texas pioneers, settling first in Jack County in 1852 and later at Barton’s Creek in Erath County in 1855. They were the first Anglo settlers to the area and their homestead was in northern Erath County on Barton’s Creek, near modern day Gordon.

It was located at the creek’s crossing ford on a trail that went from Palo Pinto to Stephenville. This homestead is just south of Interstate 20 near mile marker 373, just west of the Gordon exit. Gordon and Mineral Wells were not yet established at the time.

Nothing exists of their cabin but the pecan tree in their yard still stands on the south bank of the creek. William and Mary had come from Kentucky via Arkansas.

As a teenager, William had fought with Andrew Jackson (Old Hickory) at the battle of New Orleans in 1813. William’s father (Jacob Reznor – well documented in history accounts) was one of the original mountain men in the western Rockies and was in a group of three trappers who briefly scouted for the Lewis and Clark Expedition and were members of the Astor Expedition sponsored by the Astor Fur Company. Jacob was killed by hostile Native Americans in 1814 while trapping on the Boise River in Idaho.

Maternal great-great-grandfather, Daniel Archer, settled in Red River County (bordering the Indian Territory) in 1847 and later relocated in Palo Pinto County. His grandson, George Washington Archer, married the granddaughter of William Reasoner, Eva Doty, (David’s maternal grandparents) at the Reasoner home at Barton’s Creek.

David’s paternal great-grandfather, James Thomas (JT) Spear, was an Alabama Civil War veteran and is buried in the CSA cemetery (Section 3, Row B, headstone No. 22) in Austin. He served in Company C of the 46th Alabama Infantry, CSA. He lived in Bastrop County near Austin before moving to Palo Pinto.

David is Black Dutch and probably has Native American heritage from the Archer side of the family.



Clara Gene Whatley Spear

Born in Mineral Wells Texas on Oct. 8, 1919, the forth child of Samuel Quintus Whatley and Verna Tompkins. Siblings were Sam Carlton Whatley, Mary Helen Whatley Wheeler, Everett Lowell Whatley, George Harbinson Whatley and Margaret Madeline (Pat) Whatley McQueary. She attended school in Mineral Wells, graduating with the class of 1938.

The Whatley home was a farm 3 miles west of Mineral Wells on the south side of U.S. Highway 180 just east of the Brazos River at Indian Creek. She was mainly a stay-at-home mother, but was a full-time working partner at the Spear Conoco and Grocery at Peadenville. She also managed a home, living with war ration books, rearing two under-5 rascally sons while David was in the Pacific in 1944-45.

Significant ancestors: Clara’s Texas pioneer ancestors included paternal grandparents George Washington Whatley and Indiana Price Whatley, who came to Texas in 1873 and settled (as one of the first Anglo residents) on the Brazos River in what is now Indian Creek. Highway U.S. 180 runs just north of where the farmhouse once stood. They came from Fayette County, Georgia, where he served in the First Georgia Regiment in the Civil War. His father was a state representative. George W. Whatley was elected treasurer of Palo Pinto in 1904. They were descendants from Whatleys who had settled in Jamestown, Va., in the early 1600s.

On her maternal side are great-grandparents John Baptist Tompkins and Sarah Harbinson Tompkins, who emigrated from Virginia via a few years in Missouri (where they had four children). They settled in Parker County in 1853 on a hill overlooking Village Creek and the old Fort Worth-to-Fort Belknap road, about 6 miles northeast of Weatherford. They raised nine children (the original four children born in Missouri and an additional five children born in Texas). John was a successful stockman, breeding an excellent line of horses that were prized in the area. The Native Americans of the area often stole horses from the Tompkins ranch. Their original log cabin is on display at the historic Log Cabin Village museum in Fort Worth’s Forest Park.

Clara’s ethnic background is mostly English.