Notes for: William Perry H MCFADDIN

William Perry Herring McFaddin was like his father and older brother in that he possessed great energy and enterprise which he channeled into productive activities. Known formally as W. P.H. McFaddin, informally as Perry, he was educated privately at home and at Texas Military Institutein Austin; he then attended a business college in St. Louis. Upon his return, he entered the cattle business with his father who had reared him by his own cardinal principles of success. An apt pupil, who was bold and innovative, he realized early in his career that land , cheap and plentiful, was an investment certain of [appreciation] and a capital that would never be entirely eroded no matter what the circumstances.

With his father and three [family] associates, he organized the Beaumont Pasture Company that purchased large tracts of land on the coastal prairies of Jefferson County [on which to raise cattle]. In [January1901] some of these lands were under lease to Captain Anthony Lucas and became a part of the Spindletop oil discovery, an event that introduced a new dimension into the life of the cattle company , [as well as] Beaumont, Jefferson County, and, indeed, the rest of the world [as it ushered in the modern oil industry].

[He and family business] associates experimented also with rice [farming]. They built a canal system and a rice mill that were the largest of their kind at that time. Still a cattleman, he maintained a large feeding lot near the city, and ‘McFaddin steaks' were sold as far away as New York. Later he introduced fur-farming, using muskrats of theGulf Coast as the source of his pelts, and "McFaddin furs" appeared on the London market." Source: More Early Southeast Texas Families, Madeleine Martin, Nortex Press (1998). [email David McFaddenk, 21 Jul2000]