Swenson Biography

The Abilene Reporter News begins here a biography, the first complete one ever
compiled, of William Gray Swenson, 86, leader in Abilene business for more than six
decades.
Mr. Swenson is a director and was a co-founder of Citizens National Bank, director of
West Texas Utilities Co. and president of its predecessor company, director of the Roscoe,
Snyder and Pacific Railway, a trustee of the Fort Worth and Denver Railway, holder of
extensive properties in Abilene.
Leads Efforts:
He was a leader in the efforts which brought into being the old Abilene streetcar
system, the hotel now known as the Windsor, The Mims building and many other business
undertakings.
With his first-hand knowledge of much of Abilene’s history, with his great intellect and
his keen sense of memory, he is the best of authorities on the birth and development of many
local institutions.
Now, despite his preference that he would avoid publicity, Mr. Swenson has agreed to
share much of this knowledge with the readers of the Reporter News.
He Granted to Assistant Editor Katharyn Duff many hours of interiew time and gave her
access to many files and papers pertinent to the history of Abilene.
The result is a wealth of local historical material, much of it not heretofore in public
print.

Three parts:

The Lengthy interview will be presented in three parts, one each Sunday in this space.
The first part is primarily biographical. The second part wil deal mainly with the development
of banking and utilities in Abilene. The third will tell of milestones in Abilene’s growth into a
City and will give Mr. Swenson’s views on some present day leadership and efforts to make
this a better town.
The Reporter News is deeply indebted to Mr. Swenson for his graciousness and for his
cooperation in this extensive to tell the Abilene story

First of three parts:
Mr. Swenson: Part of Abilene Genesis

W. G. Swenson, a spare, reticent, precise-spoken Abilene businessman, has an
expression which drifts sometimes into the conversation.
“Now, in the beginning here, we. . .” he will say in response to inquiry on some facet of
Abilene life.
Such a genesis phrase, “in the beginning,” is from Mr. Swenson’s lips accurate to a
degree it would be from no other living business personality. The pronoun “we,” is revealing
too.
Mr. Swenson has lived almost all of Abilene’s history – and not merely as a spectator.
He helped bring about many of the city’s “beginnings.” He was a leader in that amazing
coterie, that “we,” which poured out the molds, five and six decades ago, for much of present
day Abilene.
He continued in a formative force in the growth and development of the town, long after
his contemporaries were gone. And now, approaching his 86 th birthday – he is a year and a
half older than Abilene and has been a resident here since the town was age two – he is still a
major, if a quiet, influence on the business community.

Things have changed somewhat for Mr. Swenson,
His office, in Citizens Bank Building, now has the stillness of a private study and the
telephone rarely jangles. But he is at work here daily, working at the fine old roll-top desk that
has served commerce in princely amounts, business measured through by the years by the
millions.
He is unknown to some he might meet on the street as he goes about from this
director’s meeting to that board conference. But those who do greet him as friend are a
significant lot – today’s leaders in business and civic affairs, the white-haired sons and
middle-aged grandsons of the men who were Mr. Swenson’s associates in laying Abilene’s
foundations.
HE EMBARKS NO MORE on the daring business ventures which once were for him
routine.
But let not that or the other facts of age 86 be misleading. He is still very much a part of
life.
His questions in a director’s meeting at Citizens National Bank or West Texas Utilities
are as penetrating here in the electronic age as they were back when the electric motor was
new. He is as aware of today’s potentials as he was of the possibilities of wireless telegraph
back when he and a professor managed such a message two years before Marconi
announced his discovery.
He is yet, at 86, the complex man he has always been – an alert businessman
engrossed with the cold facts of business and an erudite man with the educated interests of
the scholar.
He can quote, if you wish, a Horace ode learned long ago. (“You ‘sing’ Horace’s Latin,
not say it,” he explains.)
He keeps a New Testament in his desk drawer – a New Testament in the original
Greek which he reads.
His is a business office there in the Citizens Building, with ledgers, with files crowded
with business papers.
But atop his desk stand magnificent pieces of art, gold aftabas, those tall, long-
spouted, urns from the Middle East which he collects.
And his ledger, too, is typically contradictory.
In it are penned the figures which represent his daily business operations, also, with
notations he makes on daily Abilene events and people, a sort of history of this town he
helped build.
MR. SWENSON IS NOW the senior member of a Swedish clan identified with Texas
since a great-uncle, S. M. Swenson came here in the days of Sam Houston’s republic.
This Abilene branch, of which Mr. Swenson was the only child, was established here
by Swante Johan Swenson, father of the Abilenian.
S. J. Swenson was an engineer, educated at the Royal University of Sweden, who,
because of his health came to the United States in 1869 at the invitation of his uncle, S. M.
As a newcomer to America he worked in the S. M Swenson & Sons Bank, 52 Wall
Street, in New York, an institution still in operation, then moved to Louisiana to manage a
Swenson sugar plantation.
He was married in this country to Kizzie Chapman Browne, daughter of the George
William Gray Brownes.
(This Mr. Browne, incidentally was a college friend of a young poet named Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow. Through the years the poet sent his friend manuscript copies of much of his work.

These precious pieces were in Mr. Browne’s desk at an office he had as a land
official when the Texas Capital burned last century and the poems were destroyed.)
(This Mr. Browne’s son, George, was the father of Lloyd Browne and Mrs Lester
Gorsuch of Abilene and the late Gray Browne, making them and Mr. Swenson cousins.)
Mr. Swenson was born Dec 8, 1879 on the plantation in Saint Mary’s Parish, Louisiana.
He was named William Gray, a name which became to contemporaries, “Willie Gray.”
The family, because of the father’s health, came to Texas while Willie Gray was a baby
and to Austin where the father was in the banking business and where he helped build the old
Avenue Hotel. (Mr. Swenson was enumerated at Austin in the 1880 census, The Bureau of
Census found when it searched its records a few years ago n helping him obtain a birth
certificate.)
Already S. J. Swenson had an assignment from the family firm of S. M. Swenson &
sons, to locate land to redeem railroad script which Swenson interests held. There had been
controversy over the script for the railroad, the old BBB&C failed. But since the Swensons had
bought the paper in good faith, the Legislature passed a special act honoring it.
The first trips out into this country to locate land, by Swenson, a cousin, E. P., and a
surveyor named Martin Duval, were made before Abilene was founded.
The ranch land, some 500 sections at the time, was located in Jones, Throckmorton
and adjoining counties.
Mr. Swenson’s mother, Mrs. S. J. Swenson, named the new ranches – Mount Albin,
Noraland, Ellerslie and the like, taking names from the writings of a new author whose stories
she was reading in current publications, a writer named Sir Walter Scott.
S. J. SWENSON was put in charge of the ranch holdings and the family moved from
Austin to a home on the Ellerslie, about seven miles north of present day Anson.
The father’s health continued to deteriorate.
In early 1883 it was determined he must be nearer to medical help so the family,
parents and small son, Willie Gray, moved to the brand new town of Abilene, a community
born in March 1881.
The father bought Section 34, Blind Asylum Land Survey and built there the family
home.
Mrs. Swenson named the ranch Ridgeland
The section was at the northeast fringe of Abilene north and East of the town’s
cemetery, One of its boundaries is now known as N. 10 th St., another as Treadaway, another
as the Albany Highway. The main Abilene Christian College campus is located in what was
Ridgeland’s “big pasture.”
The land was purchased for $10 an acre.
THE CHILD, WILLIE GRAY, attended Abilene private and public schools, graduating
from Abilene High, class of 1897. (His ‘97 diploma is one of his many keepsakes.)
As a boy he grew up with other youngsters whose names were to be well known in
Abilene history.
He remembers, particularly, two youngsters who were almost the same age, about five
years junior to him.
One was the Baptist preacher’s boy, Bernard Hanks, who went on to go into the
newspaper business and be the long time publisher of this newspaper, which his family still
owns and to be a partner in the far-flung Harte-Hanks newspaper operation.
Another was a boy named Bill Fulwiler who went on to build a large business
organization which his heirs still own.

William Gray was briefly in Texas A&M College. (One of his teen-age pictures in A&M
uniform shows what great changes cadet garb has undergone through the years.)
But it was at Southwestern University, Georgetown, that he secured his higher
education.
And quite an education it was.
He has kept grade reports from Southwestern and they show he took the stiffest of
courses, the classics, Greek, physics, logic, chemistry, philosophy and the like.
They also show he made the best of grades, a succession of near-perfect, some even
perfect, marks.
Those Swenson grades have become, in fact, something in Southwestern history. A
few years ago, his fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, borrowed Mr. Swenson’s copies of them and
had them reproduced, mounted and put in the Southwestern museum as proof the fraternity
holds the school’s all-time academic honors.
Mr. Swenson’s four-year average, between 97 and 98, is unequaled, hardly
approached, in the 120 years of the school, he was advised.
SOUTHWESTERN HAD lifetime influence on Mr. Swenson.
Some of the learning was for scholarship’s sake – he could have a New Testament in
English as easily as the Greek version. (and, he confesses, he never reached the level of
Greek his old professor wanted. This man believed you had to be able to “think in Greek”
before you knew the language and Mr. Swenson never did get that skill)
Some of his learning had practical application as well.
Electricity was newer then and so were some fo the other sciences. He became
interested in them.
He and a professor friend, R. S. Hyer, did a lot of experimenting with this new idea of
“wireless telegraph.” They rigged up equipment with which they sent such a message two
miles across Georgetown. And a couple of years later, Marconi, the Italian physicist,
announced his discoveries in the field.
This science interest formed a fine background later for his business interests in
utilities. For one major application – when he became manager and president of the local
electricity company – he wired the switchboard himself.
He picked up, also at Southwestern, knowledge of architecture so that he could draw
the plans and specifications for personal and business buildings.
It was out of his Southwestern friendship with Prof. Hyer that Mr. Swenson got his
interest in Southern Methodist University. Mr. Hyer went on to found SMU and Mr. Swenson,
by the gift to that effort, became one of the honored group known as “SMU Founders.”
(When World War I came along, Mr. Swenson was above age for combat but was
interested in civilian work in the war effort. One of his prized papers is a letter of
recommendation from SMU President Hyer in which he described Swenson as “The best
practical electrician in Texas.”
IT WAS AT Southwestern that Mr. Swenson met his wife, Shirley McCollum, whose
half brother was a professor of modern languages at the school.
Mr. Swenson’s father was dead, succoming here in May of 1884, a year or so after the
family moved to Abilene. Mrs. Swenson, the mother, died while Willie Gray was in college, in
June of 1898.
On his 21 st birthday Mr. Swenson went to New York to receive his estate, then valued
at around $40,000, from the family bank which had been executor.

He was graduated from college and on Feb. 1 st 1902, he was married to Miss
McCullom at the plantation home of the bride’s parents on the Colorado River in Fayette
County.
The couple’s first home was a new one for which he had drawn the plans and specs,
complete with recessed windows such as some in Georgetown he admired. The house, cost
$4,300, was at the southwest corner of N. 2 nd and Mulberry.
This was home until 1910, when the Swensons moved into the rambling, two-story,
home they built in the 1700 block of the street which bears their name.
Mr. and Mrs. Swenson live still in this home, in recent years a quiet life with little
inolvement in social affairs. Two Children share the home with them, a daughter, Mrs Evalyn
S. Fields and a son, Earl Gray, retired after 30 years serice with the Library of Congress in
Washington.
Dorothy, the Swenson’s other daughter is Mrs. Jarrell B. Crow of Houston. Her
husband, a longtime Houston businessman, was president of the Frazier Brick Co. which he
sold recently to Acme Brick.
Bill Jr., the other son, lives in Fort Worth and is an executive in the Cox dry goods
merchandising organization which his wife’s family owns, an organization which has several
Texas stores.
There are five Swenson grandchildren, all girls, and six great-grandchildren.
THIS CENTURY WAS new when Mr. Swenson returned to Abilene to get himself
launched in business.
Abilene was a new town, about two decades old, a town roughly the size of present
day Rotan or Winters. (Population here, 1900, 3411)
He had no thought but to return to Abilene – just as he has had little thought but to
remain in Abilene when opportunities have come through the years to cast his lot with cities
far larger.
Abilene was his home. Here were his friends.
And the list of those friends, business and personal, makes up quite a roll call.
One of the boyhood friends had moved, Clarence Dillon, whose family name had once
been Lapowski, gone east where the name Dillon came to be attached to New York big
business and, by current Dillons, to high government service. (Other Swenson papers dearly
prized are “Dear Willie Gray” personal letters from the late Financier Dillon.
One friend, a close personal one, was a newcomer –attorney Tom Davidson whom Mr.
Swenson had known in college and whom he had persuaded to move out to Abilene.
Many of the other friends had names long associated with Abilene.
All in all there was on hand a remarkable group of young and middle-aged
businessmen when Mr. Swenson came home to go to work, men eager and daring and able.
There were some “youngsters” in the group, Bernard Hanks and Bill Fulwiler and the
like. There were “oldtimers” still in their prime, J. H. Paramore, Clabe Merchant and the rest.
There were such fellows as J. M. Wagstaff, Ed S. Hughes, Col. Morgan Jones, George
L. Paxton Sr., Horace Wooten, Jim Radford, Abdon Holt, John Guitar Sr., Henry James, Will
Minter and so on and on.
No ordinary fellows, these. And no ordinary times, those early years of the century.
It was a time for action and these were ready for action.
With a handshake they would form companies, with a telephone call set up a new
enterprise. They might be competitors here and partners there. And they were energetic.
Through an amazing two decades and a half, an era in which modern industry and
commerce were being born, men such as these took a sleepy village and shaped it into a

bustling town, laying foundations on which their children and grandchildren could build a
modern city.

And one of their leaders, the young man whose tasks seemed to be “to do the walking
and the talking” getting an idea started, was this one who kept his double game, Willie Gray.
ALONG WITH BUSINESS young Swenson took on civic duties as they came along.
He was school trustee eight years, 1917-1925, during which time there was a major
building program, Travis, College Heights and Lamar grade schools and a new high school
now known as Lincoln Junior. (During this time, too, Mr. Swenson notes, women were first
called on for trustee duty.)
He served his turn a a chamber of commerce worker, including presidency of the C-C
in 1923.
He served his church, First Methodist, then St. Paul after he and other Methodists met
at the old opera house to form that congregation. He was a major contributor to St. Paul’s first
building – paying his part in cash, declining, as always, to go on someone else’s note, even a
church’s.
He was on the city’s first zoning board, the one which laid down the pattern for modern
zoning, a board on which he served with the late E. A. Ungren and the late Charles Motz.
Business was his prime interest and business for him was a broad term, encompassing
utilities, railroads, banking, ice manufacturing, residential and business real estate
development.
He was so much a part of all this for so long that he is the most authoritative, and
incidentally, the most accurate, source of information on how Abilene business came to be
what it is.
He knows highlights of the history and delights in some of the tales.
There was this longtime business leader, for example, who was keen on commerce but
a bit week in education. He mangled the English language and in a fashion that got
sometimes on the nerves of Ed S. Hughes, A Princetonian.
They would be in a business conference and someone would ask this leader’s opinion,
Mr. Swenson recounts, and the fellow would say, “Oh, it’s imperial with me.”
That would set Mr. Hughes grammatical teeth on edge.
There was an expression of Mr. Radford’s which Mr Swenson enjoys using, “now to get
down to the pointplank of it. . .”
There was that Abilene businessman who did like to have a healthy highball of an
evening and one time. Mr. and Mrs. Swenson were visiting when he had had such a relaxing
drink.
The host got to talking about the hot weather.
“It’s not the heat, Willie Gray, it’s the humility. . .”
Then he tried it again a bit later.
“I tell you Willie Gray, it’s not the heat, it’s the timidity. . .”
Mr. Swenson knows too the serious stories of business development.
Two of these, of which he was a most important part, are the stories of utilities and
banking, particularly West Texas Utilities Co. and Citizens National Bank.
The stories of these, as Mr. Swenson has lived them, will be presented in next
Sunday’s edition of this newspaper.

2nd of Series

This is the second of a three-part informal “history” of Abilene business as revealed in
a lengthy interview granted the Abilene Reporter-News by W. G. Swenson, one of the
architects of community life. The third portion will be presented next Sunday.

Drama, Courage fill business History

W. G. Swenson, elder statesman of West Texas business who will be 86 next
Wednesday, has been an eyewitness to or a participant in all but the first few of the episodes
and epics which make up the history of are commerce.
As a child he saw the development of the tent village of Abilene into a bustling town of
budding enterprises – he has live here since he was age 4 and the town was age 2.
He became very much a part of that building and budding when he came home in
1901, equipped with a small inheritance from his father and with an education in which he set
acedemic records at Southwestern University, to begin a business career in Abilene.
During the six-plus decades since, he has engaged in various enterprises – banking,
utilities, railroading, residential and commercial real estate, ice manufacturing.
These are still his major interests – except ice. Earlier this year he sold his interests in
his last ice business.
He is director now of the Citizens National Bank he helped found.
He is a director of West Texas Utilities Co., whose predecessor company he helped
build and in whose parent company, Central and South west, He is a major figure.
He is a director of the Roscoe, Snyder and Pacific Railroad, which he helped build, and
a trustee of the Burlington-Fort Worth & Denver lines, a title inherited as founder-director in a
line now incorporated into that system.
Some of the buildings he helped bring about are now sold, the Windsor Hotel and the
Mims Building, to name a couple, but he still owns and manages others.
Mr. Swenson has, therefore, the position and the perspective to tell the history of local
business.
As sample credentials: He co-signed the first money issued by Citizens National bank,
back when banks issued money; he put in the first 24-hour electricity service Abilene had; he
had the ceremonial duty of piloting Abilene’s first streetcar on it’s first run, and quite a tale that
was; he was one of the leaders in the fights for railroads and he suffered, along with other
Abilenians, some classic railroad defeats, at least one of which proved a blessing in diguise.
MR. SWENSON DID not know Abilene’s very first bank, the Cameron Bank, but he has
been personally acquainted with the others which have come and gone, which have come
and stayed.
In the first days after Abilene was opened in March of 1881 banking was highly
informal, Merchants simply did double duty by assuming responsibility of customer’s money.
Officially, Mr. Swenson says, the first Abilene bank was the Wm. Cameron Bank
located, according to his memory, at N 2 nd and Pine.
The first bank to assume an important role, and it was a large one, came about in 1884
when Otto W. Steffens, one of the key figures in Abilene’s history, founded here The First
National Bank.
“Notice that ‘The’ in its name,” Mr. Swenson says. Such articles and prepositions in the
name of a local bank are significant, he points out.
A year or so later The Abilene National Bank appeared, including in its makeup the old
Cameron and bringing to Abilene another key everyday figure, J. G. Lowden.
The banks, the First National and the Abilene National, came to be identified as the
“Steffens bank” and the “Lowden Bank” and both grew into large operations.

In 1898 the two joined, becoming a denationalized, private bank known as Steffens &
Lowden, Bankers.
In the meantime, at the first of 1890, another bank had come into being, The Farmers
& Merchants National Bank established by Maj. Gen. F. W. James, a Civil War veteran who
already had a bank at Baird.
The F&M, in which Gen. James’ son Henry, and Abilene Businessman Ed S. Hughes
were interested, opened for business on the east side of Chestnut, next to the old Palace
Hotel, Mr. Swenson recalls.
(The F&M changed it’s name to “First National” – without the “The.”)
THE TWO BANKS, F&M and Steffens & Lowden were serving Abilene when Mr.
Swenson came home from college, ready to go into some sort of business.
He had opportunity shortly.
J. M. Wagstaff, then beginning to come into his prime as an Abilene lawyer after
moving here from Buffalo Gap where he had been Presbyterian College president, proposed
to young Willie Gray Swenson that they start a third bank here. Some others joined in on it,
Miles Cope, County Judge D. G. Hill, George Clayton, a merchant who had not heretofore
had much use for banks.
The idea matured. A charter was issued. The bank opened for business Nov. 2, 1902,
in a building at N. 1 st and Pine, a building which was a part of Mr. Swenson’s story of real
estate development, the first commercial structure which he helped build.
The bank was named, Citizens National of Abilene. (“Note the ‘of,’” Mr. Swenson says.)
Mr. Wagstaff was president, Mr. Swenson the Cashier and active manager.
These two signed the money, “national currency which the bank issued. The very first
five-dollar bill, the one marked “No. 1” has been preserved, mounted, it sits now on the desk
of Citizens Bank president Oliver Howard.
MR. SWENSON REMAINED cashier-manager until there appeared in the Citizen’s
story another name prominent in banking history, that of George Paxton Sr.
Paxton, who had been a merchant here in earlier days before he became a banker,
joined Citizens, acquiring controlling interest, became the chief operating officer.
After a time as cashier, Mr. Paxton became president in 1910.
Mr. Swenson kept his interest in the bank, continued a director, and was named vice-
president after Mr. Paxton became president.
He has continued a vice-president even though, he says, the title is now honorary in
nature.
The Citizens, under Mr. Paxton’s guidance. Grew and developed as Abilene did – and
then in time, there came the depression.
Banks were closing, right and left, and among the many noble battles fought by
bankers to keep instutions stable was the historic fight Mr. Paxton waged.
Mr. Paxton sold to J. M. Radford many personal holding to aid the bank, including the
Paxton building on Cypress and the Paxton interests in the Medical Arts Building and the
Mims Building, two in which he was associated with Mr. Swenson.
IN THE MIDST of all this hard work Mr. Paxton became ill, Mr. Swenson recalls.
But he had others who were in the fight with him to help the ban, Will Fulfiler Sr., Mr.
Wagstaff, Mr. Swenson and a Paxton son-in-law then wel known for his recent service as
governor of Texas, Dan Moody.

The bank went into voluntary liquidation to reorganize and a new bank was chartered,
named “The Citizens National bank in Abilene. (“Notice the ‘in,’” Mr. Swenson says. The
preposition, ‘in’ for the original ‘of’ was the only change in the name.)
There were some dramatic moments during all this, Mr. Swenson recalls.
At one stage there was an elaborate code system worked out with which to keep secret
conversations via long distance phone between the bank and Federal Reserve officials.
“I remember we would call Fulwiler ‘Bill’ and Wag (Mr. Wagstaff) was ‘Jack’ and we
would refer to loans as ‘merchandise,’” he says.
The reorganization was perfected and the bank came through it’s experience in
condition it could grow and prosper. Mr. Paxton became board chairman in 1934. He died in
1935. Malcolm Meek succeeded him as president and served until retirement when Howard
took over the post.
Mr. Swenson has officed, since selling the Mims Building, on the fifth floor of the
Citizens’ magnificent new building in the 400 block of Cypress.
THERE HAVE BEEN many other banks in Abilene, leading up to the present complex
of five.
There was a First State Bank in early years There were the Central State, Commercial
National, Guaranty State.
And there was the American National, one which had a dramatic, and unexpected,
effect on Mr. Swenson’s business career.
This all took place in the early part of this century.
The American National Bank was organized by the same interests which owned
Steffens and Lowden, Bankers, The private instution.
These same interests also owned three of the local utility firms, The Abilene power and
Light Co., which provided electricity, the Lytle Ice Co., which provided that then – essential
service and the Lytle Water Co., which had taken over municipal water system as the young
City of Abilene cided a water system was a big undertaking for local government and could
best be handled by private enterprise.
Then, in early 1905, The American National Bank became solvent and was placed into
receivership.
The bank trouble had resultant effects on the power, ice, and water companies. (The
gas company was owned by another group, a Minter – Radford – Batjer combine, Mr.
Swenson says.)
Mr. Swenson, Mr. Wagstaff and Mr. Paxton among others, had great faith in the
distressed power, ice and water firms – and set out to salvage them.
A “creditors committee” was formed. Mr Swenson and Mr. Wagstaff went far and near
working up the deal, all the way from a Tombstone, Ariz., bank to Hanover National in New
York.
At one stage of the effort Mr Swenson recalls, Hanover sent into Abilene under the
assumed name of “Mr. Elmer” an executive vice president named Elmer Whittaker to help
straighten out Hanover bank’s portion ot the matters.
Out of all this came a new combine, some known and some “behind the scenes” –
Swenson, Wagstaff, Paxton, Ed S.Hughes, Henry James and later, Col. Morgan Jones and
others – which became the “sole creditors” for the three troubled utility firms.
The three companies were organized into two, Abilene Light and Abilene Ice Co. –
With Mr. Swenson president of both.

“NOW, TO BEGIN AT the beginning,”to use a phrase which steals into Mr. Swenson’s
conversation, Abilene got it’s first electricity in the early 1890’s from a plant operated originally
by Walter Jennings and a Mr. Kelly who came here from Weatherford.
Various people were at one time or another interested in the production and sale of
electricity before the owners of American National had the company.
The first real power plant here, Mr Swenson recalls, was a “direct” current plant built on
the creek on the eastern edge of town. Wires strung to bring the low-voltage power into town
were big ones, an inch in diameter, he remembers.
Most homes and stores were wired for lights, he says, but the only appliances were a
few electric fans and a few electric irons.
Service, when Mr. Swenson went in as president – manager, was from dusk until
midnight.
“When the Elks had their big Elks Ball or when there was some other big party or event
in town, those running it would have to telephone us to request we keep the lights burning
longer.
MR. SWENSON HAD from college training some technical background for his new job.
(Personally he wired the new switchboard which was installed.)
He went to work as president of the two-fold firm in the spring of 1906.
He recalls that the new company hired as bookkeeper young W. J. Fulwiler – who had
to go to court and have his “disabilities as a minor” removed so he could qualify as a notary
public.
Mr. Swenson updated the plant to provide 24-hour electric service.
He put in diesel engines, the first ever installed in this part of the country, two of them
with a steam turbine as stand-by. He recalls the main shafts of the machines were from
Krupps works in Germany so that, in case of trouble, replacement was not simple.
Mr. Swenson set about to increase the use of electric power, to add to the limited
demands made by lights fans and irons. He began preaching to local businessmen that they
could add a belt to an electric motor and with it run meat grinders, printing presses and such.
Many listened and applied the new technique.
He worked, also, to better the service in the other utility fields under his direction.
Water distribution lines were extended, the water works was improved with new
machinery and a new standpipe, the big one on old “standpipe hill” in South Abilene, was
erected.
The town grew and the utility operations grew and as they did a new idea was growing
in American commerce generally.
“We had in this country a craze for developing “holding companies,” Mr. Swenson
recalls.
And the holding company idea came to Abilene in 1912, brought here by one John R.
Dawson.
DAWSON WAS THE agent for eastern capitalists.
In Abilene he worked up a deal whereby those interests purchased the power and
water and ice companies held by the Swenson group and the gas company owned by the
Minter-Radford group.
The Package deal was effective Dec. 1, 1912, all local properties power, gas, water
and ice, delivered to the new owners on that date.
The name for the new company formed by the purchasing group was suggested by Mr.
Swenson: American Public Service Co.