Texas Time Travel
William Pendleton took office as the seventh mayor of Fort Worth on April 8, 1890, in what would become 135 years later the 11th largest city in the U.S.
On July 14 of the same year, he sent a telegram addressed to the “Honorable City Council of the City of Fort Worth.”
“Gentlemen: I herewith tender my resignation as Mayor, to take effect immediately.”
Pendleton was gone within three months of taking office. He sent that telegram from Buffalo, New York, where the 41-year-old was honeymooning with his new wife — his new 19-year-old wife, whom he had married while still in legal covenant with his initial beloved. (He thought he had gotten a divorce in Illinois while carrying on with his new lady.)
It’s what you call a salacious mess, one that made headlines around the country and that ultimately drove a mayor from office and the same man and his new lady right out of town.
One newspaperman called it a “fatal infatuation.”
The sordid tale has been retold by Richard F. Selcer, Fort Worth historian extraordinaire, in his new book, Fort Worth Characters 2, a sequel and expansion of a previously published work in 2009 examining “colorful, oddball” and mostly forgotten historical figures and stories in Fort Worth history. (The book was published by UNT Press.)
Did you know, for example, that John Birch — the martyred figure who inspired the John Birch Society and its followers — was a graduate of Rev. J. Frank Norris’ Baptist Bible Institute, now Arlington Baptist College, in Fort Worth?
I was today years old when I found that out — extracted from Selcer’s book, another fantastically researched manuscript, characteristic of his expertise across 15 published works.
This book covers 31 individuals over 25 chapters. How in the world does he find all these people mostly lost to history?
“I spend countless hours reading, scrolling through old newspapers, and I come across a name that’s interesting or a story that’s interesting, and I’ll start researching and gathering material, and one thing leads to another, and pretty soon I’ve got a whole file,” Selcer says. “My whole condo is one vast file cabinet with stories.”
Selcer, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from Austin College and a Ph.D. from TCU, has established himself as the official chronicler of Fort Worth history — and a fantastic storyteller to boot.
A history teacher at Paschal High School fed his interest.
Selcer says he went off the college with a plan to study veterinary science, but after a year and half of math and science, he found he despised math and science — and the feeling was mutual.
“I’ve never looked back,” Selcer says.
His dissertation at TCU was on amphibious naval operations of the Civil War. He continues to research the Civil War, but he discovered a love of the history of his hometown. His first book was Hell’s Half Acre, published by TCU Press, in 1991. It won an award for best Western nonfiction.
“I kind of found my way into local history,” Selcer says, before bringing the conversation back to Hell’s Half Acre. “I read the name in an old newspaper and got interested in it and began pursuing it, and it turned into a book. And so a lot of research since has started by finding something in an old newspaper that interests me, and I started chasing it down.”
Mayor Pendleton, a onetime member of the Texas House of Representatives, had a law office on the second floor of the First National Bank on the corner of Houston and Second. Nineteen-year-old Addie Cullen was the “telephone exchange girl” in the building. Her job was connecting callers to the phone numbers they wanted to reach.
Pendleton, married with five children, continued to play the role of dutiful husband even as he discovered love with the “Telephone Venus,” as a Dallas newspaper irreverently described her.
“I always wondered what happened to Pendleton,” Selcer says. “He becomes mayor in 1890, and he’s out in 1890. He didn’t die. He didn’t get abducted. When you start digging into it, you find out they kicked him out. He had an affair. He dumps his wife and runs off and marries the telephone girl.”
The new couple settled in Shawnee, Oklahoma Territory. Pendleton reinvented himself into an upstanding lawyer, jurist, and downright righteous man in the future 46th state. Pendleton and Addie remained married until her death in 1906 at age 35.
Upon the event of her demise, an Oklahoma newspaper praised her as “a lady of attainment and great personal beauty.”
