Local History - Cannon

The "Premier Wagon Builder" of North Texas, Mr. Cannon, built Bois d' Arc wagons for his neighbors after having served a long apprenticeship in his father's and in his own shop. The excellence of his wagons soon became known throughout the whole of North Texas and for a long period he was kept busy building wagons for men who sought him out in his farm shop seeking carriers which
stood out above all others in point of beauty and serviceability.


PRIZE AT FAIR

So long ago that his brothers cannot name the date, one of Mr. Cannon's wagons was awarded first prize at the State Fair of Dallas as being the best in point of service among the many entries submitted. That wagon had then been in service for twenty-three years and was used for a number of years afterward.
A son-in-law now uses daily in one of his businesses a wagon built by Mr. Cannon forty years ago.
A number of purchasers of the wagons shipped them home to other parts of the state instead of driving them home as was the custom then, because "it is too pretty to dirty up on the road."
Mr. Cannon, with his brother, W. R. Cannon, served through the last two years of the Civil War, as a member of Company D, Sixth Texas Cavalry. Fellow-soldiers who returned from the war with Mr. Cannon have said that never a truer soldier for the South stood behind a
gun in that heroic struggle. He was a true friend and an excellent soldier, his friends assure.
He never failed to attend meetings and re-unions of Confederate veterans in this part of the state, and occasionally visited re-unions
held in more distant sections.
On Dec. 1, 1870, Mr. Cannon married Miss Olive Tolbert, the daughter of Buck Tolbert, who had come from Tennessee and settled west
of Howe, several miles north of the Cannon home. Eight children were born to them, five of whom survive their father. Deceased children were Mrs. Georgia Cartwright, Mrs. Willie McNally and Ernest Cannon.