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First Methodist Episcopal Church Denison, Texas On
the last day of January in 1889 the women of the North Methodist Church
in Denison conducted their Ladies' Trade Carnival in the vacant Garner
& Haynes Building at 527 West Main Street. Trade carnivals (also
called "trades carnivals") originated earlier in the 1880s in other
states, notably Kansas and Missouri, as fund raising events. Local
businesses agreed to participate for the opportunity to promote their
goods and services while supporting a charitable cause. Tables were set
up for displays, but the main attraction of Denison's trade carnival
was a pageant or parade of young ladies in costumes, each designed to
showcase the wares of the business represented by the wearer.
Three days after the Thursday night event The Sunday Gazetteer devoted its entire front page to a report on the trades carnival, complete with descriptions of the costumes. That coverage notwithstanding, the carnival was on the whole a relatively minor event in Denison's history. One of the costumes, however, attracted wide attention. The State National Bank bedecked their mascot, 19-year-old Mary Roberta "Bertie" Oldham, in a dress embellished with $15,000 worth of paper currency. She wore an additional $20,000 worth of diamond jewelry, loaned from the personal collection of bank president J. N. Johnson. The $35,000 total value of Bertie Oldham's costume in 1889 is the equivalent of nearly $877,000 in 2017.  The Gazetteer printed his name as J. S. Johnson, but his name was actually Jesse Newport Johnson. He founded the State National Bank in 1883. He had amassed a fortune in the 1870s in the African diamond mines. He sold his interest in the bank toward the end of 1889 and later moved to Kansas City, where he died in 1940 at age 94. His daughter, Charlotte Johnson Pugsley who was born in a room over the State National Bank, moved to China in 1917 with her husband, a Navy doctor and amateur archaeologist. They returned to Kansas City more than a decade later and brought with them an enormous collection of Chinese art. At her death in 1959 her collection was acquired by Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum, known for its extensive collection of Asian art. (The Kansas City (MO) Times, Friday, May 22, 1959, pg. 6A) The picture was not printed in any newspapers at the time, because the necessary technology for that was still a couple of decades away. It was not until 1951, sixty-two years later, that it was first published in the Poughkeepsie Journal in upstate New York. Bertie's son, William Robert Wood (1907-1991), was living nearby at the time, and he provided the photo to the Journal. He also showed them his Gazetteer clipping, from which they quoted at great length. The Oldhams moved to Denison from Kentucky in the late 1870s. William M. Oldham had been stationed in Grayson County during the Civil War in 1864. The Journal article says he was a Denison banker, but I found no evidence of an affiliation with a particular bank. He did own land in Denison, and his name was often mentioned in the newspapers as a businessman. Both his sons were employed at the State National Bank, so maybe he did own an interest in it. His daughter Bertie (1869-1918) married William Menzies Wood (1870-1957) in the First Presbyterian Church in Denison in 1892. W. M. Wood was a civil engineer and Texas A&M graduate of 1888 who worked for the Katy. In the late 1890s he and Bertie moved to Dallas, where he was in business for two years. In 1899 they moved to Washington, D. C., where he worked for the U. S. Treasury. From 1904 to 1914 they were in Panama, where he was a disbursing officer during the construction of the Panama Canal.  William M. Wood with his only son/child who was born in 1907 while they were living in Panama. Thomas Marine. The Makers of the Panama Canal (New York: F.E. Jackson & Son, 1911, 69.) They went from there to Cuba, where he was in the sugar business. At the outbreak of World War I they returned to Washington, where he was appointed a major in the Quartermaster Corps. Bertie died in New York City in 1918 at the age of 48. Her husband remarried in 1920 and died in Florida in 1957. Her son retired in 1969 and moved from New York to California, where he died in 1991. In retirement he became a landscape artist and was the first man to be elected president of the Glendale Art Association. He had a son, Robert L. Wood, and a daughter, Joan Oldham Wood Mizzi, wife of Dr. Alex Mizzi.  First Methodist Episcopal Church History Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson CountyTXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |