By Jerry Flook, Garland Historian
Published in the Garland-Rowlett Messenger, March 2012
Kingsley Road, one of Garland’s principal east-west thoroughfares, is perhaps the only surviving memorial to one of the town’s most notable character-Will C. Kingsley. Always the attention seeker and eccentric entrepreneur, Kingsley’s activities in the 1910s and 1920s were a constant source of entertainment, if not downright amazement to the people of Garland and all of Dallas.
William Carl Kingsley was born in 1873 in Springfield, Missouri, the only son of Charles and Cornelia Kingsley. Charles Kingsley, and artist who also painted signs and houses, brought his family to Garland area from Fayetteville, Tennessee, sometime in the 1880s. HE is known to have painted the scenery and curtain for the auditorium of the new Garland College building in 1890.
Will Kingsley evidenced his entrepreneurial bent even as a youth. He landed the job delivering mail from Garland to Richardson on horseback and soon bought two yellow nags and a hack to establish a transfer and delivery business. At the same time he did farm labor and worked in local cotton gins in ginning season. He invested his wages in livestock and land purchases, and on the 1900 census (at age 26) he is listed as a livestock trader. He came to own the finest herd of polled Durham cattle in the country and also some 500 head of Shropshire sheep.
In 1900 Kingsley was amrried toMattie Murphree. Will and Mattie never had children. In 1903 they purchased the 150-acre Daniel Bechtol farm on the south side of what is now Kingsley Road and west of Duck Creek and developed it into a showplace ranch and home. Over the ensuing years he added to his land holdings, ultimately owning some 800 acres.
He was a partner in a cotton ginning business for about 40 years and served as a vice-president and director of the Garland State National Bank. He was also a member of the Garland Presbyterian Church and a 32nd Degree Mason. Kingsley was known to be a generous supporter of the American Red Cross and gave generously to those less fortunate. But that was the conventional side of Will Kingsley.
Kingsley seemed to thrive on attention and successsfully garnered more than his share. His very dress was a case in point. He was usually seen about town dressed all in white; large white hat, white trousers, white short and high-top boots, which were in those days the costume of a gentleman stockman.
His ranch home was a marvel of its time and place. In front of the house was a 50-foot flagpole with a large lighted American flag, which could have been seen all the way to Greenville Avenues, which was 10 miles away. Situated on the highest point of the Kingsley acreage, the house was a 2-story, 9-room, Craftsman style structure with a multitude of windows that caught the summer breezes from all directions. In a 1918 interview Kingsley boasted that his home had steam heat, indoor plumbing and a septic system; rarities in a rural home of that day. Electricity was furnished by a gasoline powered generator and 16 storage batteries. It was reported that this system powered “80 lights, a water pump, churn, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, sheep shears, etc.” His water came from a 20,000-barrel cistern system with charcoal filters. At the time he claimed that he’d never had a doctor’s bill in his life.
On the floor above the power plant was Kingsley’s “den”, described in the News article as “a delightful disarray, where gather on muddy nights he and his neighbors, who have returned from fox hunts with their 30 hounds and play games, smoke and gossip. “Lining the walls are hundreds of pictures of fishing and the chase, mounted bobcats, wolves, foxes and wild fowl, and also guns and fishing tackle.”
On the grounds was a concrete root cellar where jars of honey from Kingsley’s wild bees were kept, and “sufficient preserved fruits and vegetables from his large orchard and garden to do five or six families a year or more.”
A dominating feature of ranch grounds was the cattle barn, with its 10,000 square feet of floor space, capable of wintering 100 head of cattle. In the barn was also a sanitary milk shed, reportedly kept spotless by Kingsley’s ranch hands. Also in the barn was a “possum room,” where possums were caged and fattened on table scraps for the dining enjoyment of the workers.
It was reported in 1918 that Kingsley employed 15 families at his ranch, “living in 14 cottages, each painted, screened, sanitary, tightly built and warm.” These farmers raised crops of cotton and corn on the halves, with wages of $1.50 a day paid to them for handling Kingsley’s crops. Whenever work was slack on Kingsley’s place, they were allowed to assist other farmers at regular pay and to retain their homes. Kingsley provided them ample garden space, free water and wood, a milk cow, and a smokehouse.
By 1920 Kingsley was raising foxhounds and had erected a concrete-floored zoo building outdoors to house wolves, foxes, deer. raccoons, possums, polecats and other varmints for the dogs to tree. The floor was kept clean by water pumped from Duck Creek.
Kingsley dammed a branch of Sucj Creek to form a spring-fed lake some quarter of a mile long providing for boating, swimming, and fish for trout, white perch and channel catfish. His woodlands were kept clear of weeds for the public to picnic in the shade. A restic shelter was added for the benefit of campers and picnickers. At the time of Kingsley’s ownership Duck Creek was still inhabited by the large numbers of ducks which gave it its name. Kingsley erected blinds for duck hunting.
The interior of Kingsley’s house featured a polished dance floor, a billard room, a $375 phonograph, and rugs, paintings, wall paper and furniture “that [could] hardly be excelled in any home in Dallas,” according to a Dallas Morning News feature article (1918).
In 1917 the Kinglseys constructed a gold course on the grounds of their home. Dallas dignitaries and socialites in addition to Garland friends were often hiests of the Kingsleys for golf and picnic or barbecue outings in the “country.”
Another of Will Kingsley’s attention-getters was his herd of cattalo, a hybrid between cattle and bison. It is quite possible that he got his cattalo breeding stock from the famed cattleman Col. Charles Goodnight, with whom he is known to habe exchanged several letters seeking advice on the care and feeding of the animals.
Kingsley’s travel adventures were also a source of amazement and probably some envy to his Garland neighbors. In 1919 the following item appeared in the Garland News:
W. C. Kingsley has bought a Hudson touring sedan and fitted it up with a tent, cooking utensils, cupboards, and a complete camping outfit. He and his wife and Mrs. Daughterty will leave next month for a tour of Colorado and other western states. He will take along a Negro man and woman to do repairs and cook. He will also leabe a dozen or so Negroes at home to care for his snakes, possums. coons, wild cats , and other pets. Kingsley will later leave with the Terrill School of Dallas for a summer camping trip to Canada. The group will go by boat from New Orleans to New York, thence to Toronto via Niagara Falls. He will return the last of August.
His trip with the Terrill School for Boys harks to Will Kingsley’s fondness for children. His niece has written that the fondness was mutual and that when one saw Kingsley on the streets in Garland he was usually being trailed by one or more little boys, many of them underprivileged. Was it the candy he carried in his pocket, or exciting tales he could tell, or his shaman’s costume? Who can say, but unquestionably Will Kingsley was in his day Garland’s most intriguing figure.
In 1940 Will Kinglsey built and moved into a new stone “giraffe” style cottage on First Street. His famous ranch was sold to real estate developer Randolph Caldwell. Will Kingsley died in 1946.