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Heritage Hall Of Honor
Six named to Texas Heritage Hall of Honor
Tobin and Anne Armstrong, Susan Combs, Morgan Jones, Wade Lewis Pennington, and John Slaughter have been elected to membership for 2010. The Texas Heritage Hall of Honor was established in 1992 by the State Fair of Texas to recognize lifetime achievement in agriculture.
Tobin and Anne Armstrong served their community, state and nation as a team. They owned and operated the Armstrong Ranch in Kenedy County – a ranch recognized for its production of beef cattle, breeding stock and wildlife. Tobin served the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association for 48 years and was instrumental in bringing about the consolidation of the Livestock and Meat Board, the Beef Council and the National Cattleman’s Association. His wife Anne was highly respected and served as a counselor to Presidents Nixon and Ford. She was the first woman to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain and served as a Regent of the Texas A & M University System. Anne’s death in 2008 followed her husband’s death three years earlier in 2005.
Susan Combs is known for her high standard of excellence and commitment to efficiency while serving as the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. As Comptroller, Combs is the state’s chief financial officer. She was the first woman elected to the position of Texas Agriculture Commissioner in 1998. Combs reduced the Texas Department of Agriculture’s budget by 18 percent while igniting economic growth, promoting Texas products, and launching one of the strongest school nutrition policies in the nation. Born in San Antonio, she has a ranching operation in Brewster County on the same ranch owned by her great-grandfather more than a century ago.
Morgan Jones primarily built railroads in semiarid, largely unoccupied regions and opened up the Texas Plains for farming, ranching and city growth. He left his home in Wales and sought his fortune in railroad construction. He sailed to the United States in 1866 and was hired by the Union Pacific Railroad as foreman of a construction crew. Jones honed his skills and his expertise in rapid construction became legendary. Overseeing grueling projects with seemingly impossible deadlines, Jones is considered a local hero in Fort Worth for completing the Texas and Pacific line to the city of 1,600 residents. He died in 1926.
Wade Lewis Pennington was born on land farmed by generations of his ancestors in Houston County, Texas. After serving in the U.S. Army, Pennington returned home to Grapeland and began a 70 year career in farming and ranching. He is legendary in East Texas for growing a small watermelon patch into a nationwide business. He was an award winning peanut farmer and cattle rancher. Pennington and wife Arvay were married for more than 68 years. They were blessed with three sons and three daughters. Baylor University recognized Wade Pennington and Sons as the Texas Family Business of the year in 2004. He died in March of 2010.
John B. Slaughter was a trail driver, Indian fighter, rancher and farmer. Born in Sabine County, he started out with 30 or 40 head given to him by his father and spent a lifetime becoming one of the best known and respected cattleman in the state. Among his accomplishments is the crossing of the buffalo with Brahma cows (cattalo) and a second cross with a buffalo known as the “Vernier.” He moved his brand, the “U Lazy S,” to Garza County in 1901 and, in 1907, sold 50,000 acres to C.W. Post, cereal magnate and town developer, for the town of Post to be built. Just shy of his 80th birthday in 1928, Slaughter died of heart failure. He had spent the previous day in the saddle during a roundup.
