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Recently, a ledger appeared on display at the Burleson Heritage Visitors Center, loaned by Doris Jo Haas, who volunteers her time there.
The book provides insight to the interurban express business that operated between Fort Worth and Cleburne from 1912-31.
Entries in the ledger account for shipments arriving at the Joshua interurban station.
Registered information somewhat validates the role of the freight service that served Joshua and other communities along its route.
Beyond all this, it represents a job held by a member of a longtime resident family, who through their daily lives became intertwined with the history of two Johnson County communities.
The front of the ledger reads “W. A. Wood, Agent – Joshua, Texas.”
The book accounts for the years of 1924-26. Wood served as Joshua’s interurban ticket agent from 1920-31, according to his granddaughter, Doris Jo Wood Haas.
Her cousin, Hattie Stewart, actually located the book among things belonging to Stewart’s mother. She passed the book along to Haas, believing she might be able to determine its purpose.
“I knew [the ledger] was from the depot,” Haas said.
On a quick glance, she believed it to be just a list of people. Once home, she examined it more closely, realizing that it also listed names of businesses existing in the 1920s, such as Montgomery Ward and Armour Company.
Although Mrs. Haas never rode the interurban to Fort Worth, her parents once put her on the Cleburne-bound passenger car while stopped at Burleson. She returned to Burleson in the family automobile after arriving in Joshua.
“I guess it was because [the interurban] was about to close down,” she said, speculating that her parents just wanted to have the memory of riding the interurban.
Joshua was a familiar place to the Wood family.
W.N. “Newt” Wood, her father, was born to W.A. Wood and wife, Hattie Bransom Wood in 1900 around the Union Hill community, east of Joshua.
Haas recalled hearing her father speak of the day the Cleburne courthouse burned.
He remembered the scattered papers from the courthouse, carried by gusty winds as far away as their farm, quite a distance.
Even further than that was the trip made by 16-year-old Newt Wood and his cousin, Jackson “Honeybee” Bransom, by bicycle from downtown Joshua to Fort Worth, “marveling at the tall buildings,” Haas said.
She said he had only seen downtown Fort Worth once before from a mule-drawn, watermelon-filled wagon driven by his father in 1908.
They parked the wagon in the wagon yard across from the Tarrant County courthouse, remaining there until their melon crop was all sold.
William Newton Wood attended high school in Joshua and moved on to business school in Dallas about the time his father became the Joshua ticket agent for the interurban.
Newt married Eunice Easter in 1921 after a serious letter-writing campaign during their courting days.
Their daughter, Doris Jo, was born in Joshua.
In 1928, they moved to the Arlington Heights Addition on the western side of Fort Worth, and he worked for a downtown barbershop located on Seventh Street.
The tough depression times sent W.N. Wood and family packing to Burleson in 1930.
They lived in an old building on West Ellison Street, occupying one side of the structure as a residence and operating a barbershop in the other.
Eunice opened a beauty parlor in their living room, boosting the family income to about 10 dollars per week, Haas said.
When she was about 8 years old, they lived in a house on Wilson Street that stands to this day.
Her recollections of the sound of passing interurban cars are still as ever present in her mind as the old school bell that rang from the other side of the railroad tracks.
Haas said she started the first grade in the old, red-brick school building — old Burleson High school — built back in 1910.
She attended grades one through 11, the highest grade in high school at the time.
As she reached seventh grade, class and library use replaced the upstairs auditorium, which moved to a new gymnasium, where she attended chapel once per week.
Built in 1936 as a WPA project, the gymnasium is the oldest and only remaining school structure still standing on the original public school site.
Her baccalaureate service and her 1941 graduation ceremony took place on the built-in stage of the historic gymnasium.
Six months later, America declared war on Japan, and thousands rallied to defend their country.
Frank W. Haas was another soldier being prepared for the grueling years of sacrifice ahead. He and Doris Jo Wood married during the summer of ’42.
She had worked for the Burleson F&M State Bank about three weeks when Frank was assigned to a base in Tennessee for extensive training.
He was to become a member of the U. S. Army’s newly formed 80th Division.
His preparation completed, she returned home to her parents for the duration of the war, and he was sent to Europe.
Information Haas provided suggests that Frank’s battalion approached Nussbaum, Germany, to engage the German rear-guard units protecting the Siegfried Line along the east side of the Our River.
On Feb. 19, 1945, Frank was wounded and returned home that year, a Purple Heart recipient.
Frank Haas worked as a Texas State Optical optician and manager for 30 years, 13 in Cleburne.
He and Doris Jo had four children, Gary, Michael, David and Diane, and several grandchildren and great grandchildren. Frank died Oct. 12, 1979.
Back in the late 1930s, Newt Wood had given up barbering to go into the cattle business, attending cattle auctions in other towns and buying stock to sell at the Fort Worth stockyards.
During the early 1940s, he purchased four lots from Bernice and C. L. Booth Sr. for $20,000.
The Booth Café occupied a building at the corner of Ellison and Wilson Streets and was the Wood family’s first residence on moving to Burleson. Adjacent to it was the Booth home.
Noll and Minnie Wicker’s home and the new home of Vida and C. L. Booth, Jr. occupied the remaining two lots that were to be cleared for future retail construction.
Plans to expand the original concept of a shopping center that would feature Audrey and Wilmer Mercer’s proposed new grocery in 1958 were modified for expansion at the suggestion of contractor Dave Bloxom, Doris Jo Haas said.
Jim Brothers’ Barbershop, Pete McAkin’s television and radio repair shop, and Burleson Cleaners joined the grocery store as Wood’s Shopping Center tenants.
A couple of years later the shopping center expanded to include five more businesses, one of which was the Grisso Washeteria.
W.N. Wood maintained an office next door, and it became a popular gathering place for friends.
Over the years, Newt Wood served the community in numerous capacities, including on the city council, the BISD board of trustees, city of Burleson zoning board, as a Methodist church trustee, and on the F&M State Bank board of directors for more than 20 years.
He died in 1992 at the age of 91.
His wife remained owner-operator of Milady’s Beauty Salon for more than 60 years and was active as a member of the Eastern Star.
She served as a member of the building committee during the construction of the new Methodist church at the corner of Ellison and Dobson Streets in Burleson.
Eunice Easter Wood died in 1996 at age 93, .
Their daughter, Doris Jo, was a piano teacher for 17 years, and served as pianist and organist for First United Methodist Church in Burleson.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s she oversaw affairs concerning their rental properties. The Wood Shopping Center was sold to Raymond West in 1994.
For years family members’ interests have included historic preservation while modestly overlooking their own contributions to history, claiming to be just regular folks.
But regular folks built Burleson, monitored its progress, safeguarded its future, and in fact are the essence of its history.
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