Edwin Green
Faithful Odd Fellow married three sisters
Sometime in the 1820s, Littleberry Green, his wife Francis (Tyree) Green, and their kids lit out for Texas. They didn’t quite make it…at first.
The Greens were living in Bedford County, TN, when they decided to move. No interstate highways. No paved roads. No railroads that would have been helpful. There were only seven short railroads in the U.S. Three from Boston, one from Albany, two from Baltimore, and one from Charleston. So they loaded up a wagon and, by themselves or with other wagons of settlers, and headed west.
They probably crossed the Mississippi River by steamboat ferry at Memphis, TN, and made it to Hempstead County, in Arkansas Territory. There they stopped. Perhaps they were tired of traveling. Perhaps they found desirable farm land. More likely, Littleberry fell ill or was killed; he died in 1829 and is probably buried in Hempstead County.
Littleberry’s son George died in Hempstead County in 1855. George’s son Edwin Jeremiah Littleberry Green – let’s call him Ed – was born in Hempstead County. In 1850, he was still there, but by 1859, Ed was in Hays County where, in 1859, he and Mary Ann Young married. Their first child died at birth, they had one more child, then Mary Ann died in March 1865.
Ed then married Mary Ann’s sister Eliza Jane Young in July 1865, and they had at least six kids; possibly two more who did not survive. Eliza died in 1896.
There was a third sister, Alice (Young) Bohon. Alice’s marriage to William Bohon didn’t last long. Married in 1881, they separated after their daughter Mamie’s birth in 1886. Ed and Alice married in 1898; when Alice moved in with Ed, so did Mamie. They are with Ed on the 1900 census.
Meanwhile, in San Marcos, Ed clerked for Dr. Cayton Erhard, San Marcos’ first postmaster and Texas’ first druggist. Ed’s career was interrupted by the Civil War. His service with the CSA is hard to decipher. One record puts him in TX in 1863-1864, part of the 27th Brigade at Willow Springs in Bell County. Another record puts him in Rip Ford’s cavalry regiment, no date given.
His service may have been somewhat erratic. His daughter Mary was born in 1862, so Ed wasn’t always off to war. John Salmon Ford got his nickname by writing “Rest In Peace” on casualty lists. Part of Rip’s fame rests on his defeat of Union forces at the Battle of Palmito Ranch outside Brownsville in May 1865. The Yankees suffered 118 casualties and retreated, thus crediting Ford with a win in the last land battle of the Civil War. The battle was won, but the war was lost. Two weeks after Palmito Ranch, all Confederate forces in Texas surrendered.
Shortly after the war ended, Ed was elected as Hays County’s district clerk and county clerk, positions that he held until 1882, when he declined to run for re-election. Meanwhile, in 1879 Ed opened a bank on the south side of the square. Ed immediately established banking ties with the First National Bank of Dallas, the Frost National Bank of San Antonio, and the First National Bank of Houston.
Frank H. Malone operated Green’s Bank until Ed’s term as county clerk expired and Ed took over as president. Former mayor O.T. Brown had an office over Green’s Bank. In 1885, Green’s Bank was chartered as the First National Bank of San Marcos. Now part of Wells Fargo and Co., it is San Marcos’ oldest business in continuous operation. As he aged, Ed stepped down to vice-president rather than president, but, as a majority stockholder, still retained firm control of the bank. Ed was also instrumental in forming the First National bank of Lockhart and the National bank at Bastrop. Ed spearheaded the organization of the Texas State Bankers’ Association in 1886 and was its third president in 1889.
When Ed opened his bank, I.H. Julian, editor of the San Marcos Free Press, said, “By his card in another place, it will be seen that Ed. J.L. Green has opened a Banking business in his building southeast corner of the public square. Mr. Green has resided in this county twenty-four years, and no man in it is better or more favorably known in a business capacity or as a citizen. Such a man needs no introduction or commendation from us. He is not only a prompt, skilled and faithful business man, but he possesses in an eminent degree what writers on phrenology designate as “agreeableness.” His past career is the best guarantee of his success and acceptableness in his new sphere of action.”
He incorporated the San Marcos Electric Light & Power Company in 1889. He was heavily involved in the San Marcos Water Company and in an ice factory at the water works. He erected a dam on the San Marcos River to provide power to those businesses. In 1905, William Green proposed and instituted the San Marcos sewerage system which he expected to have in operation by 1 July. William was Ed’s son. It’s hard to imagine that Ed was not intimately involved in the project.
In 1900, Ed sold “the head of the river” to the San Marcos water company.
No longer working for the county government, Ed ran for and was elected to the Board of Aldermen, today’s City Council. Ed was on the board of the San Marcos River Camp Meeting Association of Texas. On the original Board of Trustees of SWTN, serving for a time as its president. He was also President of the San Marcos School Board for most of the 30 years he spent on the School Board. About 1890, Marion Columbus McGee opened the Lone Star Business College at 325 N. Comanche in San Marcos. McGee’s College was eventually eclipsed by business courses at SWTN and closed. Ed was on the first Board of Directors of Lone Star Business college and served, probably, until it closed.
Texas felt a need for prisons and education. It decided to put a prison in San Marcos and a Normal school in Huntsville. Ed made trips to Austin to confer with state leaders who saw the wisdom of locating the prison at Huntsville and the Normal at San Marcos. Ed, along with W.D. Wood and S.V. Daniel were appointed as the first Local Board of Directors and Board of Visitors for 19031904, 1904-1905, 1905-1906. Judge W.D. Wood died 11 May 1906; he was replaced as a Director by Dr. J.M. Hons who joined Green and Daniel for 19061907, 1907-1908,1908-1909, 19091910, 1910-1911. In 1911, Will G. Barber replaced Daniel, joining Green and Hons for 1911-1912. Briefly. In 1911, the state created the State Normal School Board of Regents to oversee all Normals in the state. The local Board was then superfluous.
Ed joined the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ membership which had, in 1869, erected a church on Guadalupe Street. Ed hauled wagon loads of lumber from Austin to build it. This must have seemed a great improvement to a congregation that had been meeting in members’ homes or, occasionally, under a large oak tree. Sadly, people have been contentious ever since Cain and Abel disagreed about what constituted proper worship. The bone of contention in the San Marcos Christian Church centered around musical accompaniment to the singing of hymns; shall we have an organ or no? Ed was in the group that favored acquisition of an organ. That group withdrew from the Guadalupe Street church and in 1893 erected a new church on the corner of San Antonio and Comanche Streets. Ed owned the land on which the new church was to be built; he sold it to the church for $1. Ed was Sunday School superintendent and secretary-treasurer of the church for 40 years; 20 years before the split and 20 after.
Ed was a joiner. The Masons and their subdivisions such as the Shriners; he was a Past Master of the San Marcos Lodge. He was also a member of the Odd Fellows. “Odd” should be viewed in the context of “odd” jobs. Fraternal organizations in England were normally formed by the well-to-do. The Odd Fellows was formed by common working men for mutual aid and charity.
Ed’s mining interests included a silver mine which he jointly owned with Texas’ lieutenant governor Leonidas Jefferson Storey. He was also a principal in the Corwin & Green Mining and Milling Co. In 1908, Ed was re-elected president and J.C. Corwin was re-elected general manager. The mine was operated in the 1908-1909 period, but probably ceased operations about 1913 due to land office issues. Likely they failed to maintain their claim by failing to provide proof that the mine had value other than just as a piece of land. The mine can still be viewed on a self-guided tour in Mount Rainier’s Carbon River area.
Ed amassed a sufficient fortune to have his own private railroad car for trips to Chicago and New York. At his death, his estate was valued at about $160,000; about $3 million in 2025.
Ed capped his political career with a single term, 1913-1915, as mayor of San Marcos.
In 1883, I.H. Julian, editor of the San Marcos Free Press, said that Ed possessed an eminent degree of “reasonableness,” a fitting epitaph for a man of such remarkable abilities.
Ed was not able to enjoy San Marcos’ first street paving project. A city ordinance of 1 October 1924, laid out the plan. The city had contracted with Brown & Root to improve some streets with a hard surface bituminous top. Those streets were [parts of ] North and South Austin Streets, San Antonio Street, Hopkins Street, Guadalupe Street, Cheatham Street, Comanche Street, Colorado Street and Mathews Street.
The total cost was reckoned to be $16,665.36. Four blocks of the paving surrounded the Square. The City would bear the cost, $6,237.53, of its side of those streets; the other sides and the other eight or so blocks, $10,427.83, would be assessed against the adjoining land owners. Ed’s estate was assessed $250 for 166.67 feet at $1.50/foot on South Austin Street, now South LBJ; and another $40.68 for 90.32 feet on San Antonio Street at $.45/foot. The street paving surrounded the square, Guadalupe from the square to Hutchinson, North Austin Street to Colorado Street, then east to Water Street, and South Austin to Cheatham Street and then Cheatham Street to the river.
No life is without its shadows. It appears that Ed was a member of the San Marcos Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. A 2011 Texas State thesis states merely that he was a member. In 1926, the Klan held a Lodge of Sorrow near Rogers Park to honor deceased members, 12 of whom, including Ed, were named.
Ed died at his home on Sunday 17 Feb. 1924. findagrave # 31870195 Almost immediately after Ed’s death, Alice moved to Lockhart to live with her daughter Mrs. Harry Chew. Mamie, that is; whose dad was William Bohon, Alice’s first husband.
Long after Ed’s death, some old timers were gathered around the square. Ed was called “colorful.” Agreeable AND Colorful.
On 6 April 1915, A.L. Davis succeeded Ed as mayor. Davis’ story next week will end this series.
Editor's Note: The online version of this story has been edited.
