War Eagle

Tex's Kansas driver's license (courtesy of grand-niece Lily Price)

Richard Charles Stinnett was born April 19, 1909 and was the youngest son of John and Lizzie Stinnett. He first appears in the 1910 Federal Census which gives his birthplace as Arkansas though the family had moved to Joplin by that time. He attended the Lincoln School in Joplin from 1916 to 1918. He is listed with the family in Webb City in the 1920 census. Richard appears to have gone to school in Wichita, Kansas for a while where his mother and sister Walsie visited him in May 1921.
He may have been living with his brother Arthur who married Virgie Foote in Wichita that same year. Richard's move to Wichita may have been precipitated by his accidental shooting of a neighbor boy in Webb City. According to a May 11, 1921 article in the Joplin Globe, Richard and his friend George McHenry were playing cowboys and Indians with a gun that Richard had found in a trash can. The McHenry boy was killed and a coroner's inquest found that the shooting was accidental.  There was enough information in the article below and in preceding and subsequent stories to confirm that the "Negro Boy" in the sub-headline was indeed John and Lizzie's Richard.

Joplin Globe May 11, 1921

I can find no other record of Richard until 1931 when he appears in a Salina, Kansas city directory. He has changed his name to Tex and is living at 708 Hancock - the address where his parents reside with his sister Walsie and her husband Harvey Fickes. Tex is not listed in the 1930 census with them. He is still living in Salina when a 1938 accident was reported in the Emporia Gazette on April 27.

By this time Richard had married Charlotte (maiden name unknown) and was the father of five-year-old twins Gloria Jean and Tex R Stinnett.

Richard got a [new] driver's license in July 1939 and he is now Tex S. WarEagle. I don't have a clue where the name came from. There are some federal census records from as early as 1900 that list black families named Wareagle in Arkansas. There is also a town in Arkansas called War Eagle. I would love to have heard the reason for Tex's decision to change his surname.

Tex died Sep 26, 1939 at age 30 in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The attending physician indicated he had been treating Tex for about two weeks and that he had died from a two-year-old bout with lung cancer. I don't know why Tex was in Eureka Springs or how long he had been there but I do hope he wasn't there for this cancer cure hoax. The informant on his death certificate is his brother Arthur. Tex is buried in an unmarked grave in Gypsum Hill Cemetery (Plot: 24:44:06) in Salina.

Charlotte and the twins are in the 1940 census in Salina and she appears in city directories through 1943. She eventually left Salina and lived in southern New Jersey until she died in March 1991. Her obituary says that she was predeceased by her husband Richard "Tex" Stinnett and that she was survived by her daughter, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. No mention was made of Tex Jr (1933-1985).

I don't know much about Tex Jr. other than he was in the US Navy from 1951-1955 and served on the USS Barton in 1952 (listed in ship's cruise book).  He is listed in a Red Bank, NJ directory in 1958. At least one of Charlotte's grandchildren may have been Tex's daughter who was born around 1967. To the best of my knowledge to date his sister Gloria had two children (both deceased).