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Texas Merchant: Margin Leonard and Fort Worth, by Victoria Buenger and Walter L. Buenger. College Station: Texas A&M University Press,1998. xii, 264 pp. $36.95, cloth; Deed Ellum and Central Track: Where the Black and White Worlds of Dallas Converged, by Alan B. Govenar and Jay F. Brakefield. Demon: University of North Texas Press,1998. xxi, 264 pp. $29.95, cloth.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY TEXAS HAS TRADITIONALLY BEEN Of comparatively little interest to historians of the state. Prior to the last twenty-five years or so, most scholars researching topics in Texas history preferred to focus on the Spanish and Mexican periods, the Texas Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, or the growth of the range cattle industry after 1865. With the exception of a substantial body of work treating the discovery of oil and its impact on the state, the story of people and events after 1900 has only recently begun to attract historical interest. These two works add considerably to our understanding of twentieth-century Texas and should inspire other researchers to center their efforts on topics of a more recent vintage.
Victoria Buenger, a visiting professor of management at Texas A&M University, and Walter Buenger, an associate professor of history at the same institution, have undertaken to relate the history of Marvin and Obie Leonard, two brothers, and the retail department store they founded in Fort Worth in the early twentieth century. "Leonard Brothers," or "Leonards," as the store was commonly called, grew to become one of the best known retail establishments in the Fort Worth service area. Even today, North Texans of a certain age can still remember visiting the store and wandering around in awe, marveling at the great variety of merchandise offered for sale. At its height, Leonards spread over several blocks of downtown Fort Worth and boasted its own private train to transport its customers from remote parking lots to the store's front door.
As the authors relate, the Leonard brothers grew up in a family of modest means in rural northeast Texas, where life and circumstances impressed upon them early the enduring value of hard work and the rewards to be gained therefrom. Marvin Leonard, the elder of the two brothers, moved to Dallas in 1914 and went to work for a small retail establishment...