INTERVIEW WITH MAYOR W. W. McALLISTER
Interviewer:
Date:
Clyde W. Ellis
July 13, 1976
(Tape 1)
Place: 4th Floor, San Antonio Savings Building
(Mayor McAllister will share with us remlnlscences of his life in San
Antonio and some of his associations which he had here.)
ELLIS: Mayor I think you will start off by talking about your family
and your ancestors.
McALLISTER: Yes, I'd like to say that three of my four grandparents
were born in Germany, and they all came to Texas independently and
arrived in the neighborhood of San Antonio i n the early l840s. As a
matter of f act, my father's mother was wait a minute now
my father's mother was . oh, wrong sheet . . . I was thinking . .
my mother's mother was one of Castro's group that settled at Castro-ville,
and they would come to San Antonio ever so often, let's say
once a month, with ox carts to make purchases. My maternal grand-father
Stumberg was a clerk or had a store here in this very neighbor-hood
here, at Main Plaza, and they camped in front about where the
Courthouse is at the present time, and he saw this young lady and made
up his mind that was who he was going to marry and so subsequently
they did become married . . . and that was my grandfather and grand-mother
on my mother's side.
ELLIS: Do you know if their house in Castroville is still standing?
McALLISTER: No, I never did know which house it was that they lived
in. She came to San Antonio . . . they were married in San Antonio
in, well, about 1850. I'll say that both of my parents, all four of
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my grandparents, were born in San Antonio . . . I mean were married in
San Antonio, and my father and mother were born in San Antonio and
they were married here in 1887. I was born on the 26th of March, 1889,
and so I naturally have a very close association and warm feeling for
San Antonio.
I might say that my mother's father and mother owned a piece
of property on Alamo Plaza . In fact, they owned a lot that was the
middle third of the block where the Menger Hotel is today. The lot on
the north corner (the north side of that block) was owned by Friedrich,
who subsequently became Friedrich of the Friedrich Refrigerator Corpo­ration,
and the south third (south block) was owned by old man Menger.
The Alamo Ditch went right through the middle the front part of
that block, and, of course, that was good, clean, clear water and kids
would bathe in it and so on all the time.
I recall my mother telling me that when Mr. Menger started to
build the Menger Hotel in 1857, which he finished in 1859, on the
third . on his property there . . the, of course, after it
became a hotel why the Stumbergs wanted to move ... my mother's
folks wanted to move from that location .
ELLIS: Well, now had they moved here from Castroville?
McALLISTER: Yes, they married in San Antonio then and lived in San
Antonio her whole married life. She was married in the late l840s,
and I can recall my mother saying . . . telling that when she was a
child, the Ditch went through the yard--front of their yard the
Friedrich's yard, their yard and under the Menger Hotel and came out
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on the Blum Street side, then flowed through where Joske's is now. And
she s aid that it was great sport for her and her brothers to get in
that ditch and swim under the Menger Hotel and come out on the Blum
Street side. Well, they lived there and then
ELLIS: What sort of things did the Stumbergs do? Were they .. ?
McALLISTER: He was a merchant. He was a green merchant. Well, you
know, in those days a merchant sold anything that he could get his
hands on, whether it was food or clothing and so forth and so on. I
might say that my grandfather on the McAllister side is the only one
that was born in the United States. He was born in Ken tucky. His
folks had come to Kentucky from Pennsylvania and then they'd moved to
San Antonio in late the late forty's. They were married ... he and
his wife were married . . her mai den name had been Braden (that waS
also a well-known name in San Antonio in those days) and they I don't
know jus t exactly where they did live except that in 1854 my mother's
father bought a piece of property on Houston Street at the corner of
Navarro Street, where Walgreen's is today. That was bought in 1854,
and the same year that the McAllister family bought a lot at the south­west
corner of Villita and South Alamo Streets which is now Villita,
and that became their family homestead a few years later.
Strange to say that when Civil War came along the Germans had
a very loyal feeling to the United States and many of the Germans did
not want to engage in war on the side of the Confederacy (they didn't
approve of slaves and so my mother's father left San Antonio--Ieft his
family here (how they lived I don't know, but they managed to live all
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right) and went to Mexico. And my father's father, McAllister, orga-nized
a company. He was, he was . had, well l et's say affilia-tions
and feelings for the South and he organized a company right here
in San Antonio that was a company in the Civil War, fought on the
side of the Confederates. And, the war, of course, in time was
over. I recall my grandmother McAllister saying that when her husband
came back from the war one of her children ran and met him at the door
and ran back to her mother and said, "Mamma, there I s a tramp at the
door" because he looked so terrible and so on.
ELLIS: Had he seen much activity in the war did you hear? Know?
McALLISTER: I don't know. Just ... yes, he'd been pretty active in
the war--been in a good many of the battles and so on, fortunately,
was never wounded and returned to San Antonio with most of the men
that he had started with in his company.
ELLIS: Do you know if your Grandfather Stumberg engaged in business
or anything in Mexico during the time?
McALLISTER: He must have ... he must have. I don't know what he
did but he must have been in business . There's no question about it,
because the war l asted four years and you just can't ... he didn't
have .. . he was a very thrifty individual ... he didn't have, he
couldn't have enough money to have lived and supported his family in
San Antonio under those conditions.
ELLIS: Do you recall their saying anything about any of the neighbors
that they had at these two r espective locations where they lived?
McALLISTER: Well, only thing I can say is that the north lot at the
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Menger Hotel there, the north lot in that block was owned by Fried­rich,
who subsequently became the, well, Friedrich of Friedrich Refrig­erator
Company. And I can recall my mother saying that Friedrich and
Stumberg and Menger were such good friends that they bought lots in
City Cemetery No.1, close to each other, so they'd be associated in
death as well as in life . rather a sort of sentimental proposition.
ELLIS: So then, what did they do after they moved in? Did they move
shortly thereafter away from the Menger Hotel?
McALLISTER: They moved some few years later . . . and, there was a
house on this property on Houston Street and Navarro Street that was
they lived there for a very short time because I can recall my
mother telling me that one of the nice things about that place was
that they could go swimming in the river. The San Antonio River,
before wells were dug, had springs coming up in the middle of the river .
I can recall seeing bubbles of water, bubbles of air coming up
in the middle of the river at lots of places in downtown San Antonio,
which you don't see at all now.
ELLIS: There must have been a larger flow of water then, too.
McALLISTER: Exactly, it was a better flow of water in the river and,
also, the river had springs allover. That, of course, was one of the
things that attracted the Spaniards when they first came to this place
here in 1691, as I read the history. They must have been on the bank
of the river where La Villita is, and they saw the bubbling springs in
the river, and the verdant valley, and that's what prompted 'em to
establish a city here, and that's what they said they were going to
do--colonize this area for the King of Spain and they did so in l71S
(it mentions l71S).
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Well, to get back to my story, it was a peculiar proposition
that both families, though they were friends . . . there was no mari­tal
relationships between them, bought property in San Antonio the
same year in lS50--one in '54. One, on South Alamo Street, the McAl­lister
place, which be came their homestead, and the Stumberg place on
the corner of Navarro and Houston Street which for awhile was their
home place, only for a f ew years. Then Grandpa Stumberg acquired a
house on South F10res Street, which was a rather larger house
stone, adobe, at what would be about 322 South Flores Street. That is
right near the corner of Guilbeau and South Flores Street on the east
side of South Flores Street. On the corner of Guilbeau, right on the
corner, is the school. There's a public school there ...
ELLIS: Yes.
McALLISTER: And that public school took a lot about 75 by 150 or 200
feet, and then our lot had about a hundred-foot front on South Flores
Street and ran through to Dwyer Avenue, and that's where that
was the old home . . the Casiano home and that was the one
that Grandpa Stumberg bought and that's where my father and mother
lived, and that's where I was born.
ELLIS: Is there a house across the street from the Little Rhe in Steak
House? Wasn't t hat a McAllister house.
McALLISTER: Yes. That 's it . .. that's the one! That's the property
that my grandmother built and bought in lS54.
ELLIS: Oh ... well . .. and that's still in excellent condition.
McALLISTER: That's it. Yes. Well, part of it. Part of it only was
there to begin with, see . She built all of the rest of it.
ELLIS: Has that been sold out of the family?
McALLISTER: Well . . that belongs to the City. I sold that to the
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City of San Antonio. I had that property and also the other piece of
property came to me and the City wanted it when Gus Milam was Mayor.
And I sold it to them. That's when they were conpleting the La Villita
acquisition.
ELLIS: Well, it was mentioned, you were talking of San Antonio being
founded in 1718, and I heard it said, since this is our Bi-Centennial
Year, that your mother attended the Centennial Celebration in Philadel­phia.
Do you remember her talking about that?
McALLISTER: Yes. I can remember my mother telling about the experi­ence
that she had in 1876, when they had the Philadelphia Centennial.
And, though she didn't tell me about it, I'm under the impression that
the railroad hadn't quite reached San Antonio. I don't think it
reached San Antonio until about a year or so later . Now it may be
that it was there, because she didn't tell me about having to travel
in a stagecoach some distance in Texas to get to the railroad. But,
at any rate, it was a very interesting experience for her as a young
child to go to the Centennial. She was then about fourteen, fifteen
years old.
ELLIS: Well, back to the Stumberg residence then that they moved over
and the school was nearby . Did they remain there? You were born
there, that's where you ..
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McALLISTER: Yes, my mother and father were married (I don't remember,
know the exact date, but, without looking it up) but in late '87 or early
1888. And my father built a house . . . a brick house on the corner
of Goliad and Water Street and that's where he and his bride lived.
It was a two-story house. He was at that time in the grocery business
in the McAllister homestead on Alamo Plaza, I mean on Alamo Street.
And they lived there, and Grandfather Stumberg passed away. When he
passed, well, then my mother wanted to go back and live with her
mother, so as to take care of her. And so they didn't live in this
other house on Goliad Street less than a ye ar, and moved i nto the
other the old house on South Flores Street. I remember the old house
on South Flores Street It also had a ditch--the Flores Street ditch
went through it and over the ditch was built a stone washhouse. In
other words, you could go in there, take your bath or you could wash
clothes, whatever it was that they did. And, it was quite something.
The house was stone, double stone and consisted, as I recall, there
were three bedrooms and a living room and a dining room and . . . then
a kitchen. And then, set apart from the house itself, was a storeroom
that was built that was about oh, let's say eighteen by eighteen feet
high . solid rock with ventilated louvres up above, so as to get
fresh air through it . and a cement stone floor. Potatoes, apples
and anything else that they bought by the bushel or i n the sack (they
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didn't have refrigeration in those days) was laid on the f loor or on a
table in that room to preserve them ... see.
ELLIS: Do you have pictures in any of your files or artifacts or scrap­books
of any of these places? For instance, the old back of the wash­house?
McALLISTER: I have some. I have some. Now whether we moved from the
South . . . my grandmother died and a few years l a t er we moved to Slo­cum
Place. We moved to Slocum Place in 1898, as I recall. My Grand-father
Stumberg evidently had bought al l the property . mas t of
the property on Sl ocum Place, which is, you know, where the Main Avenue
High School is
ELLIS: Yes.
McALLISTER: . . . between Flores and San Pedro Avenue. Because when
my mother built a house there, she had a sister that built . . . two
sisters that had built homes on the same street. And a brother, George
Stumberg, who had built . . . whose home was on . Romana Street,
right near the entrance into Slocum Place, and his son one of
his sons, had built on the corner of Romana and Sl ocum Place and two
of his married daughters had also built on Slocum Place.
ELLIS: They had a family compound . . .
McALLISTER: It was a family compound . yes. I had . . . I had
one, two, I had three aunts living on one side or the other of Slocum
Place within a block.
ELLIS: So it was a very warm family atmosphere there.
McALLISTER: Yes.
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ELLIS: I wanted to ask you when ... you mentioned that when your
grandfather died and your mother wanted to move in with your grand­mother
to help care for her, I wanted to ask where her brother and sis­ters
were at that time.
McALLISTER: Well they were married. One s ister was married and
living in Houston. She subsequently came back to San Antonio and
lived on Slocum Place. And her brother, one of her brothers, was
George Stumberg that had a general merchandise store on South Flores
Street, and he lived on Romana. And then she had one brother that was
a merchant in Laredo, Texas, living in Laredo at the time , and one
other brother that had passed on .
ELLIS: So the current Stumberg family are cousins of yours.
McALLISTER: Yes. Yes.
ELLIS: Do you remember any of the neighbors or people who lived
around you while on the Slocum Street area?
McALLISTER: Well, I can remember one family on South Flores Street
and that was the Guergin (G - U-E -R-G-I-N,I think it was) . Mr . Guergin
was a jeweler or pawnbroker or something like that, and had a house
there, and I can remember that family because he had one daughter who
was just about my age. And her daughter married a man named Hill and
lives in New York and is the founder of the Campfire Girls, a national
organization, and visits San Antonio every now and then.
ELLIS: Well, that's interesting. Do you remember any particular out-standing
events that happened during this period . say when you
all moved to the Slocum area? Any particular t hing that happened?
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McALLISTER: Yes. I can remember that the very first day that I went
to public school when we lived on Slocum Place, I went to Marshall
Street School, public school, and I got into a fight! (Chuckles here.)
ELLIS: Well, you started off with a bang!
McALLISTER: Oh boy--you bet your life! And the funny proposition
was, I didn't know anybody, at least I thought I didn't know anybody.
Lo and behold, I had an ally there . He and his gang came and got me
out of my trouble and that was the Santlebens.
ELLIS: Oh!
McALLISTER: I didn't know it at the time, but the Santlebens had
... one of the Santleben girls had married my f ather 's brother and
they lived up in that neighborhood too.
ELLIS: So you had a cousin as an ally that you weren't aware of .
McALLISTER: Yes. . I didn't know about it.
ELLIS: Well, would you like to make a comment about life then as
opposed to today. We fee l that life is so complicated and people are
so frustrated, and the children of today are so undisciplined and
unstructured. Do you feel that life then was simpler and less compli­cated?
Do you think that each age has its pressures?
McALLISTER: Well, in a way life was simpler then, because we didn't
have ... we didn't have the same terrific .. . ambitions and also
... and also let me say this, you used the word just a moment ago
that I think is a very, very important word, to-wit "discipline." Our
family life today isn't at all what it was even thirty years ago.
It's changed to beat the band. Personally, I think it has changed as
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a result of a planned program. Not necessarily a planned program on
our part, but a planned program. And, I want to say to you, that if a
child doesn't learn discipline .. and the place for a child to
learn discipline is at his, is at its mother's knee or father's hands
and you've got to learn discipline or none of us can live a
happy life. We've got to discipline ourselves every day. Every day
you have to discipline yourself. And the fact that you've learned
discipline, learned how to control yourself and deny yourself the
things that you think you want and so on, you learn that as a child
. . . and that unfortunately is the thing that is no longer available
or isn 't available in the same degree that it used to be.
ELLIS: Absolutely .
McALLISTER: . when I was a child. And I want to say to you that
I fee l that this lack of discipline has a very strong influence upon
our life in this country today .
ELLIS: And, don't you feel that social values have changed. For
instance, your parents' friends and the things that they did for
entertainment. Don't you see a large change in the way, when you go
out socially today, people behave?
McALLISTER: Dh, brother. There's just no comparison. You take San
Antonio--now I can't tell you what the population of San Antonio was
in . . . at the time I was born in 1889, but it was somewhere, I would
say to you somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000, something like
that. I bought a piece of property that was built in '73, and, when I
tore it down in the cornerstone was the population of San Antonio of
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1870. And, the strange thing about it was that that population was
classified on an ethnic basis. There were approximately 15,000 people
in San Antonio: 5,600 of them being German or of German descent;
5,400 Anglo or Irish (as they were classified); and 3,700 Mexicans.
And, the balance of f em '\07ere other various nationalities.
ELLIS: Was this in l870?
McALLISTER: This was built in '73, and they gave the population of
1870, which had been divided ethnically in San Antonio. Our popula­tion
was in the neighborhood of 15,000.
ELLIS: It's interesting to see that they were ethnic conscious at
that time, because there's so much discussion about it today.
McALLISTER: Yes, yes it's strange indeed, I didn't believe it, I mean
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it.
ELLIS: Yes, well that is interesting. At this stage in your life
were you at all interested or aware of politics in San Antonio, or
McALLISTER: Oh, yes indeed!
ELLIS: . or the way the City was going at that time?
McALLISTER: Oh, yes indeed. In those days . . . in those days San
Antonio had the Mayor and alderman form of government. The City was
divided from about 1884 until 1914. San Antonio operated with an alder­manic
form of government. We had eight wards and there was an alder­man
from each ward and there were five . . . four "Aldermen-at-Large"
and the Mayor. They were a council of thirteen men. The Mayor's j ob
was a full-time job. The job of the aldermen was not a full-time job.
Then they had different department heads, like sanitation, streets,
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and stuff of that sort. But, the City ... the thing that I noticed
immediately about that was that if you were the alderman for Ward 1
and I was the alderman for Ward 2, and we'll say that your peop le
wanted a cer tain street paved and my peop l e had a drainage problem
all right, you worked toward getting your people and I worked toward
getting mine, and you scratched my back and I scratched yours and so
on. And I 'm not saying that the money wasn 't well spent. But the
money was not given . was not spent on the bas is of a planned,
overall program for the development of the City . see . In other
words, what you did, or what I did, was all right for this time, but
probably would not fit into what was necessary for that area ten years
later.
ELLIS: Right .
McALLISTER: And, that's the thing that we noticed about the Alder­manic
form of government . You couldn't get away from the fact that
there was a selfish desire to get as much improvements in your ward as
you could. The City, at times, would have a master plan prepared, and
that master plan ended up in the basement of City Hall, and that's
where i t stayed and nobody paid any attention to it. And, it was
wasted effort. So, tha t was my feeling, and I early fel t that the
Aldermanic form of government was . . . and having men elected from
specific smal l areas, repres enting small areas, was not a good propo­sition.
We kept that form of government until 1914.
ELLIS: Did you notice any particularly strong personalities in poli­tics
at that era? Were there any colorful characters that you were
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McALLISTER: Yes. Yes. The most colorful name in San Antonio history,
really, is that of Callaghan.
ELLIS: Yeah right .
McALLISTER: Bryan Callaghan. Original . The first Bryan Callaghan
was the Mayor of San Antonio in 1846, just after we came into the
Republic . .. I mean, into the United States. He was Mayor only for
ten months. Then he didn't serve anymore ... and, all during the
years, mayors didn't last very long. And, then, this Bryan Callaghan
had a son, who was Bryan Callaghan, who became the Mayor of San Antonio
I think first in about 1884, and off and on served as Mayor
(never as long as ten years at a single time but fourteen years alto­gether)
and died in off ice as Mayor of San Antonio in 1912. Then
after
Then,
his name, of course, was easily the most colorful one.
ELLIS: Was he sort of controversial in some of the things that he did?
McALLISTER: Well. (hesitating to speak)
ELLIS: Okay. . . just an "outstanding" personal ity.
McALLISTER: To continue the story about Callaghan . . . this Bryan
Callaghan, in turn, had a son named Alfred Callaghan, and Alfred Cal­laghan
became Mayor of San Antonio in ... in, I think in '49. I
know that he was Mayor in 1950. The reason I remember that date is
that in the late twenti es I became interested in Council-Manager form
of government, which was a new form of government. I might say that
San Antonio in 1914 dismissed the Aldermanic form of government and
adopted the Mayor and Commission form of government. The mayor and
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Commission form of government seemed to be an improvement, but later
on we found out that it wasn't. There you had four commissioners.
One would be the commissioner of street and of sanitation, "Public
Works" let's say; another one "Parks and Sanitation"; another one,
IIPolice and Firell
; and, another one IIFinance Commissioner, II and then
the Mayor who was sort of the general manager over all of 'em. Now,
here is the problem, here is the thing that was wrong with that form
of government. You had five men--each one of whom was part of the
Council policy-making part fo r the City . . ordinances and so on,
but was also the administrator of a certain particular operation of the
City. In other words, one was the administrator of the Pol ice and Fire
Department, another one of the Parks and Sanitation, another one of
Fi nance, and another one of Streets and Public Improvements .
and then whatever was left over, and Joe Blow was the Mayor. The
result of it was that you'd have good men, perhaps, but not necessarily
men who had any previous experience in the operation of that depart-ment.
And it did not produce .. it did not produce an efficient
form of government in my opinion. I became sold on the Council­Manager
f orm of government in the late twenties, which was then just
budding you might say, just being started, and I helped organize the
Citizens' League in t he early thirties; and, we got interested in
politics and succeeded in electing some County officials--Forrest
Woodhal l was our County Judge, Maury Maverick became Tax Assessor-
Collector. (Pause . ) . . elected the Sheriff and we elected Neil
Campbell County Clerk. In other words, we got quite a few people in
the County.
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ELLIS: And this was when you were getting your feet wet and
McALLISTER: Yes. Just starting out. This was in the early 1930s
and, as a matter of fact, the strange thing is that we didn't seem to
improve our government one whit as a result of having people in there
that we knew personally ... and if you liked t hem, we felt honest.
Insert, when I said somewhere about moving to 221 Slocum Place
in 1898 and going to Marshall Street School . I might say that
besides the interesting thing of having so much of my family, so many
aunts living in the neighborhood, was my experience then . . . one of
the experiences that I recall was first experienced when my uncle
bought an automobile. This was in 1900, and, as I recall, it was a
Studebaker, and made by the Studebaker wagon firm . And what an experi­ence
I had the first time I drove . . . tried to drive with shifting
gears. You 'd have to shift gears, and I went immediately from first
into reverse, which was opposite first instead of ... (chuckles) but
fortunately wasn't going fast, so I didn't strip the gears.
ELLIS: Were there many cars in town at that time?
McALLISTER: No. Very, very few aut omobiles at that time . Very few.
I can't say how many . I would say that probably the first car in San
Antonio was bought probably in '95. Somewhere along in through there,
about six years, seven years before.
ELLIS: Do you remember any unusual experiences happening with the
early cars? For instance, we hear of them startling horses and
causing buggies to stampede down the street, and all that sort of
ili~.
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McALLISTER: Yes . I'll say this, that allan Houston Street and Com­merce
Street (Commerce Street was at the time I was a child, the main
business street of the City) ... Then, gradually, i t moved over to
Houston Street and, as a matter of fact, before Commerce Street it had
been on Market Street. Market Street had been . .. of cour se, f irst
two plazas here, and then Market Street, then Commerce Street, and
with Commerce Street connecting it up with Alamo Plaza. And, then
finally, it moved on down to Houston Street . I can r ecall on all the
curbs on both sides of the street reins so that you could tie your
horse there. With the rein they wouldn't, they couldn't get away.
ELLIS: I 'm going to digress for a moment . the plaza was such a
center of activity I think it's interesting that your building here is
facing one of the old plazas. Did you own this property before ...
McALLISTER: Nb. No. No, this was just rather accidental. I 'll just
say, that at this site here was one of the, was the Clipper Saloon,
which was one of the famous or infamous places in San Antonio. Here 1 s
where the ex-sheriff from Austin was killed (I can't call his name).
I might say that one of the things that I overlooked by the
time I moved to Slocum Place that was in 1898, that was the time of
the Spanish-American War. And, Teddy Roosevelt organized a company of
Rough Riders in San Antonio, and they were trained at what was known
as the fairgrounds, which is the property that was on Roosevelt Avenue
(at that time it was called Garden Street) east and a little bit south,
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across the street from Riverside Park . Here Riverside Park is on
Roosevelt Avenue now, diagonally acroSs the street from that was the
fairgrounds. The fairgrounds had quite a bit of open space, and Teddy
Roosevelt trained his Rough Riders there.
ELLIS: Do you remember hearing it said why he came to San Antonio to
do that?
McALLISTER: Because he wanted a cavalry regiment, and he wanted peopl e
who knew how to ride horses, and he wanted Texans and others from
Wyoming and Montana and so on. Roosevelt's health hadn't been so good
as a child, and he had gone out to Wyoming on a ranch, and consequently
he wanted to organize that kind of a group of people. And they say he
did most of his enlisting in the bar of the Menger Ho tel . That I
can't vouch for (he chuckles here). But, I will say that on two occa­sions
he trained the Rough Riders (they were only in San Antonio six
weeks) and on two occas i ons, on Sunday, we drove out there to the fair­grounds,
and I met both Colonel Roosevelt and his commanding officer,
Colonel Leonard Wood. Roosevelt, of course, was the colorful indi­vidual.
And, when they left San Antonio, I can well remember my
intense desire each morning to get ahold of a paper, a morning paper,
The Express, to see what the Rough Riders had done in Cuba.
ELLIS: And, so, this developed your interest in Roosevelt, which
affected your political .
McALLISTER: It did that. It did that. There's no doubt about it.
And, also, let me say to you, that in those days when I was a child
living on South Flores Street, there wasn't much in the way of
entertainment, except as some of your cousins would have a birthday
party or something like that. All birthday parties were universally
recognized and celebrated here--aunts and uncles and everybody .
20
ELLIS: Okay
day parties?
. . your cousins . . . you were saying, and the birth-
McALLISTER: Yes. The entertainment in those days was birthday parties,
and gol ly, I can remember every cousin, that his Mama wouldn't let that
day .. birthday get by without having a birthday party. Being as we
had a rather large family (I was the only child in my family but that
was unusual, as I had lots of cousins) there was always plenty of
people attending the birthday parties. I can also remember another
very interesting form of entertainment and that was about once a month
Mama would drive out to Fort Sam Houston on a Sunday, when the band was
playing at the bandstand there at what they called the "Upper Post,"
and the only, the city folks would be all out there visiting with each
other and visiting with the military, walking from carriage to carriage,
and we kids would be out there playing in the Bermuda grass getting
full of red-bugs. It was great sport!
ELLIS: What about the birthday parties? Do you remember any sort of
the activities that they did there? The refreshments?
McALLISTER: Well, they always had a lot of refreshments, and if, of
course, all different types of cake and lemonade . and then later
on ice cream. Oh boy, that ice cream ... that was something. You
were giving a party if you had ice cream for your guests.
ELLIS: Well, what did the young people of that time enjoy doing for
fun, as far as ... di d they enjoy games? You know today they have
to have such elaborate entertainment.
21
McALLISTER: Yeah, we always played games of different kinds--running
games and so on. Then, also, had quite a bit in the way of guessing
games, and things like spe lling and so on.
ELLIS: Well, as you became older, more toward high school age and
were dating and that kind of thing, what was considered activity then
to do?
McALLISTER: Well. then I went to high school. I went to high
school in 1903, and the high school was on Main Avenue.
ELLIS: Was that where Fox-Tech is now?
McALLISTER: That's where Fox-Tech is yes. That's where Fox-
Tech is. I might say that school was a lot different in those
days because you went to school, and you had a pretty intense desire
to get a good grade. Grades were by numbers. If you got a 6 that was
"failure"; 7, you just barely skinned by; 8, 9, and 10, those were
good grades, and we tried . I can't remember a single class that I
was in that I didn't have some intense competition with another boy or
Some girls with regard to grades. And that, of course, was a stimulus
to me and to them. And, I'll say to you that in those days if you
didn't learn the teacher simply didn't pass you, that's all. If you
failed if you were in the 7th grade or 6th grade or whatever
grade you were in and you failed you had to do that work over again.
ELLIS: Was it considered among the students of the same age at that
time, the peer group, was it considered a disgrace to fail?
McALLISTER: Yes it was . . it was a lot.
ELLIS: They put value on making good grades.
22
McALLISTER: They did that~ The teachers well, they had, the teachers
had discipline that's all there was to it.
ELLIS: And you respected your teachers.
McALLISTER: Exactly. Exactly. And, if you didn't behave yourself,
well, the teacher would say you'd have to stay in after school for
thirty minutes--and that, of course, was terrible.
ELLIS: And I expect the parents thought it was terrible in those days
too ... to get in trouble in school.
McALLISTER: School meant a great deal to me for the simple reason
that my mother was always urging me to make good grades. And she was
very muchly interested in the public schools. She and Miss Eleanor
Brackenridge, who was the old maid sister of Colonel George Bracken­ridge
(who incidently never married either, see, and he was the rich-est
man in San Antonio in those days) . . and Miss Eleanor Bracken-ridge
had organized .•. was starting to organize ... parents'­teachers'
clubs. So my mother became interested in that and she took
over that work, and she organized . . . you might say, she organized
the Mother's Clubs in all the schools in San Antonio. Now, that's the
that's the following that became the Parent-Teachers Association.
Yes. In other words, the Parent-Teachers Association is an outgrowth
of the old Mother's Clubs.
ELLIS: Well, then, I know your interest in schools has always con­tinued
to flourish. My remembrance is of your banking with the school
children. I always had my account . .
23
McALLISTER: Yeah.
ELLIS: . and I thought that was good, early training.
McALLISTER: Well, that of course was something that came very much
later . I might say to you that I finished high school in 1906 and
determined to go to The University of Texas. My plans had been made
to go to The University of Texas and I planned to study electrical
engineering. So, I went to The University and graduated in 1910 with a
degree of Electrical Engineer. I had also taken a lot of extra work
in civil engineering and could have gotten a degree in Civil Engineer­ing
with, sayan additional year's course if I had gone back to The
University, but I didn't care enough about it to go back and get that
additional degree. Then, when school was out, I got a job with the
.. what was then known as the Colorado River Power Company. They
were building a dam on the Colorado River at Marble Falls, and that's
where I went to work to begin with.
ELLIS: What was the nature of your work there?
McALLISTER: Well, I was a part of the Engineering staff, though I did
not have anything to do with the design. Mere l y taking the plans and
seeing that the forms were set up properly and that they were correct
in dimension and things of that sort. In other words, a sort of a
technical checkup of the way the work was being done.
ELLIS: And, were you living on the site up there?
McALLISTER: Yes. Yes, I lived in Marble Falls. Lived in Marble Falls,
right there, and was on the job every day.
ELLIS: And, about how long were you there?
24
McALLISTER: I was there . . . I was there about oh, about nine or ten
months.
ELLIS: I guess Marble Falls was a small place then .. .
McALLISTER: Yes, a small place then .
ELLIS: . and not too much to do.
McALLISTER: Not. No. And then they started to work on the. not
started work but they determined to have them build the Medina Dam,
and I came to San Antonio and got a job with the engineering firm that
had charge of the Medina Dam. And, as a matter of fact, I had charge
of all the surveying of the dam site and the area of the basin.
ELLIS: Do you recall what the name of the firm was which built the
dam?
McALLISTER: The engineering firm . . . the engineering firm was
Bartlett and Ranney. A local civil engineer or surveyor by the name
of Alex Walton was the man who had the idea originally of developing
that Medina Dam. And, he surveyed out there on the Medina River and
saw the open valley and then narrowing down to a canyon and he said to
himself, "Well, here's where you ought to build a dam," and that's
exactly where the Medina Dam was built.
ELLIS: Wasn't there a village or two which was inundated by the lake
and the people had to relocate?
McALLISTER: No. No. There wasn't any village that was inundated.
There were some, strange to say, very few, but there were some farm­houses
that had to be moved. That's all there was to it. Of course,
most of them sold their farms outright to the Medina Irrigation
Company.
25
ELLIS: There's been some comment recently across the country ...
the redesigning and the reeva luation of the present state of the dam
. and it's been observed that there has been considerable leakage
around the dam. I sn't it true that it did that at the time for the
nature of the deposits
McALLISTER: Exactly. Frankly , I doubt if the dam could have been
built at any site . . where they built it was the logical place to
build it. They did a good job so far as the foundation and so on is
concerned, but that's porous limestone and even after the dam was built
why water would seep through from the other side into the discharge
. well, discharge ... (hesitates).
ELLIS: Area there?
McALLISTER: Yeah.
(End of Tape 1)
.. , .
MCALLISTER,WALTER WI t ape 1
Biographical,11, 17 ,23,24
early citizens:Callaghan,Bryan,15,
Froedric h,2,5 Maverick Maury,Sr .
16 , Menger,2 Rooseve lt,Teddy,*
18,19, Stumberg,1,3,4,6-9
famiuy, history,1-4 ,6-l0
INDEX
Menger hotel,2,3,1 9
politi cs(1930's), 13-15
San Antonio census,1870 ,1 2,13
school, 21-23
social and family li fe , 11 ,12,
20,21
Walter McAllister was 87 when this intervi ew took pl ace. He
recalls family history, the look of San Antonio in the early
1900's, discusses politics, etc.
See second interview .
* not a citi zen of S.A. but here training the 'Trough r i de rs'T