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William A. Bond (December 6, 1917 - June 9, 1992) was an avid sportsman, rancher, and Civil War artifact collector. After his return from World War II in 1945, he went on a major hunt somewhere in the world each year for the rest of his life.
Family History
JAMES BOND
William A. Bond's paternal great-grandfather was James Bond of Windsor, North Carolina. Inspired by a letter from his uncle Thomas Bond, the first Bond settler in Haywood County, James Bond moved to Tennessee from North Carolina to pursue a dream of fortune in the cotton industry. In 1828 James Bond settled in Haywood County and built one of the largest fortunes in the state through the cultivation of cotton. (ref. F)
James Bond, one of the wealthiest slaveholding planters in Tennessee, if not in the entire South, came to the state during the late 1820s or early 1830s. Bond and two brothers moved from Bertie County, North Carolina, to the Forked Deer region of West Tennessee and rapidly acquired large landholdings in Haywood County.
By the eve of the Civil War, Bond had amassed property holdings in Haywood County alone of more than seventeen thousand acres and approximately 220 slaves. In 1859 his five plantations yielded more than one thousand bales of cotton and nearly twenty-two thousand bushels of corn. The federal manuscript census for 1860 estimated his total wealth at just under $800,000. (By comparison, the total value of all farmland, buildings, and other improvements in the entire county of Johnson--situated in the mountainous region in the northeastern part of the state--was just under $790,000.) In addition to investing heavily in land and slaves, Bond participated in a variety of other economic endeavors. For example, he owned or invested as a silent partner in a variety of mercantile establishments in the county seat of Brownsville. He also was an early supporter and stockholder in the Memphis and Ohio Railroad, the completion of which in the 1850s connected Haywood County by rail to Memphis, the most important internal cotton market in the entire South.
Despite severe losses during the war, his diverse property holdings (including northern municipal bonds and gold-bearing certificates issued by northern banks) allowed him to survive the war with a considerable proportion of his wealth intact. Until his death during the 1870s, Bond remained the richest planter in Haywood County and among the wealthiest landholders in the state. On the day of his funeral the courthouse and businesses of Brownsville closed. (all above ref. G)
During his time in Tennessee, he built the first free school in Brownsville, gave the land for the Brownsville Baptist Church, (H) and built the Brownsville Baptist Female College.
Daniel Bond, paternal grandfather of William A. Bond, whose mother was Mary Eliza Jordan Outlaw Bond and whose step-father was Governor John Branch (governor of Florida and North Carolina and secretary of the navy under President Andrew Jackson), moved to Brownsville and became editor of the Brownsville Times. He was interested in law so passed the bar examination and soon had a flourishing law practice and he also grew cotton. He married the first born daughter of James Bond, Margaret Williamson Bond, and they had eight children. Daniel was named cheif deputy for the Internal Revenue Department, and the family moved to Nashville. After his death in 1898, Margaret opened a boarding house and her cake's reputation achieved such fame taht Grover Cleveland, then president of the United States, started serving them at the White House.
Daniel Bond, Jr., was the son of Daniel Bond and Margaret Williamson Bond, and was William A. Bond's father. At 18, he decided to take the competitive examinations for an appointment to West Point and won the right to represent the State of Tennessee there. Upon completion of his second year at West Point, his father died and he moved home to help his family, who had relocated to Memphis. In 1898, he began to work for the Southern Cotton Oil Company in Memphis. In 1909, John Bomar, a banker in Brownsville, along with several other businessmen, decided to back him financially when there was a cotton oil mill up for sale in Vernon, Texas. They offered Daniel Bond, Jr. a partnership in exchange for his managing their investment. Daniel made the trek to Vernon, Texas, to meet with W.T. Waggoner, who owned the Vernon Cotton Oil Company at the time. They made a deal and soon Daniel Bond, Jr. was deeply involved in the cottonseed oil mill.
Daniel Bond Jr. married Ethel Anderson, daughter of William O. Anderson who was one of the early pioneers of Vernon and maternal grandfather of William A. Bond. He was born in Ireland and had roots in Scotland. He had a coal and feed business in Vernon and was elected city alderman to serve on the city's very first city council. He also joined other Vernon business men to apply to the U.S. Treasury Department for a charter for a national bank to serve Vernon. The charter was granted in 1899 and W.O. Anderson became Director of the bank until his death. He also served as Vice President of the Kell Milling Company, which he helped organize, and was later elected county commissioner for Wilbarger County. He also served as a director and vice president of the Vernon Cotton Oil Company until his death.
William A. Bond Trophy Room Located at the Red River Valley Museum in Vernon, Texas, the William A. Bond Trophy Room is filled with almost 140 individual mounts and no exact duplications of animals. About 95% of them are World Record kills. (ref. B) This trophy room is one of the finest natural history exhibits found in any museum. (ref. A) In 1983 William A. Bond told the Board of Directors that he would make a donation to kick off a building fund and if successful, he would donate his collection of over 130 record-holding wild game trophy mounts from around the world. (ref C)(ref E)
Vernon William A. Bond was a passionate booster and proponent of the enrichment of Vernon. He was one of the largest private donors for the building of the Vernon High School football field. William A. Bond was an original member of the Santa Rosa Palomino Club. The Santa Rosa Palomino Club, honored as the official "Ambassadors on Horseback" for the State of Texas. The outstanding riding club in America, and the national drill team championship, use precision horsemanship, matched Palomino mounts, colorful attire and unparalleled esprit de corps to maintain its position year after year as one of the greatest non-professional riding groups ever assembled. It celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2005, the self-supporting group draws superlatives wherever it performs. (ref D)
The Rhino was not scheduled on the trip he took in 1960 in Kenya. However, when the Game Warden asked for his help in taking down two rhinos which had trampled crops and huts, killing a native and generally wreaking havoc in the area, he readily agreed. The story of the tracking of these dangerous animals that led through tunnels of grass higher than the men's heads, tells of one of the most frightening and dangerous of all his hunts. The Saiga antelope is an animal that was known to prehistoric man. Found only in Siberia and on the Russian Steppes, when this mount arrived in 1988, the Red River Valley Museum was the second museum in the United States to exhibit the Saiga. Russia had closed the doors to foreign hunters in 1908, fearing that the Saiga would becom extinct.
references: HUNTING HERITAGE: FIFTY YEARS OF SHIKAR-SAFARI CLUB INTERNATIONAL http://www.chartingnature.com/books.cfm?book=B7776
http://www.weatherby-foundation.org/donations/list.html
http://www.biggame.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=38
http://www.biggame.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=38
http://www.biggame.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=41&Itemid=38
A. http://www.redrivervalleymuseum.org/bond.html
B. http://www.museumsusa.org/museums/info/1167484
C. http://www.redrivervalleymuseum.org/museumhistory.html
D. http://www.txfb.org/county/wilbarger/local.htm
E. http://ctmh.its.txstate.edu/attraction.php?cmd=detail&attrid=16
F. http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=H033
G. http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=B059