Ellis Cockrell, Pioneer Dallas Cattleman, Dies
Burial Set Friday for Partner of Silberstein and J. B. Wilson
Funeral services for Ellis Cockrell, 84, cattle raiser for whom Cockrell Hill was named, will be held at 10:30 a.m. Friday at the family residence, 201 North Mont Clair, Dr. Wallace Bassett, pastor, Cliff Temple Baptist Church, officiating. Burial will be in Laurel Land Memorial Park.
Pall bearers will be Charlie Dickerson, O. H. Britain, Claud Britain, Wess Cockrell, B. J. Coffee, Ray Nesbitt and David Lacey.
Mr. Cockrell died Wednesday evening of a heart attack shortly after retiring at his ranch house near Cleburne, Johnson County. He had been at the ranch several days, having gone there from Dallas on a business trip. When his heart began troubling him he went to bed early. He was laughing and joking with some of the members of the ranch when he was suddenly and fatally stricken.
Born in Dallas.
A native of Dallas County, Mr. Cockrell was born Aug. 5, 1852, to Wesley and Sarah Wilson Cockrell in a one-room log cabin on their homestead of 640 acres near Chalk Hill. He grew up on the family farm, helping his father with the routine chores and learning the livestock trade. At the age of 20 he formed a partnership with a childhood chum, Ascher Silberstein, for whom the Silberstein Grade School in Dallas was named, and entered the cattle-raising business on a large scale. The business flourished and in a few years the name of Cockrell was familiar to cattle dealers and buyers over the South and Midwest.
In 1879 he married Mary Jane Gray at the bride's home within two miles of where he was born, and near the old French settlement. Mrs. Cockrell's mother, Mrs. Betsy Gray, was one of the first settlers in Dallas County.
Partner of Wilson.
After twenty years in partnership with Silberstein, Cockrell became connected with the late J. B. Wilson, by whom the Wilson Building in Dallas was erected, and continued acively buying, raising and marketing cattle. He maintained his partnership with Silberstein but on a much smaller scale until Silberstein's death fifteen years ago. He remained in partnership with Wilson until the latter's death. Since that time he had carried on his business and management of his two ranches in Bosque County and Johnson County mostdly by himself.
He had maintained his home on Mont Clair in Oak Cliff for the last forty-two years. In 1929 he and Mrs. Cockrell celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with a barbecue picnic at the Cockrell farm on the Dallas and Fort Worth pike. Mrs. Cockrell died shortly afterward in the early part of 1930 [sic].
Survivors are two sons, S. G. Cockrell, Amarillo, and Rubin Cockrell, Cleburne; three daughters, Mrs. J. J. Kellam, Cleburne; Mrs. Joe Y. Field and Mrs. B. F. Harmon, both of Dallas; a brother, Lee Cockrell, Cockrell Hill, and eight grandchildren, Ellis Cockrell, Lewis Cockrell, Dr. Seth Kellam, Jack Kellam, Mary Jane Field, John Field and Lucy Kate Field.
