The Texas Historian, Volume 34, Number 4, March 1974 Page: 2
32 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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- ii~
WHERE CAN A STORY BEGIN with a man like
Barry Scobee? Husband, writer, soldier, poli-
tician, and historian are occupations of which
the dictionary's definitions share little in com-
mon. If you look them up in the Fort Davis
area, however, you will find that they all
have one important commonality-Barry Sco-
bee.
One mile northwest of the post office-black-
smith shop of Pollock Village in North Central
Missouri is where Albert Berry Scobee was
born on May 2, 1885. As a beginning, Sco-
bee's parents (James Wesley Scobee and Sarah
Ann) named their son Berry, not Barry, after
Doctor Albert Berry who delivered him. The
doctor told the Scobees that he would buy the
boy his first pair of long pants if they would
name the baby after him. They accepted the
gift.
Scobee was always called Berry. In the army
during World War I, one of Scobee's pals
was Royal Leclair Green of Pennsylvania. As
the son of a family of some social standing
and an educated person, Green had been a
Barry Scobee (above), with pen and ink, be-
came instrumental in preserving Old Fort
Davis as a historical landmark. Courtesy: Pho-
tographs courtesy of the author unless other-
wise noted.SCO
socialite in his hometown. "He was not a bad
guy," writes Scobee," "except he was uppish
with his more ignorant and crude fellow sol-
diers." One day the company's mail orderly
tossed a letter on Berry's cot. It was addressed
to Private Berry Scobee, Company H, 9th
Infantry, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Green
picked up the letter, regarded it, spelled the
name aloud, "B-E-R-R-Y," and then sneered
contemptuously, "What a hick name! Why
don't you change that to B-A-R-R-Y? That
would have class, make you a somebody."
Scobee says, "That stuck in my very soul. Out
of the army and back home in Unionville,
[Missouri] I changed my name to Barry and
have used it ever since."
B-A-R-R-Y, or B-E-R-R-Y, Scobee indeed
was on his way to becoming a sombody. On
November 24, 1911, Scobee became Katherine
Delphina Ford's husband. Katherine Ford
caught her first glimpse of Scobee from her
bedroom window in Unionville. She was quar-
antined with typhoid fever; he was employed
as a reporter for the local newspaper. As he
passed her house going to and from work,
she became interested in this young man,
made inquiries about him, and saw to a meet-
ing. They fell in love and were married in
a minister's home in Kansas City, Missouri.
These were the lean years, with more love
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Texas State Historical Association. The Texas Historian, Volume 34, Number 4, March 1974, periodical, March 1974; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth391276/m1/4/: accessed May 20, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.