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ROBERT W. ALFORD. Among the active business men of Fort Worth, Robert W. Alford is one of the few who were born in Fort Worth when it was a frontier country town without a railroad within a hundred miles. His father was one of the old and prominent settlers of Fort Worth and northern Texas, and Mr. Alford himself grew up in the city and for many years has been identified with the industry of ice manufacture.

Mr. Alford, who is president of the Alford Ice Company, Incorporated, was born September 14, 1871, a son of James P. and Minerva (Maulding) Alford. His father was born either in Tennessee or Georgia and his mother was a native of Tennessee. James P. Alford settled in Fort Worth a few years after the military post was established there. He was a surveyor by profession and ran some of the pioneer land lines in northern Texas, and was also a dealer in lands. While at Fort Worth he was elected a member of the Legislature, and re journeyed to Austin on horseback in the absence of any other means of communicating with the capital. He lived to the age of eighty-four. He was a very devoted Christian, active in the Methodist Episcopal Church and one of its early members at Fort Worth. The mother lived to the age of seventy-nine. Their f amily consisted of six daughters and four sons, nine of whom reached mature years and six of whom are living.

Next to the youngest, Robert W. Alford was reared and educated in Fort Worth. As a boy he worked as a messenger in the Western Union office, also as an employe of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway, and concluded his education with a course in the Pruitt Business College, the first institution of the kind in Fort Worth, established by F. P. Pruitt. Mr. Alford has been in the artificial ice business since 1900. He organized a company for the manufacture of ice, and in1912 this company built the Alford Ice Plant, the first of its kind in Fort Worth to employ electrical equipment. The business is one that employs about twenty-five people, and it supplies a large part of the ice consumed in Fort Worth and neighboring towns.

Mr. Alford is a member of the Kiwanis Club, the Knights of Pythias and the Elks. He married in 1892 Mary Castle, of Smith County, Texas. They have three daughters, Cecilia, Catherine and Roberta.