Frank Andrews, railroad attorney and state assistant attorney general, son of Rev. Green Lee and Martha Ann (Sellers) Andrews, was born in Fayetteville, Texas, on June 15, 1864. He graduated from Southwestern University in 1885, was admitted to the Texas bar in 1887, and from 1888 to 1891 served as city attorney at Belton. He was assistant attorney general of Texas from 1891 to 1895. On December 22, 1891, he married Rosalee Smith, with whom he had two children.
In 1895 he moved to Houston, where he organized the law firm of Andrews, Kelley, Kurth, and Campbell and became interested in railroad building. As attorney for the Houston and Texas Central Railway Company, he represented the company before the Railroad Commission. With E. M. House and Robert Holmes Baker, he chartered the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railway in 1902 and later the Yoakum Lines, which became part of the Missouri Pacific.In 1913, when the Frisco System in Texas went into receivership, Andrews served as receiver of Texas properties, and in 1916 he became chairman of the board for a newly chartered New Orleans, Texas and Mexican Railway.
He declined three appointments to Texas judgeships, including a nomination to the state Supreme Court in 1918. With others he established the Union Bank and Trust Company and developed the Montrose addition in Houston. He was a member of the cotton exchange and chamber of commerce and was a developer of the Houston Ship Channel. He was a member of the American, state, and county bar associations and a Mason. Andrews died at his home in Houston on December 7, 1936.
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Houston Post, December 9, 1936. National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 27. S. G. Reed, A History of the Texas Railroads (Houston: St. Clair, 1941; rpt., New York: Arno, 1981). Who Was Who in America, Vol 2.
Categories:
Law, Law Enforcement, and Outlaws
Lawyers
Railroad and Transportation Law
Time Periods:
Late Nineteenth-Century Texas
Progressive Era
Texas in the 1920s
Great Depression
Places:
Houston
Upper Gulf Coast
East Texas
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Erma Baker,
“Andrews, Frank,”
Handbook of Texas Online,
accessed May 20, 2022,
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/andrews-frank.
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