James V. Allred, born in Bowie to Renne and Mary Henson Allred, was one of nine children and worked in his youth as a soda pop bottler, shoeshine boy, and newsboy. He attended local schools, Rice University, and Cumberland Law School, served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, and was admitted to the bar in 1921. His early law practice was with the Wichita Falls firm of Bernard Martin and Ben G. O'Neal. After serving as Assistant District Attorney, he was appointed in 1923 by Governor Pat Neff as District Attorney of the 30th District, where he gained a strong reputation in the fight against the Ku Klux Klan. He married Joe Betsy Miller of Wichita Falls, and they had three sons: James V. Jr., William David, and Sam Houston Allred. As Texas Attorney General from 1931 to 1935, he won many victories over monopolies, strengthened enforcement of the gasoline tax law, corrected unfair trade practices, defended oil proration laws in the first test case, fought federal efforts to tax the income of Texas schools, and established the school fund's title to West Texas oil royalties worth over twenty million dollars. In 1934 he won the governor's race against five opponents, was named Outstanding Young Man in America in 1935 by the National Junior Chamber of Commerce, and won a second term in 1936 by a landslide. As Governor of Texas from 1935 to 1939, he carried out executive, legislative, and judicial programs to address social and economic ills, led the fight to outlaw pari-mutuel gambling, oversaw Social Security amendments to the Texas Constitution, and on Nov. 19, 1935, signed the state's first Old-Age Assistance Bill; he soon instituted Aid to Dependent Children, Aid to Needy Blind, and a Teachers' Retirement Fund. He secured for schools their greatest per capita apportionment, obtained fairer salaries for instructors, advanced building programs for colleges and other state institutions, created a Board of Pardons and Paroles, initiated prison reforms, revised the Industrial Labor Commission, instituted an unemployment insurance system, and combined the Texas Rangers and Highway Patrol into the State Department of Public Safety. In 1937 he encouraged Lyndon B. Johnson in his congressional campaign and befriended other future officeholders including Ralph Yarborough, Robert B. Anderson, and Robert Calvert, and he named Judge Sarah T. Hughes of Dallas as the first woman appointed to the Texas judiciary. After his two terms as governor, he was twice appointed United States District Judge and remained on the bench until his death; he is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Wichita Falls.