Charles Vernon Terrell

Charles Vernon Terrell was a leading public man in Texas from 1896 to 1939. Born in Wise County to settlers who had arrived in 1854, he spent two years at Texas A. and M., then read law and began practice in 1886. He served as Decatur City Attorney from 1888 to 1892, as County Attorney from 1892 to 1896, and in the Texas Senate from Denton, Montague, and Wise counties from 1896 to 1901 and again from 1909 to 1913, where he sponsored the act creating North Texas State University. He was State Treasurer of Texas from 1921 to 1924. Appointed in 1924 to the Texas Railroad Commission, and serving two terms as chairman, he served during landmark years when Texas became a major world energy supplier. Through regulation of oil and gas shipping, the Railroad Commission became the agency for making production rules. When East Texas in the 1930s began producing oil in volumes the world had never known, and the state invoked martial law to quell strife there, Terrell and his associates pioneered in conservation without sacrificing industrial leadership. After his retirement in 1939, his native county had an oil discovery at Park Springs in 1942, and the Chico field came in with larger yields in 1947. C. V. and Etta May Terrell were the parents of Tully Vernon, John Preston, and Margaret, Mrs. F. T. Ward.

Decatur, Texas · United States