William Florence

William Peyton Florence (First cotton grower in West Texas; author and educator)
Born	June 17, 1872 Smith County, Texas
Died	November 24, 1944 (aged 72) Slaton, Lubbock County, Texas Resting place: Englewood Cemetery in Slaton, Texas
Spouse	(1) Mary Agnes Anderson Florence (2) Loula Spinks Florence Children: From first marriage: Earl Anderson Florence From second marriage: Eunice Florence Carle Joseph Alton Florence Parents: Samuel Thomas and Levina Anne Ashley Florence
Religion	Baptist

William Peyton Florence (June 17, 1872 – November 24, 1944) was one of the first three cotton growers in the Llano Estacado of West Texas. He was also an author and an educator, who became the first superintendent of public schools in Slaton, a small community in Lubbock County.

Florence was born in east Texas in Smith County, of which Tyler is the principal city, to Samuel Thomas Florence (1848-1931) and the former Levina Anne Ashley (1849-1931). When he arrived in Lubbock County, he was a land promoter in the Lubbock areas. His land promotions were printed a decade after the founding of Lubbock in 1891. The other cotton pioneers were George Oliver Groves (1856-1932), a Tennessee native who planted several acres in 1896 that failed because of frost, and Squire S. Rush (1857-1935), a native of Darke County, Ohio, who planted ten acres in 1900, but lost a half bale to stray cattle. Florence picked two full bales of cotton, which he had ginned at Big Spring in Howard County, Texas.

Florence's memoir of ninety-two pages, Hopeful Visions on Higher Ground, was published in 1936. In this work, Florence recalled that he attended school when he could, specifically Farmers' Alliance High School in Lingleville in Erath County, Texas. When unable to attend school, he studied at home. By the age of twenty-three, he had earned a first-grade teacher's certificate and began teaching in small country schools in Eastland, Comanche and Hamilton counties in central Texas. The Lynn County News stated in a 1906 article that Florence taught a class on physical geography in Tahoka in Lynn County. That same year he wrote a poem, "Troubles of a Homesteader", published in the Lubbock Avalanche.

He came to Slaton to become the first superintendent of school and continued to grow cotton. In 1923, it was reported that Florence sought assistance with his large crop of cane, from which he made molasses. The Slaton Slatonite confirms that he sold ribbon cane syrup from a yield of five hundred gallons from six acres. He also raised hogs and farmed turnips, plum trees, grapes, onions, and melons. In 1914, he opened Rose Hill Dairy. In 1917, he joined the Slaton office of the Federal Farm and Loan Board.

His involvement with the community came from his efforts in the schools, the local Baptist Church, at which he led the music, and his various business interactions. He frequently donated the medals given out at the at the high school award ceremony. He was an outspoken opponent of the Ku Klux Klan, which was temporarily revived in Texas during the 1920s. One of his melons was stolen in 1921 and delivered to the porch of the editor of The Slatonite, with the carved-out inscription “K.K. Klan."

From his first brief marriage to the former Mary Agnes Anderson (1877-1900), he had a son, Carl Anderson Florence. Mary Agnes died two weeks after Carl's birth in May, and Carl died in August 1900. Mary Agnes and their infant son are interred at Aspermont Cemetery in Stonewall County, Texas. After Mary Agnes' death, he wed the former Loula Spinks (1879-1945), a native of Meridian,Mississippi. Alongside his second wife, Florence is interred at Englewood Cemetery in Slaton, where he died at the age of seventy-two.

More information on Florence can be found in Southwest/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University.