East Baton Rouge County Louisiana Archives Biographies.....Watson, Warren September 28, 1893 - 

**********************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm
**********************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Mike Miller http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00004.html#0000912 October 7, 2006, 4:18 pm

Author: Henry E Chambers

Warren Otto Watson, who is a veteran of seas service in the World war, is one 
of the and popular younger members of the bar of Rouge, where he has been 
established in the general practice of his profession since January and where 
distinctive success is attending his and efficient service in his chosen 
vocation he has the fundamental characteristic that make for successful 
advancement needs no further voucher than the statement that he depended 
entirely upon his own resources in gaining his higher academic and also his 
professional education.

Mr. Watson claims the old Lone Star State as the place of his nativity, his 
birth having occurred at Kilgore, Gregg County, Texas, September 28, 1893.  His 
father, John Robert Watson, now a resident of Marshall, that state, was born in 
Georgia, June 29, 1861, and was a boy at the time of the family removal to 
Alabama, whence removal was later made to Texas, he having been still a 
comparatively young man when he established his residence in Gregg County 
Texas, where he was for a time engaged in farm enterprise and where he was 
called upon to serve in various local offices of public trust.  He was long and 
actively associated with public service, has been influential in the councils 
of the democratic party in Texas, and now holds a position with the Texas & 
Pacific Railroad.  His wife, whose maiden name was Georgia Letitia Morris, was 
born in Alabama, November 16, 1865, and they have six children:  Henry 
Prescott, who was born September 12, 1886, resides at Breckenridge, Texas, 
where he is city secretary and treasurer, as well as city tax assessor and 
collector;  Robert Pitt, who was born July 24, 1888, is engaged in the 
wholesale and retail grocery business at Marshall, Texas;  Callie Belle, who 
was born October 10, 1891, is the wife of Homer M. Spencer, manager of a retail 
grocery at Marshall, Texas;  Warren Otto, of this review, was the next in order 
of birth ;  Mittie Lucile, born November 26. 1893, is the wife of Albert J. 
Tatum, of Houston, Texas; and  Annie Lorna, born September 5, 1902, is the wife 
of John Eli Mason, of Houston, Texas.

The earlier educational discipline of Warren Otto Watson was acquired in the 
public schools of Gregg and Harrison counties, Texas, and in his native state 
he was graduated from the Hallsville High School as a member of the class of 
1908.  For a few months thereafter he applied himself to strenuous sawmill work 
at Milvid, Texas, and in the Lone Star State he remained, variously employed, 
until the year 1911, when he there took a position in the shoe department in 
the department store of the Russell-Graham Company at Marshall.  He continued 
as a salesman for this concern two years, and from September, 1913, until July, 
1913, he was similarly employed in the Imperial Shoe Store at Shreveport, 
Louisiana.  His next experience, of brief duration was that gained as agent for 
the New York Life insurance Company at Shreveport, and in the meantime he had 
permitted nothing to dampen his ambition to prepare himself for the legal 
profession.  In September, 1913, he was matriculated in the academic department 
of the Louisiana State university and his work there was interrupted by his 
gallant service in the World war, after the close of which be resumed his 
studies at the university, in which he was graduated as valedictorian of the 
law class of 1921 and from which he received his degree of Bachelor of Laws.  
In his senior year he was business manager of "The Gumbo," the University 
annual.  In the autumn of 1920, while still a student, be was defeated in his 
candidacy for the position of delegate to the State Constitutional Convention 
of Louisiana which assembled in 1921, his defeat being by a very few votes.  
Mr. Watson was admitted to the bar in June, 1921, and thereafter was associated 
with an insurance agency in Baton until January of the following year, when he 
an office and engaged in the practice of his profession.  He has made his 
impress as a resourceful trial lawyer and well fortified counselor, and his 
practice is constantly expanding in scope and importance.

When Mr. Watson entered the university his financial resources were at the 
lowest ebb, and to finance himself in the continuing of his law studies he 
worked during afternoons of his freshman year in a shoe store in Baton Rouge.  
For this service he received five dollars a week, and on this he contrived to 
live and pay incidental expenses.  In his sophomore year he took charge of the 
shoe department of the Welsh & Levy Clothing Company, at a salary of forty-five 
dollars a month, with work in the afternoons only.  He was in his freshman year 
in the law department of the university when the nation became involved in the 
World war, and less than a month later he volunteered for military service and 
was sent to the First Officers Training Camp at Fort Logan H. Roots, near 
Little Rock, Arkansas.  On the 13th of the following August he was there 
commissioned a second lieutenant in the quartermaster corps, and was soon 
assigned to a labor battalion of negro troops at Camp Pike, that state.  On the 
4th of December, 1917, at Hoboken, New Jersey, he embarked for overseas 
service.  He landed at Brest, France, on the 21st of that month, and on 
Christmas day he arrived at Bassens, six miles distant from the City of 
Bordeaux.  The next day he took his company out to work on railroad 
construction, and he continued to be stationed at Bassens until midsummer in 
1918.  In this interval he was engage(l in the construction of all railroad 
yards, courthouses, cold-storage plants, docks, etc., built by the American 
Expeditionary Forces in that district.  Thereafter he was engaged in railroad 
construction in the vicinity of Talmont, at the mouth of the Girond River, 
until November 11, 1918, which was marked by the signing of the now historic 
armistice.  He remained at Talmont, engaged in general work in connection with 
the closing of the service of that camp, until January, 1919, and thereafter 
was in charge of road repairing, with headquarters at Bassens, until the 1st of 
the following March, when he was detached from his company and sent to the City 
of Paris, where for four months he had the privilege of attending the famed 
Sarbonne University.  He arrived in the Port of New York City July 31, 1919, 
and on the 25th of the following mouth he received his honorable discharge at 
Camp Pike, Arkansas.

Mr. Watson is an ardent advocate of the principles of the democratic party, and 
has been an active worker in its ranks. By a very few votes in the primary 
election of January 15, 1924, he was defeated for nomination for representative 
in the Louisiana Legislature.  He and his wife are zealous members of the First 
Baptist Church of Baton Rouge, and he is superintendent of one of its Sunday-
School departments.  His basic Masonic affiliation is with Baton Rouge Lodge 
No. 372, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, of which he is senior warden (1925), 
and in the Scottish Rite of the great fraternity he has received the thirty-
second Degree in the Consistory at New Orleans, where also he k a Noble of 
Jerusalem Temple of the Mystic Shrine.  Mr. Watson is an active member of the 
Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce, and his property holdings in the capital city 
include his modern home place at the corner of Drehr Avenue and Oleander 
Street, in the attractive district known as Drehr Place.

December 17, 192l, marked the marriage of Mr. Watson and Miss Janie L. Palmer, 
daughter of James and Mattie (Rogillio) Palmer, the former of whom died in 
Baton Rouge, where the widow now resides with her daughter.  Mr. and Mrs. 
Watson are popular factors in the social life of their home city.

Additional Comments:
A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), pp. 80-82, by Henry E. Chambers.  Published 
by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/eastbatonrouge/bios/watson110gbs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/lafiles/

File size: 8.5 Kb