First Gregg County Phone Company Had Connections
By Van Craddock
Claude Lacy opened Gregg County's first phone company in 1897.
"Longview is at last to have a telephone exchange," reported the Dallas Morning News in September that year. Lacy, from a prominent pioneer Longview family, operated a hardware store when he was awarded the local telephone franchise over two other bidders.
Born on a Rusk County farm in 1863, Lacy moved to Longview at age 11 with his family. Always an industrious fellow, he labored at a sawmill as a youngster. He attended Texas A&M and worked in Oklahoma for a couple of years before returning to East Texas. By 1883, at the age of 20, his parents had died and Claude was appointed guardian of his eight siblings.
The Lacy Telephone Company set up shop above Lawrence's Drug Store in downtown Longview. Claude brought a switchboard from Waco and began to build his system.
By October 1897, Lacy had erected most of the necessary poles and cross-arms "and will start to string wire immediately. He wants to have the exchange in operation in ten days," said the Longview Times-Clarion. "The telephones are of the best made and arrived today and people may soon be using the much-needed instruments."
There was much excitement when the exchange went into service that fall.
Kelly Plow Company, the town's biggest employer, got the coveted telephone No. 1. The S.C. Forman Furniture store was No. 2. Dialing No. 3 would connect callers with early physician Dr. W.D. Northcutt. The Texas and Pacific downtown depot was No. 31 while the Junction's International and Great Northern Rail depot east of town was No. 34. The fancy Mobberly Hotel was No. 43.
Fanny Lacy Scoggins and Betty Lacy Curtis were the company's first daytime operators while Claude's younger brother, Edwin, got the night shift.
"There were 120 telephone numbers in Longview then and I had to remember every one," Edwin Lacy recalled in a 1967 speech to the Gregg County Genealogical Society. The exchange shut down at 10 p.m. but was kept open later if an ill resident might need to call a physician.
The second-story exchange was reached by an open stairway, which attracted an occasional vagrant. Family members were fond of telling about the time Lacy filled a nail keg full of rocks and rolled it down the stairs, scattering several sleeping fellows.
In August 1899, the local paper reported that Lacy "has arranged to extend the Longview and Carthage telephone line from Carthage to Timpson by September.
Claude Lacy continued to expand his operation, selling his hardware business in 1901 to devote full attention to the telephone company. By August 1907, a new line was strung "to Judson ten miles and connects up ten subscribers along the road and opens up telephone communications to the most thickly settled portions adjacent to this place," said the Longview paper.
The exchange had several hundred subscribers by 1912, when Lacy sold it to the Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Company. He then organized Security State Bank and Trust Co. and was involved in lumber and oil businesses.
The man who ushered in phone service in Longview died in 1957 at the age of 94. Lacy's brother Edwin, the nighttime operator, grew up to become a prominent attorney and Gregg County judge.