Nov 17, 2016 - Sale 2432

Sale 2432 - Lot 308

Price Realized: $ 406
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(TEXAS.) Archive of H.T. Ponsford & Sons, building contractors in El Paso. Several thousand pages (1.8 linear feet) in 2 boxes; condition varies from moderate wear to poor. Vp, 1905-46, bulk 1913-42
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Henry Thomas Ponsford (1866-1942) was a native of Canada who emigrated with his wife and children to El Paso, TX in 1897. He became one of the city's leading building contractors during a period of rapid growth and commercial development, eventually taking his 5 sons into partnership as H.T. Ponsford & Sons by the 1920s. They built schools, apartment buildings, gas stations, and more in the El Paso region, including nearby parts of Arizona and New Mexico. They also acquired and managed rental properties.
The collection includes approximately 150 building contracts, 2 thick folders of correspondence, an accident report from a boy killed by a Ponsford truck in 1915, lists of apartment tenants, inventories of a drugstore, apprenticeship papers, a 1912 notice regarding union wage scale, and numerous other receipts, deeds, memoranda, and legal documents. Among the highlights are a 1921 land document signed by businessman Alberto Madero (uncle of the progressive Mexican president Francisco Madero); a 1940 deposition signed by former mayor Tom Lea Jr. (father of the artist) as notary public; and a 1905 deed signed by Clarence S. Pickrell, owner of the Elite Confectionary store which became a favorite haunt of Pancho Villa.