Longview’s fourth mayor, Charles Whitney Booth, was one of the directors of the International & Great Northern Railroad’s offices here for 20 years.
Booth, a native of Mississippi, was one of the civic leaders who persuaded another Mississippian, F.M. Marschalk, to come to Longview with the Clarion newspaper.
Son of the Rev. Horace M. and Emily Whitney Booth, the mayor and his wife, the former Eudora Carolina Gordon, were active in the Methodist church.
He often recalled his Mississippi heritage, which included such prominent ancestors as revolutionary soldier John Booth, a pioneer settler, and James Rex Whitney, who served in the navy with John Paul Jones, before moving south.
The railroad, now the Missouri-Pacific, transferred Booth and his family to Houston shortly before the turn of the century.