Doctor Mantooth
THE ALTOGA DOCTOR
[John Thomas Mantooth]
Courier Gazette, July 11, 1976, Section II
By Billy G. Thompson
Altoga was a Centennial Community this July 4th as the United States celebrated its 200th birthday.
Baptists of Scotch-Irish-French descent cleared and settled the farming hamlet 10 miles northeast of McKinney in the first decade after the Civil War that left their croplands, homes and economy in Tennessee and Georgia stripped and drained.
If Baptists were Altoga's creators, then, a part-Cherokee Christian-John Thomas Mantooth of Campbellite persuasion-is held, by many, to be Altoga's saviour.
Hundreds of sons and daughters of Altoga who have scattered to such faraway places as Dallas, Houston and beyond will tell you that Doctor Mantooth delivered Altoga from pestilence and poverty ...and them at birth... over more than 50 years of practice as a country physician-pharmacist.
John Mantooth started practicing medicine in Altoga at the turn of the century. He never quit until he was hospitalized a few weeks before death in 1953 at age 76.
Doctor Mantooth moved to Melissa in 1930, but the move didn't diminish his interest in Altoga nor lessen his care and concern for patients and friends there and in Climax, Womble, Verona, Ardath and other communities of the area.
Nor did his patients and "children" ever forget him.
The deep imprint of Doctor Mantooth on the lives of many persons who came from Altoga was best described, perhaps, by a nephew a few years ago.
"Very often," recalled the nephew, now farmer-banker, "I meet someone and in our conversation it is mentioned that they are originally from Altoga, Valdasta, Verona, Blue Ridge or the Melissa area.
"Nearly always, when they learn that I am also from the area, they ask if I am related to Doctor Mantooth.
"It is surprising how many say, "He brought me into this world."
The credit to Doctor Mantooth is always paid in boastful tones.
Doctor Mantooth always liked to muse about his first delivery-first cousin John Lacy-in 1898 when he was working for Doctor S. J. Dobbs as an apprentice in readying himself for medical school.
As was necessary, in most instances, before the turn of the century, John Mantooth went east to prepare for a career in medicine. He studied at Memphis, Tenn., Hospital and Medical College in 1898-1900, and at the University of Chattanooga College of Medicine in 1900-1902.
Upon earning his doctorate of medicine from Chattanooga, he returned to Altoga and began his practice in association with Doctor Dobbs.
The deaths of his mother and twin brothers during his boyhood are thought to have motivated John Mantooth to become a doctor.
As a boy, he liked to read and write, and took more interest in school house than did most country boys of the day.
He attended the Johnson School about two or three miles south of the Altoga townsite and the area's first educational facility- from about 1884-1894. He earned a teaching certificate from the Hawthorne College in McKinney in 1895.
The future doctor returned to Altoga to teach a year in a newly-built community school.
"He used the money he earned from teaching that year to go to medical school," recalls Mrs. Hattie Baxter, 88, a second cousin of Doctor Mantooth. Today, she resides in the Wysong Nursing Center.
When John Mantooth returned from Chattanooga, he brought home to Collin County new techniques in the practice of medicine which won him early recognition among his doctor colleagues and, more important, contributed to an immediate upgrading in the quality of life around Altoga and the longevity of its residents.
The new doctor introduced an improved and cleaner procedure in child delivery to the area of his practice.
Also, he brought home knowledge which enabled him to make early diagnosis of the symptoms of appendicitis, which, at the turn of the century, was taking a high toll in fatalities.
Doctor Mantooth stuck to the general practice of medicine throughout his career.
Even so, his expertise in spotting maladies and injuries needing major surgery drew praise from contemporary specialist of scalpel and swab. He worked closely with eminent surgeons of the area, like Drs. W. S. Wysong and J. C. Erwin of McKinney, Doctor Cantrell of Greenville and others to bring new and rapid treatment to those requiring the specialist.
Doctor Mantooth spent most of his career in an isolated area, but the locale of his practice never dented his pursuit of an endless curriculum of continuous medical education.
Altoga was a hard place to get to in the first half of the twentieth century. Not until 1953 was the village accessible by hardtop road. The rich black waxey soil in and around Altoga produced splendid cotton, corn and oats during the years of Doctor Mantooth's practice there-but then, as now, the soil produces the deepest and stickiest crops of mud to be found anywhere.
Nevertheless, Doctor Mantooth would make his way out of the mud and burgeoning practice to attend "post graduate" courses at Tulane in New Orleans and-or Baylor College of Medicine in Dallas in those years when this country was starting its climb to preeminence in medical science.
By saddle, buggy, Model T and Model A, the Altoga physician made his rounds to the sick, lame and halt for 28 years before bowing to a petition of Melissa resident in 1930 to move his office to that community which had a hardtop road and interurban line.
The move to a more concentrated area of practice expanded - rather than reduced- his service to humanity. For, Doctor Mantooth never got around to an interpretation of his Hippocrates Oath that restricted a day's work to eight hours and eliminated "house calls."
Some Altogans-there are no Altoga Exes no more than there are Texas Aggie Exes-are still alive who remember the battles that Doctor Mantooth fought against flu epidemics that struck hard at the Altoga area in 1918. He called on and treated the victims for days and weeks, seemingly, without a blink of sleep.
Even the good doctor fell victim to the 1918 siege and had to be put to bed. Fortunately, the Altoga farm girl, Georgia Ethel Cate, whom he married in 1910 had become proficient as a medical aide and soon nursed him back to health.
Ethel Mantooth was an excellent paramedic long before the world was to know the word.
John and Ethel Mantooth made a splendid medical team for the rural area of Altoga and Melissa for 44 years- until his death in 1953 on the birthday of their only child.
Aunt Ethel, "although she had no formal training, soon learned quite a bit about medicine and became a very capable assistant.
"She had a natural talent for assuring children that the shot would not hurt and at the same time, kept a firm hold on them in case it did.
"She always knew which instrument the doctor would need next and had it ready for him," nephew Ross Mantooth of Princeton recalls.
Ethel Mantooth died in 1966, thirteen years after her doctor-husband.
However, their bent for science and service to their fellowman did not go to the grave with them.
Their daughter, Mrs. George Madden of 1709 Josephine, McKinney, nee Johnnie Marie Mantooth-is a research specialist with responsibility for quality control for one of the world's largest food organizations.
The Mantooth's son-in-law, a bomber crewman from Missouri in World War II, is comptroller for the Lighthouse for the Blind organization in Dallas.
Grandson John Edward Madden, a track star during his years at McKinney High School, became a civil engineer.
Granddaughter Helen Madden Johnson this year is starting a career in teaching.
Altoga was colonized mostly by Tennesseeans and Georgians. In many instances, they knew each other as neighbors and relatives before trekking to Texas in the big post-Civil War migration to the West.
Many of the Morelands, Lacys, Lawsons, Vermillions, Dunns, Carson, Hales, Priests, Rays, Orenduffs, Watkins and others who settled in and around the Altoga crossroads came from Bradley, Cocke and James Counties in Tennessee or Catoosa County, Georgia.
Doctor Mantooth, in the late years of his life, recalled that "they were hard-working people, cooperative and considerate people." Others have identified the early Altogans with "togetherness."
The oneness of the first settlers spawned a belief that Altoga came from a Latin or Indian word for unity or unselfishness.
Another version holds that Altoga was taken from a list of Washington-approved names for the new post office that was established in the community near the turn of the century.
From the standpoint of size and activity, Altoga peaked in the 1910 - 26 era. At one time there were a dozen or more businesses - a bank, general stores, barber and blacksmith shops, a boarding house, doctors' offices and a picture show-walling the Altoga square.
Doctor Mantooth practiced from a three-room office on the southeast corner of the square, on the north side of Bear Creek and opposite a cotton gin-Altoga's first- that was built by his farmer-father Woodson Mantooth.
The north-south and east-west roads leading into and from Altoga intersected on the northeast corner of the square, as they do today. The west road took the traveler to High Point, Ardath, New Hope and McKinney. The north road led to Stiff Chapel, Squeezepenny and Melissa, while the south road ran to farms below Altoga before swinging westward to join the McKinney road briefly before splitting for Princeton. The road east led to Verona, Valdasta and Blue Ridge.
"Woods" Mantooth, who had a strong strain of Indian blood, and Lucinda Cansada Lacy were married in Bradley County Tennessee in 1873. They headed for Texas in the next year.
John Thomas Mantooth was born October 19, 1876 in the Donna Community, near today's Westminster. The mother died in Altoga in 1883; the father lived until 1922.
Woods Mantooth in 1885, took Belle Watkins for his second wife. She was the sister of John Watkins, one of John Mantooth's boyhood chums. The step-mother died in 1936.
John Watkins grew up to become an extensive landowner and successful trader and cotton ginner in the Altoga region. He and Doctor Mantooth were partners in a general store at one time and fast friends throughout their lives.
Another of Doctor Mantooth's buddies of Johnson School days was John Ray, who also became a highly successful farmer near Altoga.
John Mantooth was slender, almost skinny, in youth, but tall five feet eleven-for boys of that era. He is remembered by some as being "shy to the point of timidity" and "bookish" during his boyhood.
His adult years, however, proved such descriptiveness to have been misjudgments. "Compassion"-for his family, friends and patients-and "dedication"-to a lifetime of service to mankind-turned out to be more accurate words of evaluation.
One of John Mantooth's few flashes of intemperance in youth occurred when John Ray decided to quit school at 16 to marry Hattie Mantooth.
Young John Mantooth wasn't mad about John Ray marrying his sister, but he was angered by his school-desk sharing friend's decision to end his pursuit of a formal education.
In later years, friends of John Mantooth often said he was "a boy ahead of his time when it came to realizing the value of an education."
Friends and family also remember John Mantooth as being so intensely dedicated to the practice of medicine that he took only one vacation in his 50-plus years of doctoring. In 1928, he joined several brothers-in-law on a South Texas deer hunt, bagging a well-racked deer whose head was mounted and displayed in his Altoga and Melissa offices for several years.
The wedding and "honeymoon" of John and Ethel Mantooth was a one-day event, marked by a buggy and interurban trip to Dallas where Dr. George W. Truett, the great Baptist preacher, read them their vows in his home. The Mantooths returned to Altoga immediately after the wedding.
A young nephew of another name, however, found Doctor Mantooth an "easy one" to top to take him fishing on Sister Grove Creek, east of Altoga. Before the nephew's school days began in McKinney, the youngster was a constant companion of Doctor Mantooth on his house calls and other trips to minister to the sick. (Daughter Johnnie Marie accompanied her father on his calls for several years after the nephew started to school.)
Somehow, most of the homebound trips of Doctor Mantooth and the nephew were interrupted for an hour-or- so stop at a fishing hole where the youngster discovered Uncle Doctor was an expert at catching sun perch. Doctor Mantooth never ceased to be amazed at the rate the nephew devoured sacks of cookies that his Aunt Ethel packed for those house call-fishing hole trips.
Another of the pleasures of practicing medicine from the Altoga square in the first quarter of this century was watching and listening to the 12-to-15-piece Altoga Band. The musicians were as popular and well-received elsewhere as they were on the village square. One year they traveled all the way down to Galveston to participate in a bandfest.
Doctor Mantooth was one of the band's best fans and strongest supporters.
The band played from 1900 to 1926 and its members bore the name of almost every family in the community. Three former Altoga bandmen are still alive-Ross Moreland, Clarence Cox, a longtime and well-liked Collin County public Schools educator, and Clint Farley.
Other names on the band's rolls, from time to time, included:
Grover Priest, Charlie Dunn, Will T. Dunn, Ross Orenduff, Dave Watkins, Russell Lawson, Pryor Moreland, Luther Ray, Oren Vermillion, Walter Lacy, Wilfred Lacy, Bob Braswell and Charlie Moreland.
Prof. W. S. Smith, the beloved teacher of the Men's Bible Class at the First Baptist Church in McKinney for many years before his death, led the Altoga Band from 1900 to 1915.
Will Dunn, who headed the Altoga bank, also served as a band director. (1915 - 1926).
Turn-of-the century needs of Altogans and their remoteness from drug stores in McKinney prompted Doctor Mantooth to obtain a pharmacist license. In 1907, the Texas Board of Pharmacy issued him License Number 1953. Doctor Mantooth kept the license in effect until his death 46 years later.
Doctor Mantooth was one of Collin County's first specialists in eye care. His reputation as "a good eye doctor" spread rapidly and afar. Into the last years of practice and life, people from as far away as Frisco and Celina came to Altoga or Melissa "so Doctor Mantooth could fit them in glasses."
Doctor Mantooth, remembers a relative, would counsel young patients and friends to prepare themselves for careers of service to their fellowmen.
John Lawson, a farm boy-turned-clerk in Charlie Chafin's grocery store, was one of those who heeded "the good doctor's good advise."
Lawson, with some support from Doctor Mantooth, went to Fort Worth to train for a career in pharmacy. On earning his license, he returned to McKinney and was employed as a pharmacist for several years. Later he established his own business, Lawson's Drug Store, in Princeton and was greatly admired and respected by his counselor.
Long before spectacles and contact lens became so fashionable and helpful to those needing or desiring them-and a rewarding work, financially, for those supplying them- Doctor Mantooth encouraged the townboy nephew to train himself for a career in ophthalmology.
It didn't happen, however. Today, the nephew is an itinerant journalist.
Of all the sons of Altoga, none are remembered longer nor admired more than John Thomas Mantooth in this Bicentennial Year when Americans are calling up their heroes for the celebration.
Were he alive today, 1976 would be Doctor Mantooth's Centennial Year.
The admiration-almost reverence-for Altoga's Doctor-comes on best, perhaps, in retelling The Great Altoga Bank Robbery in 1912.
It is said that the robbers, in planning the nighttime heist, kept John and Ethel Mantooth's moves and their cottage on the south side of Bear Creek under close scrutiny to ensure that the Mantooths were not endangered if shooting occurred. The cottage was about 200 yards from the money house.
The robbery "went down," as they say on TV police shows nowadays, about 15 minutes after Doctor Mantooth returned safely to his home after a late-hours errand of mercy to an ailing Altoga family.
The robbers were never found, but years later word leaked out that the roadmen had Doctor Mantooth under surveillance from the time he left home until he was safely back.
Altogans were destined to lose their money. But the robbers weren't going to cost them their doctor on that infamous night.
[John Thomas Mantooth]
Courier Gazette, July 11, 1976, Section II
By Billy G. Thompson
Altoga was a Centennial Community this July 4th as the United States celebrated its 200th birthday.
Baptists of Scotch-Irish-French descent cleared and settled the farming hamlet 10 miles northeast of McKinney in the first decade after the Civil War that left their croplands, homes and economy in Tennessee and Georgia stripped and drained.
If Baptists were Altoga's creators, then, a part-Cherokee Christian-John Thomas Mantooth of Campbellite persuasion-is held, by many, to be Altoga's saviour.
Hundreds of sons and daughters of Altoga who have scattered to such faraway places as Dallas, Houston and beyond will tell you that Doctor Mantooth delivered Altoga from pestilence and poverty ...and them at birth... over more than 50 years of practice as a country physician-pharmacist.
John Mantooth started practicing medicine in Altoga at the turn of the century. He never quit until he was hospitalized a few weeks before death in 1953 at age 76.
Doctor Mantooth moved to Melissa in 1930, but the move didn't diminish his interest in Altoga nor lessen his care and concern for patients and friends there and in Climax, Womble, Verona, Ardath and other communities of the area.
Nor did his patients and "children" ever forget him.
The deep imprint of Doctor Mantooth on the lives of many persons who came from Altoga was best described, perhaps, by a nephew a few years ago.
"Very often," recalled the nephew, now farmer-banker, "I meet someone and in our conversation it is mentioned that they are originally from Altoga, Valdasta, Verona, Blue Ridge or the Melissa area.
"Nearly always, when they learn that I am also from the area, they ask if I am related to Doctor Mantooth.
"It is surprising how many say, "He brought me into this world."
The credit to Doctor Mantooth is always paid in boastful tones.
Doctor Mantooth always liked to muse about his first delivery-first cousin John Lacy-in 1898 when he was working for Doctor S. J. Dobbs as an apprentice in readying himself for medical school.
As was necessary, in most instances, before the turn of the century, John Mantooth went east to prepare for a career in medicine. He studied at Memphis, Tenn., Hospital and Medical College in 1898-1900, and at the University of Chattanooga College of Medicine in 1900-1902.
Upon earning his doctorate of medicine from Chattanooga, he returned to Altoga and began his practice in association with Doctor Dobbs.
The deaths of his mother and twin brothers during his boyhood are thought to have motivated John Mantooth to become a doctor.
As a boy, he liked to read and write, and took more interest in school house than did most country boys of the day.
He attended the Johnson School about two or three miles south of the Altoga townsite and the area's first educational facility- from about 1884-1894. He earned a teaching certificate from the Hawthorne College in McKinney in 1895.
The future doctor returned to Altoga to teach a year in a newly-built community school.
"He used the money he earned from teaching that year to go to medical school," recalls Mrs. Hattie Baxter, 88, a second cousin of Doctor Mantooth. Today, she resides in the Wysong Nursing Center.
When John Mantooth returned from Chattanooga, he brought home to Collin County new techniques in the practice of medicine which won him early recognition among his doctor colleagues and, more important, contributed to an immediate upgrading in the quality of life around Altoga and the longevity of its residents.
The new doctor introduced an improved and cleaner procedure in child delivery to the area of his practice.
Also, he brought home knowledge which enabled him to make early diagnosis of the symptoms of appendicitis, which, at the turn of the century, was taking a high toll in fatalities.
Doctor Mantooth stuck to the general practice of medicine throughout his career.
Even so, his expertise in spotting maladies and injuries needing major surgery drew praise from contemporary specialist of scalpel and swab. He worked closely with eminent surgeons of the area, like Drs. W. S. Wysong and J. C. Erwin of McKinney, Doctor Cantrell of Greenville and others to bring new and rapid treatment to those requiring the specialist.
Doctor Mantooth spent most of his career in an isolated area, but the locale of his practice never dented his pursuit of an endless curriculum of continuous medical education.
Altoga was a hard place to get to in the first half of the twentieth century. Not until 1953 was the village accessible by hardtop road. The rich black waxey soil in and around Altoga produced splendid cotton, corn and oats during the years of Doctor Mantooth's practice there-but then, as now, the soil produces the deepest and stickiest crops of mud to be found anywhere.
Nevertheless, Doctor Mantooth would make his way out of the mud and burgeoning practice to attend "post graduate" courses at Tulane in New Orleans and-or Baylor College of Medicine in Dallas in those years when this country was starting its climb to preeminence in medical science.
By saddle, buggy, Model T and Model A, the Altoga physician made his rounds to the sick, lame and halt for 28 years before bowing to a petition of Melissa resident in 1930 to move his office to that community which had a hardtop road and interurban line.
The move to a more concentrated area of practice expanded - rather than reduced- his service to humanity. For, Doctor Mantooth never got around to an interpretation of his Hippocrates Oath that restricted a day's work to eight hours and eliminated "house calls."
Some Altogans-there are no Altoga Exes no more than there are Texas Aggie Exes-are still alive who remember the battles that Doctor Mantooth fought against flu epidemics that struck hard at the Altoga area in 1918. He called on and treated the victims for days and weeks, seemingly, without a blink of sleep.
Even the good doctor fell victim to the 1918 siege and had to be put to bed. Fortunately, the Altoga farm girl, Georgia Ethel Cate, whom he married in 1910 had become proficient as a medical aide and soon nursed him back to health.
Ethel Mantooth was an excellent paramedic long before the world was to know the word.
John and Ethel Mantooth made a splendid medical team for the rural area of Altoga and Melissa for 44 years- until his death in 1953 on the birthday of their only child.
Aunt Ethel, "although she had no formal training, soon learned quite a bit about medicine and became a very capable assistant.
"She had a natural talent for assuring children that the shot would not hurt and at the same time, kept a firm hold on them in case it did.
"She always knew which instrument the doctor would need next and had it ready for him," nephew Ross Mantooth of Princeton recalls.
Ethel Mantooth died in 1966, thirteen years after her doctor-husband.
However, their bent for science and service to their fellowman did not go to the grave with them.
Their daughter, Mrs. George Madden of 1709 Josephine, McKinney, nee Johnnie Marie Mantooth-is a research specialist with responsibility for quality control for one of the world's largest food organizations.
The Mantooth's son-in-law, a bomber crewman from Missouri in World War II, is comptroller for the Lighthouse for the Blind organization in Dallas.
Grandson John Edward Madden, a track star during his years at McKinney High School, became a civil engineer.
Granddaughter Helen Madden Johnson this year is starting a career in teaching.
Altoga was colonized mostly by Tennesseeans and Georgians. In many instances, they knew each other as neighbors and relatives before trekking to Texas in the big post-Civil War migration to the West.
Many of the Morelands, Lacys, Lawsons, Vermillions, Dunns, Carson, Hales, Priests, Rays, Orenduffs, Watkins and others who settled in and around the Altoga crossroads came from Bradley, Cocke and James Counties in Tennessee or Catoosa County, Georgia.
Doctor Mantooth, in the late years of his life, recalled that "they were hard-working people, cooperative and considerate people." Others have identified the early Altogans with "togetherness."
The oneness of the first settlers spawned a belief that Altoga came from a Latin or Indian word for unity or unselfishness.
Another version holds that Altoga was taken from a list of Washington-approved names for the new post office that was established in the community near the turn of the century.
From the standpoint of size and activity, Altoga peaked in the 1910 - 26 era. At one time there were a dozen or more businesses - a bank, general stores, barber and blacksmith shops, a boarding house, doctors' offices and a picture show-walling the Altoga square.
Doctor Mantooth practiced from a three-room office on the southeast corner of the square, on the north side of Bear Creek and opposite a cotton gin-Altoga's first- that was built by his farmer-father Woodson Mantooth.
The north-south and east-west roads leading into and from Altoga intersected on the northeast corner of the square, as they do today. The west road took the traveler to High Point, Ardath, New Hope and McKinney. The north road led to Stiff Chapel, Squeezepenny and Melissa, while the south road ran to farms below Altoga before swinging westward to join the McKinney road briefly before splitting for Princeton. The road east led to Verona, Valdasta and Blue Ridge.
"Woods" Mantooth, who had a strong strain of Indian blood, and Lucinda Cansada Lacy were married in Bradley County Tennessee in 1873. They headed for Texas in the next year.
John Thomas Mantooth was born October 19, 1876 in the Donna Community, near today's Westminster. The mother died in Altoga in 1883; the father lived until 1922.
Woods Mantooth in 1885, took Belle Watkins for his second wife. She was the sister of John Watkins, one of John Mantooth's boyhood chums. The step-mother died in 1936.
John Watkins grew up to become an extensive landowner and successful trader and cotton ginner in the Altoga region. He and Doctor Mantooth were partners in a general store at one time and fast friends throughout their lives.
Another of Doctor Mantooth's buddies of Johnson School days was John Ray, who also became a highly successful farmer near Altoga.
John Mantooth was slender, almost skinny, in youth, but tall five feet eleven-for boys of that era. He is remembered by some as being "shy to the point of timidity" and "bookish" during his boyhood.
His adult years, however, proved such descriptiveness to have been misjudgments. "Compassion"-for his family, friends and patients-and "dedication"-to a lifetime of service to mankind-turned out to be more accurate words of evaluation.
One of John Mantooth's few flashes of intemperance in youth occurred when John Ray decided to quit school at 16 to marry Hattie Mantooth.
Young John Mantooth wasn't mad about John Ray marrying his sister, but he was angered by his school-desk sharing friend's decision to end his pursuit of a formal education.
In later years, friends of John Mantooth often said he was "a boy ahead of his time when it came to realizing the value of an education."
Friends and family also remember John Mantooth as being so intensely dedicated to the practice of medicine that he took only one vacation in his 50-plus years of doctoring. In 1928, he joined several brothers-in-law on a South Texas deer hunt, bagging a well-racked deer whose head was mounted and displayed in his Altoga and Melissa offices for several years.
The wedding and "honeymoon" of John and Ethel Mantooth was a one-day event, marked by a buggy and interurban trip to Dallas where Dr. George W. Truett, the great Baptist preacher, read them their vows in his home. The Mantooths returned to Altoga immediately after the wedding.
A young nephew of another name, however, found Doctor Mantooth an "easy one" to top to take him fishing on Sister Grove Creek, east of Altoga. Before the nephew's school days began in McKinney, the youngster was a constant companion of Doctor Mantooth on his house calls and other trips to minister to the sick. (Daughter Johnnie Marie accompanied her father on his calls for several years after the nephew started to school.)
Somehow, most of the homebound trips of Doctor Mantooth and the nephew were interrupted for an hour-or- so stop at a fishing hole where the youngster discovered Uncle Doctor was an expert at catching sun perch. Doctor Mantooth never ceased to be amazed at the rate the nephew devoured sacks of cookies that his Aunt Ethel packed for those house call-fishing hole trips.
Another of the pleasures of practicing medicine from the Altoga square in the first quarter of this century was watching and listening to the 12-to-15-piece Altoga Band. The musicians were as popular and well-received elsewhere as they were on the village square. One year they traveled all the way down to Galveston to participate in a bandfest.
Doctor Mantooth was one of the band's best fans and strongest supporters.
The band played from 1900 to 1926 and its members bore the name of almost every family in the community. Three former Altoga bandmen are still alive-Ross Moreland, Clarence Cox, a longtime and well-liked Collin County public Schools educator, and Clint Farley.
Other names on the band's rolls, from time to time, included:
Grover Priest, Charlie Dunn, Will T. Dunn, Ross Orenduff, Dave Watkins, Russell Lawson, Pryor Moreland, Luther Ray, Oren Vermillion, Walter Lacy, Wilfred Lacy, Bob Braswell and Charlie Moreland.
Prof. W. S. Smith, the beloved teacher of the Men's Bible Class at the First Baptist Church in McKinney for many years before his death, led the Altoga Band from 1900 to 1915.
Will Dunn, who headed the Altoga bank, also served as a band director. (1915 - 1926).
Turn-of-the century needs of Altogans and their remoteness from drug stores in McKinney prompted Doctor Mantooth to obtain a pharmacist license. In 1907, the Texas Board of Pharmacy issued him License Number 1953. Doctor Mantooth kept the license in effect until his death 46 years later.
Doctor Mantooth was one of Collin County's first specialists in eye care. His reputation as "a good eye doctor" spread rapidly and afar. Into the last years of practice and life, people from as far away as Frisco and Celina came to Altoga or Melissa "so Doctor Mantooth could fit them in glasses."
Doctor Mantooth, remembers a relative, would counsel young patients and friends to prepare themselves for careers of service to their fellowmen.
John Lawson, a farm boy-turned-clerk in Charlie Chafin's grocery store, was one of those who heeded "the good doctor's good advise."
Lawson, with some support from Doctor Mantooth, went to Fort Worth to train for a career in pharmacy. On earning his license, he returned to McKinney and was employed as a pharmacist for several years. Later he established his own business, Lawson's Drug Store, in Princeton and was greatly admired and respected by his counselor.
Long before spectacles and contact lens became so fashionable and helpful to those needing or desiring them-and a rewarding work, financially, for those supplying them- Doctor Mantooth encouraged the townboy nephew to train himself for a career in ophthalmology.
It didn't happen, however. Today, the nephew is an itinerant journalist.
Of all the sons of Altoga, none are remembered longer nor admired more than John Thomas Mantooth in this Bicentennial Year when Americans are calling up their heroes for the celebration.
Were he alive today, 1976 would be Doctor Mantooth's Centennial Year.
The admiration-almost reverence-for Altoga's Doctor-comes on best, perhaps, in retelling The Great Altoga Bank Robbery in 1912.
It is said that the robbers, in planning the nighttime heist, kept John and Ethel Mantooth's moves and their cottage on the south side of Bear Creek under close scrutiny to ensure that the Mantooths were not endangered if shooting occurred. The cottage was about 200 yards from the money house.
The robbery "went down," as they say on TV police shows nowadays, about 15 minutes after Doctor Mantooth returned safely to his home after a late-hours errand of mercy to an ailing Altoga family.
The robbers were never found, but years later word leaked out that the roadmen had Doctor Mantooth under surveillance from the time he left home until he was safely back.
Altogans were destined to lose their money. But the robbers weren't going to cost them their doctor on that infamous night.
