By Tracy Gupton
He was born in West Virginia and was a resident of West Columbia at the end of his life. Dr. Robert Louis Queen, a local optometrist for many years, will be among five doctors being featured in this year’s Meet Your Ancestors program at historic Columbia Cemetery on November 2nd.
Michael McCulley is the actor who will take on the role of Dr. Queen this Saturday. The event is slated to begin at 5 p.m. at the front gates of Old Columbia Cemetery on East Jackson Street across from the Columbia Methodist Church. Former doctors interred in West Columbia’s oldest graveyard will be “brought to life,” if only for one night, when visitors walk through the cemetery to listen to five actors speak to them about the lives of doctors Queen, Weems, Loggins, Stafford and Copes.
Sandy Weems will be stationed near the burial plots of his ancestors–physicians Mason Locke Weems II, Mason Locke Weems III, Mason Locke Weems IV and Marcus Weems–while Ben Pfeiffer will be near the grave of Dr. James Wilson Copes, James Kowalik will bring Dr. John Brooks Stafford to life, Michael McCulley will take on the role of Dr. Queen and Columbia Cemetery Association Board Member Reuben Burch “Bubby” Loggins V will be acting as his father, popular veterinarian Burch Loggins. Visitors attending Saturday’s Meet Your Ancestors program will be treated to informative and entertaining talks at the five doctors’ gravesites at Old Columbia Cemetery.
Dr. Queen passed away at age 71 in a Wharton hospital in 1961. Born in Waverly, West Virginia, December 22, 1889, Robert Louis Queen and his brother, F.W. Queen, were both doctors, as was the former West Columbia optometrist’s nephew, Dr. John Queen, who was living in Texas City at the time of his uncle’s passing on February 9, 1961. Dr. F.W. Queen resided in Houston at that time.
Sherry Fullilove Gibson, great-niece of the West Columbia eye doctor, now lives in Dr. and Mrs. Queen’s house in an area of West Columbia where several of the Farmer sisters and their families resided. “They had this house built in 1939,” Gibson said. “The builder was someone named Goodson, I believe.”
Living near the former homes of Hollywood actress Kathryn Grant (and the Grandstaff family), Hall and Beth Griggs, the Harold Beal family and the Dean Laughlin family, Dr. and Mrs. Queen were within walking distance of the houses where Katie Lee Brand and Nannie Slaughter once lived with their spouses and children. Sherry Gibson’s mother was Mary Elizabeth Shackelford Fullilove, the daughter of Mary Farmer Shackelford who “used to own the Columbia Apartments that were across the street from where Prosperity Bank” in West Columbia is now. The Slaughters and Brands once owned grocery stores in downtown West Columbia.
According to his 1961 Freeport Facts obituary, Dr. Queen “came to Brazoria County in 1933 and practiced optometry in Freeport. In 1952 he moved his practice to West Columbia.” Gibson provided a photo of the Freeport Pharmacy from the time Dr. Queen had his optometry office inside the pharmacy building. Jo Frances Jones Chastain, a member of the Columbia Historical Museum Board of Directors who grew up on East Bernard Street in West Columbia, a block away from where the Queens once resided, said she remembers Dr. Queen working out of the building next door to where Flowers by Mary Lee is now on Broad Street, across the street from the museum.
Betty Douthard Blackmon, another museum board member, said that when she was in high school her mother took her to have her eyes checked at Dr. Queen’s house. Blackmon is a 1952 West Columbia High School graduate. Sherry Gibson said Dr. Queen’s office was, at one time, in the building that today sits next to the 7-11 convenience store on East Brazos Avenue in West Columbia.
Dr. Queen married Helen Henry Farmer Queen in 1933, “a member of a prominent West Columbia family,” The Facts obituary from 1961 said. When Dr. Queen was laid to rest at historic Columbia Cemetery, the pallbearers who carried his casket to his grave were Dr. John Queen of Texas City, George Shackelford of Houston, Herbert Fullilove of Angleton, Jim Lansford of Alvin and West Columbians Newton Brand, Charles Brand, Tommy Kingrea and Charles Ogilvie. Several of his pallbearers were his nephews while others were husbands of his nieces. Katie Farmer Brand was the wife of Newton Brand Sr. Coach Charles Brand and Newton Brand Jr. were the sons of the elder Newton and Katie Brand, while Jim Lansford was the husband of Charlie and Newton Jr.’s sister. Tommy Kingrea and Charlie Ogilvie were husbands of the Slaughter sisters, Nancy Slaughter Kingrea and Wilma Slaughter Ogilvie. And George Shackelford is the artist who painted the large mural depicting West Columbia history on the wall inside the front doors of the Columbia Historical Museum which used to be First Capitol Bank many years ago.
Dr. Queen’s wife Helen (pronounced Huh-lean, according to Sherry Gibson) was a West Columbia school teacher like Charlie Brand, Wilma Ogilvie and Nancy Kingrea. The 1942 Gusher yearbook, the first West Columbia school’s annual yearbook, contains a photo of Helen Queen which was signed by Mrs. Queen in the writer of this story’s mother, Verna Giesler Gupton’s copy of the 1942 Gusher. The Faculty page in the 1942 Gusher reveals that Helen Farmer Queen received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville and that she was co-sophomore sponsor and taught sophomore and junior English at West Columbia High School during the 1941-42 school year,
Sherry Gibson said that her great-aunt left the teaching profession after that year in the middle of World War II and went to work for her husband in his Freeport optometry office. “I think she retired from teaching and went to work with Uncle Bob,” Gibson remembered.
Mrs. Queen was the daughter of Robert Ruffin Farmer Sr. (1859 Fort Bend County, Texas, to 1949 West Columbia) and Katie Ophelia Dance Farmer (1863 West Columbia to 1955 West Columbia) who was a descendant of the famous Dance family that ran the Dance Brothers gun manufacturing company in East Columbia that produced rifles and pistols for the Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. The Farmer family has roots in Georgia where Helen Farmer Queen’s grandfather, Jordan Farmer, was born in Burke County in 1816. Mrs. Queen’s maternal grandparents were James Watkins Dance and Temperance Cook Dance (from Greene County, Alabama).
Sherry Gibson said she was not very old when Dr. Queen passed away in 1961. But among her memories of him were, “Uncle Bob was tall and thin framed, very sweet. I loved his Irish Terrier Bobby,” said Sherry who works as a dog groomer at her West Columbia home. “He smoked a pipe in the evenings and dabbled in the stock market.”
She said Dr. and Mrs. Queen had a river house at the mouth of the San Bernard River. “He and Teeny (Helen) loved spending weekends there.”
Dr. Queen’s widow passed away at the age of 94 in Angleton in 1993. There are many members of the Farmer, Dance, Shackelford, Kingrea, Slaughter and Brand families interred at historic Columbia Cemetery where Michael McCulley will be speaking to visitors to the Meet Your Ancestors event Saturday evening as if he was Dr. Robert Louis “Bob” Queen stepping out of the grave to greet those attending the program. The event is free, and everyone is encouraged to drop by Columbia Cemetery Saturday beginning at 5 p.m. for this year’s Meet Your Ancestors which is co-sponsored by the Columbia Historical Museum and Columbia Cemetery Association.
