Joseph Alfred Woolfolk

Joseph Alfred Woolfolk, lawyer, was born on April 19, 1836, in Meade County, Kentucky, the son of John F. and Mahala A. (Harris) Woolfolk. He attended St. Mary's College near Lebanon, Kentucky, and graduated from the University of Missouri and in 1858 from the law school of the University of Louisville; the same year he came to Texas and settled in the frontier town of Belknap, where he practiced law. He was subsequently elected Young county clerk and served until December 1861.

He resigned to join a ranger company with headquarters at Belknap, and during the Civil War he served the Confederacy as a colonel in Tennessee, where he was wounded and later captured. After the war he returned to Louisville, where he worked in the law office of his uncle. There he married Elizabeth J. Lewis on February 9, 1865; they were the parents of nine children, one of whom was named after the pioneer cowman Charles Goodnight, a friend of Woolfolk's.

Woolfolk returned to Texas in 1867, went into the cattle business in Weatherford, and also maintained his law practice. His family joined him the following year. Their home was the first brick residence in Weatherford. In 1871 Woolfolk was one of the two lawyers appointed to defend the Kiowa chiefs Satanta and Big Tree, who were charged with murder in connection with the Warren Wagontrain Raid; the case was one of the most sensational cases tried in Texas. Although Woolfolk was commended for his effort, the Indian defendants were convicted.

Woolfolk returned to Young County and practiced law; he held several positions in the county before he retired to his farm near Newcastle. He died on May 23, 1919, and was buried in the Woolfolk Cemetery one mile northwest of Fort Belknap.