J. A. DRYDEN is closely identified with the new city of North Fort Worth, where he is well known as a successful business man and active as a citizen. Mr. Dryden is a native of Jackson county, Missouri, where he spent the first fourteen years of his life, and they accompanied his parents to a farm near Coffeyville, Montgomery county, Kansas, where they still live, the father being a successful farmer. Mr. Dryden is a son of Marion and Isabel (Archer) Dryden,the former of whom was born and reared in Missouri, and the mother was born in Tennessee and married in Missouri.
Reared on a farm, and educated in the country schools, Mr. Dryden followed the pursuits of farming for some years after he had attained his majority and embarked on an independent career. Leaving Coffeyville in 1896 he came to Fort Worth and engaged in the coal and wood business as a member of the firm of Mugg and Dryden. The firm conducted the fuel business in Fort Worth on a large scale, having several yards in different parts of the city, but in May, 1905, Mr. Dryden withdrew from the partnership in order to continue the same line independently in North Fort Worth, where he has had his home since 1902. To this prosperous young city he now confines his business interests, and, with a faith in its future fully justified by its present rapid growth, owns valuable real estate interests there. Public-spirited as a citizen, he has been chosen to serve as secretary of the North Fort Worth school board, and is promoting the educational welfare of his city in proportion to its progress in other lines. In 1905 funds were voted for the erection of a splendid new central and high school, and its completion will give the town one of the best institutions of the kind in this portion of the state.
Mr. Dryden and his wife, who was Miss Grace Gilmore, have two children, Allison and Mary Belle. Mr. Dryden affiliates with the Masonic and several other fraternities, and he and his wife are members of the Methodist church.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, pp. 122-123.