HON. GUILFORD P. WEBB, county judge of Grayson county in his second term of service, for the past fifteen years a representative of the legal profession, most of the time as a successful lawyer in Grayson county, is a native son of the Lone Star state and was born in Mantua, Collin county, March 7, 1861. His parents were W. H. and Jemima A. (Spearman) Webb, and his father is a Missourian by birth and is now a resident of Coleman county, this state. He served throughout the Civil war as a Confederate soldier, and his lifelong occupation has been farming and stock-raising, in which he is still engaged. Judge Webb’s mother was born in Tennessee, and came to Texas in 1854, being married to W. H. Webb in Grayson county, where for several years previous she had been engaged in teaching. She died at the old home in this county in 1874, and one of her family of children four are still living. Guilford being the only son.
Judge Webb was reared to manhood on the parental farm in Grayson county, where he also gained his preliminary education. He was educated at Savoy College in Fannin county, having completed his education from that well known institution in 1883, and then for the following five years was engaged in teaching school. With a berth in the legal profession as the goal of his ambition, he became a law student under the tutorship of Captain Jim Woods, the well known Sherman jurist, and was admitted to the bar in 1889. Since that year his time and talents have been fully drawn upon either in private practice or in the duties of public office. The first four years of his practice were passed in western Texas, and since then he has had his office in Sherman.
During his career as a teacher in this county he was appointed the first superintendent of public instruction in Grayson county, just after the adoption of the law authorizing that office. In 1896 he was elected city attorney of Sherman, and filled that office four years. In 1902 he became candidate for the county judgeship and was chosen that year and re-elected in 1904, this being an office for which his broad experience with men and his judicial mind well fit him.
Judge Webb has been interested in practical and theoretical politics ever since attaining manhood, and for the greater part of his active career has been a worker for the cause of good government and progressive local and national policies. While a resident of Coleman county he served as county chairman of the executive committee, and in that capacity and as a stanch believer in conservative Democracy he assisted in defeating the strong Populist movement in western Texas. For a number of years he has been a regular campaign speaker for the Democracy in state and national politics, and his tract, his personality, his sincere convictions, and his persuasive ability make him both popular and influential in this cause.
Judge Webb is a member of the Masonic fraternity, is affiliated also with the Woodmen of the World and the Ancient Order of United Workmen, and his family are members of the Christian church. He has been married twice. In 1885 he married Miss Eugenia Brooks, who died in 1896 leaving three children, Vida, Spearman and Charles, the last named having died in February, 1904. Judge Webb married his present estimable wife in 1897. She was Miss Ida T. Brooks, a sister of his first wife.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. I, p. 557.