Thomas D. "T. D." Wardell
Former Mayor of El Paso
Member of the First City Council of El Paso/Derby
Hardware Merchant 1888 - 1931

Thomas D. "T. D." Wardell
Former Mayor of El Paso
Member of the First City Council of El Paso/Derby
Hardware Merchant 1888 - 1931

Term as Mayor
1917 - 1921

Term as El Paso City Council Member At Large
Jun. 1903 - Apr. 1905

Thomas D. Wardell came to El Paso around 1878 as a young man at age 20. Like many other people who arrived during El Paso’s early years, he came from Tuscarawas Township, Ohio, the former home of El Paso co-founder, J.H. Minnich, who promoted the new town heavily to residents of his previous home state.

Being young and single, T.D. Wardell was probably in search of a place to make his fortune, as he is found in the 1880 U.S. census living in Leadville, Colorado, a hot-spot due to its active mining. But his occupation is listed as a farmer in the census instead of a miner, while apparently living in a boarding house with other young men, some of whom did work in the mines. And, like most of those hoping to strike it rich in Colorado, Wardell didn’t stay long.

T.D. Wardell was back in Rockford Township, Kansas, by 1885, where he had married Carrie Moon and they had a one-year-old son. Carrie was the daughter of one of Sedgwick County’s early settlers, Arnold Moon, who preempted his quarter-section farm in 1871, three miles east of the new town of El Paso. Unfortunately, Carrie died a few months after the census was taken in 1885. Wardell remarried two years later, to Carrie’s older sister, Hester Moon, who had also been married previously.

Click here to read more about T. D. Wardell by the Derby Historical Society and Museum.

(Image is a slide created in 1969 of an original photo)

Derby Historical Museum