By the end of the 19th century, Galveston was the commercial center of the State of Texas, full of banks, cotton traders, shipping companies and merchants.

There are still dreary sections of downtown, and few of the businesses and cotton traders who moved east of town have returned.

In 1840, Godfrey Barnsley, a cotton trader and businessman from Savannah, bought a 4,000-acre tract as a country retreat for his wife and children.

Born as the second son of a cotton trader, he worked in all the ranks of his father's business without completing high school.

Like his father, Tattersall was a cotton trader.

"Says the cotton traders in Memphis are pushin' down prices 'cause there's so much cotton."

Elisabeth is the daughter of Ernst D. Becker, a cotton trader, who had immigrated to Texas from Germany in 1927.

Thomas L. Jordan, who was once considered the leading individual cotton trader in the world, died Thursday at his home in the Garden District here.

Some cotton traders feared that strong winds and rain from the savage storm would reach deep into Texas.

The cancer center is named after Monroe Dunaway Anderson, a banker and cotton trader from Jackson, Tennessee.