Growing Up

Warren was named for his grandfather, John Warren Hunter, who was born in 1846 at Rogersville, Alabama. When John W. married Mary Ann Calhoun, he had attended less than three months of school in twenty-three years.5, 6 His wife was determined to make a teacher out of him. She taught him to read and write the beautiful, ornate Spencerian script. And soon he started a writing school while his wife worked as a teacher. John W. became so proficient in his studies that he passed the test to be a third grade teacher in the State of Arkansas. They lived in Arkansas for a while, but he wanted to go back to Texas where he had spent his childhood. They moved to Fredericksburg where he began a career as a frontier school teacher. They moved from small town to small town in the area where both he and his wife worked as teachers. Finally, he purchased the Menardville Record in 1891 and quit the schoolroom. Later he purchased the Mason Herald. Warren, his father, J. Marvin, and his grandfather, John W., all grew up accustomed to a nomadic lifestyle. Warren often said that he never attended the same school two years in a row. His father, J. Marvin, established the “Frontier Times” magazine in 1923 and later founded the Frontier Times Museum at Bandera, Texas in 1927. Most of the covers for the “Frontier Times” magazine were woodblock or linoleum block, and later, drawings, done by his son, Warren.