Source: A History of Central and Western Texas, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago and New York, 1911, Volume 1, Pages 354-355.

C.A. Doose, as a banker, capitalist and as a public-spirited promoter of local enterprises, has attained a distinguished place among the men of affairs in central Texas. Although born at Hallettsville, in Levaca county, February 4, 1875, he came with his parents to Runnels county in 1884, two years before the town of Ballinger was started and two years before a railroad had entered the county. he was only nine years old at that time, and he is practically a product of Runnels county, for he was reared here, and since his early youth he has been a hard and incessant worker for its interests and upbuilding.

Retracing to the days when Runnels county was a commercial non-entity and given up to the cattle and ranch business, the building of the Santa Fe Railroad, the organization of Runnels county with "old Runnels" as the county seat thereto, there gradually rose upon the scene an aggressive real estate and land dealer, with modern ideas and straightforward methods. Having been taught his primary lessons in the real estate and land business from early boyhood, C.A. Doose took the initiative and was the originator of the scheme in western Texas, to buy up cattle ranches or large tracts of land, subdividing them into small farms and colonizing them. With a full knowledge of the future possibilities of the great West Texas country, he directed the greater part of his attention to people in the older settled parts of Texas, Mr. Doose's eminently correct judgement yet simple idea being that Texans are always Texans seasoned to the climate, adapted to the modes of linving, farming and productions. How wise and well he reasoned is best told in the story of his future successes.

As noted above his principal field of effort has been in connection with the opening up of the old cattle ranches and subdividing them and colonizing them with intelligent farmers for agricultural purposes. Within the last few years Runnels county has become noted far and wide for the richness and extent of her agricultural products. This culminated in 1908 with wagon receipts of over fifty thousand bales of cotton in the city of Ballinger alone. It should be said, as a credit to Mr. Doose that these splendid results are due in large part to his constant energy in promoting immigration to Runnels county to occupy the lands he had subdivided. Merely getting people to the county, however, would not hav ebeen so beneficent in itself had he not backed this with financing and encouraging his customers in every possible way. A great majority of the farms he sold on a very low initial payment, aloowing the balance to be paid through a number of years, and many of the farmers of exceedingly small resources that he started in this manner are now financially independent. As the original colonization missionary of western Texas, Mr. Doose has trasacted some of the largest as well as some of the most attractive propositions in the history of West Texas, one deal alone involving one hundred and twenty thousand dollars and another one hundred and ten thousand, and all these have worked to the good of the country and its people. C.A. Doose and Company's magnificient twelve thousand dollar office building is situated on the corner of Hutchings avenue and Seventh street, and is quite in contrast to the "shack" in which Mr. Doose began business in 1895, and which was located on Eighth street. The abstract department is an important feature of the business, and its facilities for furnishing corrrect and accurate abstracts on short notice are unexcelled.

Mr. Doose is thoroughly familiar with all the movements of progress in Ballinger. He was one of the promoters and aided in financing the Ballinger end of the Abilene and Southern Railroad, which was completed into this city from Abilene in 1909, his efforts therewith being all the more commendable from the fact that they were expended during the hard months following the panic of October 1907, and he has succeeded in a remarkably short time in giving Ballinger what she has long needed, another railroad outlet. He was one of the organizers in 1903 of the Citizens' National Bank. He was made the president of the First National Bank in January of 1905, and these two banks, on the 1st of August, 1909, were consolidated, retaining the name of the First National Bank, of which Mr. Doose was president until January, 1910, at which time he resigned in order that he might give his undivided attention to his extensive real estate business which he has established in the past twenty years. This consolidation made one of the strongest and soundest financial institutions in western Texas. It has a capital stock of two hundred thousand dollars, with surplus and profits exceeding fifty thousand dollars. Mr. Doose is als a stockholder in the Higginbotham-Currie Mercantile Company, and he is vice president and a director of the locat Business Men's League.

His wife was, before marriage, Emma Richardson, born in McLennan county, Texas, and their children are Collis P., Marguerite, and C.A. Doose Jr. The family worship in the Cumberland Presbyterian church.