CowboyBootsDB

M.L. Leddy

Historic Master
c. 1922-1957·Brady / Fort Worth, TX

M.L. Leddy

Did you know?

Martin Luther Leddy (1896-1957) founded one of Texas' longest-running custom boot and saddle operations. M.L. Leddy's has been in continuous family ownership since 1922 and remains one of the largest custom bootmakers in the state.

Biography

Martin Luther Leddy was born on April 1, 1896. He grew up on his family's cotton farm but left in 1918, during a drought, and took work repairing boots and saddles at a shop in Brady, Texas. By 1922 he had purchased that shop and opened it as his own operation, with help from his eight brothers, who worked in the business in various capacities over the years.

What set Leddy apart early on was a systematic approach to fit. He developed a ledger system using large leather-bound books in which tracings of each customer's feet, arch measurements, instep dimensions, and boot specifications were faithfully recorded. Those ledgers — dating to the 1920s in San Angelo and 1941 in Fort Worth — are still in use today, and each pair of boots is marked with a unique code referencing the customer's ledger and page number. According to Texas Highways, the smallest boot recorded in the ledgers is a size 2 and the largest a size 22.

By 1936, demand had outgrown Brady, and Leddy moved the operation to San Angelo. Five years later, in 1941, a second location opened in the Fort Worth Stockyards, where it continues to operate. M.L. Leddy died on July 20, 1957.

In the early 1950s, M.L.'s sons Dale and Hollis, along with his son-in-law Jim Franklin, purchased the business. By 1986, M.L.'s grandson Wilson Franklin had taken over ownership. The company is now in its fourth generation of family leadership, with two of M.L.'s great-grandchildren working in the business.

Production and Recognition

The Texas Trail of Fame, which inducted Leddy with a bronze marker in the Fort Worth Stockyards, notes that nearly half a million pairs of cowboy boots and over 25,000 saddles have carried the M.L. Leddy brand — all handmade in Texas.

In December 2025, the New York Times named M.L. Leddy's one of the 50 best clothing stores in America, citing the Fort Worth Stockyards location and its range of handmade boots in leathers from calf to alligator.

Why He Matters

  • Leddy built one of the oldest and largest custom bootmaking operations in Texas, and it has remained family-owned for over a century.
  • His ledger system for recording customer measurements set a standard for custom fit that the shop still follows today.
  • The Fort Worth Stockyards location, open since 1941, is one of the most recognized Western retail destinations in the country.
  • The business demonstrates that a craft-first, family-run operation can scale without abandoning handmade production.

Sources