Nicholas Henry Darnell (1807-1885)

    Nicholas Henry Darnell, legislator and soldier, was born in Williamson County, Tennessee, on April 20, 1807, the youngest child of Nicholas and Nannie (Flewellen) Darnell. He was reared by his grandfather, William Flewellen. As candidate for the Tennessee legislature in 1835, Darnell was defeated by only eight votes. He was elected without opposition in 1837 but resigned in 1838 to move to Texas. He settled at San Augustine and was elected from that county to the Sixth and Seventh congresses. On November 24, 1842, he was elected speaker of the House. He was a member of the Convention of 1845 and ran against Albert C. Horton for lieutenant governor that year. When the ballots were canvassed, Darnell was shown to be the winner by a few votes, but he declined to take the oath of office until all the votes had been returned. Horton was elected.

    Darnell moved to Dallas in 1858. He was speaker of the House in the Ninth Legislature but resigned in 1862 to enter the Confederate Army as colonel of the Eighteenth Texas Cavalry. The flag of the regiment, made at his home, was placed in the Capitol at Austin. Darnell was assistant doorkeeper of the House of Representatives of the Fourteenth Legislature, 1874-75. He represented Dallas, Tarrant, and Ellis counties at the Constitutional Convention of 1875 and returned to the House of Representatives of the Fifteenth Legislature in 1876 as the member from Tarrant County. He served as doorkeeper and assistant doorkeeper, respectively, in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth legislatures. Darnell helped to organize the Masonic lodge at San Augustine and held all offices of the Grand Lodge of Texas, including most worshipful grand master in 1844. He and his wife, the former Isabella Cozart, had seven children. Darnell died at Fort Worth in July 1885 and was buried in the Masonic Cemetery at Dallas. Source

Masonic Section 

Pioneer Park 

Dallas

32° 77.768, -096° 80.062

 

John Austin Wharton (1806-1838)

    John Austin Wharton, soldier and statesman, son of William and Judith (Harris) Wharton, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in April 1806, left an orphan in 1816, and reared by an uncle, Jesse Wharton, who helped him obtain a classical education. He later studied law and was admitted to the bar in Nashville before he was twenty-one. In 1830 he began legal practice in New Orleans. Though some historians have suggested that he accompanied his brother, William H. Wharton, to Texas in 1829, he probably did not arrive until 1833. Shortly after his arrival, Wharton was embroiled with the Austin family in a feud that eventually led to a duel between him and William T. Austin. Wharton was shot in the right wrist and never fully regained the use of his hand. 

    Around the same time, he participated in the establishment of the first Masonic lodge in Texas. Wharton was an early activist in the movement for Texas independence. He attended the assembly in Columbia that preceded the Consultation and was appointed to the Committee of Vigilance, Correspondence, and Safety of the Department of Brazoria. As a member of this committee, Wharton corresponded with political leaders throughout Texas to consolidate opposition to the Centralist government in Mexico City. At the Consultation in San Felipe in the fall of 1835, he advocated immediate independence from Mexico and was appointed chairman of the committee to list grievances and explain the call to arms. He later served as a member of the General Council of the provisional government. 

    On December 8, 1835, Sam Houston appointed Wharton as Texas agent to New Orleans to procure supplies for the army. Wharton also served as adjutant general on Houston's staff and was responsible for bringing the Twin Sisters to the army. Secretary of War Thomas J. Rusk later recognized Wharton for bravery during the battle of San Jacinto. After the Texas Revolution Wharton attempted to gain the release of his brother and other Texans captured on the naval vessel Independence and imprisoned in Matamoros. Upon his arrival in Mexico, however, he too was imprisoned. The brothers soon escaped and returned to Texas. John served briefly as the secretary of war until October 1836, when he left the position to become a representative from Brazoria in the First Congress of the Republic. He returned to Houston after completion of his term in office and for two years practiced law with Elisha M. Pease and John Woods Harris. Wharton left the partnership to serve in the Third Congress. During this term in the House he acted as chairman of the committee on education but fell ill with fever and had to leave the position. He died on December 17, 1838, and was buried with military and Masonic rites. David G. Burnet, who delivered the funeral oration, described Wharton as "the keenest blade of San Jacinto". Source

Founders Memorial Park
Houston

29° 45.453, -095° 22.753

Mary Carson Kidd (1876-1951)

    Mary Carson, soprano, was born Mary Carson Kidd in Millican, Texas, likely in the late 1800s. She was the daughter of George Kidd and Katherine Bledsoe (Aldridge), who were both trained musicians and singers. She grew up in Houston, and exhibited promising vocal skills at a very early age and performed excerpts from operas with her brothers for neighborhood children. She received formal training in New York and the New England Conservatory before traveling abroad to study voice in Milan and Florence. Her teachers included Isadore Vraggiotti, Rafaele del Ponte, and Adolgesa Moffi. She made her debut in Italy in 1912 as Amina in La Sonnambula. She would go on to sing in some thirty operas in Italian, German, French, and English. These included the roles of Gilda in Rigoletto, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and Norina in Don Pasquale. She was highly praised for her pure soaring soprano and vocal stamina, even performing Il barbiere de Siviglia twice in one day. In Berlin, composer Richard Strauss often played as her accompanist. At some point during her European performances she dropped her surname, Kidd, the subject of various puns, and adopted the stage name of Mary Carson. She also performed in many cities across the United States and was a member of the Century Opera Company.

    In the 1910s she became a featured recording artist of popular songs and ballads for Thomas Edison’s Blue Amberol and Diamond Disc labels. Her rendition of Oh Dry Those Tears in 1912 was an early favorite, along with Kiss Waltz, released in 1913. Kiss Waltz remained a popular choice in the Edison catalog throughout the 1920s. She also recorded under the name of Kathleen Kingston. In 1917 Carson sued Edison over the company’s refusal to pay her when she was not booked with its phonograph dealers on its Tone Test circuit. The company had also forbidden her to work for any other employer, thereby depriving her of making a living. Carson won her suit. By the late 1920s and early 1930s Mary Carson worked as a music teacher in Houston. She was a member of the First Presbyterian Church. She lived in Houston until her death on August 21, 1951. She was buried in Glenwood Cemetery. Throughout her life she received many accolades for her beautiful singing voice, but Carson commented that perhaps the best compliment came from a small boy in Devonshire, England, who likened her singing to "a thrush on the ground" and "a lark in the sky." Source 

West Avenue Section
Glenwood Cemetery
Houston

29° 46.008, -095° 23.258

Thomas Watt Gregory (1861-1933)

    Thomas Gregory, politician and United States attorney general, son of Francis Robert and Mary Cornelia (Watt) Gregory, was born at Crawfordsville, Mississippi, on November 6, 1861. His father was killed in the Civil War, and his mother taught school and took in boarders to support and educate her only surviving child. After graduating in 1883 from Southwestern Presbyterian University at Clarksville, Tennessee, and attending the University of Virginia for one year, Gregory entered the University of Texas in 1884 and graduated a year later with a degree in law. For the remainder of his life he championed UT. He served on the board of regents from 1899 to 1907, headed the Ex-Students' Association from 1926 to 1928, and organized a fund-raising campaign that resulted in the construction of four university buildings, including a men's gymnasium that was named in his honor. He also served as a trustee for Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Sherman.

    After practicing law in Austin for fifteen years, Gregory formed a partnership with Robert L. Batts in 1900; the two added a third partner, Victor L. Brooks, in 1908. Gregory's success as a lawyer provided him with an entry into politics. From 1891 to 1894 he was an assistant city attorney of Austin. Although he declined appointments as an assistant state attorney general in 1892 and as a state judge in 1896, his political involvement deepened. While embracing the progressive rhetoric of the early twentieth century with his condemnations of "plutocratic power," "predatory wealth," and "the greed of the party spoilsmen," Gregory participated in Col. Edward M. House's essentially conservative Democratic coalition. He established his credentials as a progressive reformer with his attacks against Senator Joseph Weldon Bailey, the symbol of political corruption in the eyes of Texas progressives, and with his service as a special prosecutor for the state in a series of antitrust suits, including the famous Waters-Pierce Case. 

    In 1911-12 Gregory joined other Texas reformers and erstwhile conservatives like Colonel House in promoting the presidential candidacy of Woodrow Wilson. The important contributions of the Texas delegation to Wilson's victory at the 1912 Democratic national convention and House's growing influence upon Wilson led to appointments for Gregory in the new Democratic administration. He was named a special assistant to the United States attorney general to conduct antitrust litigation against the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in 1913, and in 1914 he became attorney general. In 1916 President Wilson wanted to appoint Gregory to the United States Supreme Court, but the attorney general declined the offer because of his impaired hearing, his eagerness to participate in Wilson's reelection campaign, and his belief that he lacked the necessary temperament to be a judge. 

    Despite a continuing commitment to progressive reform, Gregory's performance as attorney general provoked enormous controversy because of his collaboration with postmaster general Albert S. Burleson and others in orchestrating a campaign to crush domestic dissent during World War I. Gregory helped frame the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which compromised the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and press, and lobbied for their passage. He encouraged extralegal surveillance by the American Protective League and directed the federal prosecutions of more than 2,000 opponents of the war. 

    After resigning his position as attorney general on March 4, 1919, he played a brief and limited role at the Paris Peace Conference and then served on Wilson's Second Industrial Commission in 1919–20, studying the social effects of American industrial development. He also resumed his private law practice, initially in Washington, D.C., where he formed a partnership with a former Justice Department colleague, G. Carroll Todd, and later in Houston, where he lived from 1924 until his death. During the final years of his life Gregory remained active in Democratic politics at both the state and national levels, and he campaigned for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. During a trip to New York to confer with Roosevelt, Gregory contracted pneumonia and died, on February 26, 1933. Source 

Section 3

Oakwood Cemetery

Austin

30° 16.717, -097° 43.596