Madison Guess Whitaker (1811-1893)

    Madison G. Whitaker, veteran of the battle of San Jacinto and state senator, was born on April 4, 1811, in Lincoln County, Tennessee, the son of John and Nancy (Guest or Guess) Whitaker. He grew up in Lincoln County. In 1835 he arrived in Nacogdoches, Texas, where his half-brother, William Whitaker, had recently moved. A man named Whitaker, probably Madison, was chosen along with Solomon R. Peck to hold an election on October 1, 1835, to select delegates to the Consultation at San Felipe de Austin. Madison probably enlisted as a sergeant in the Nacogdoches company commanded by Capt. Thomas J. Rusk in October 1835 and marched with it to San Antonio de Bexar. The General Council of the provisional government elected him second lieutenant of the revolutionary army on November 28, 1835, but he declined the commission. Instead, he enlisted about March 6, 1836, as a private in the Nacogdoches Volunteer Company, first commanded by Capt. Leander Smith and then by Capt. Hayden S. Arnold, this being the first company of volunteers in the second regiment under Col. Sidney Sherman. Whitaker fought at the battle of San Jacinto and was discharged on June 6, 1836. He appears as number thirty-three in the painting The Surrender of Santa Anna by William H. Huddle, which hangs in the Capitol in Austin. Whitaker was then briefly a captain in the Texas Rangers. Some sources say that he served under Gen. Kelsey H. Douglass in the Cherokee War of 1839. Whitaker was elected senator to the Fifth and Sixth Texas legislatures, 1853-56, representing District Thirteen, Nacogdoches and Angelina counties. He was a longtime member of the board of trustees of Nacogdoches University, serving as treasurer, vice president, and president. He helped to found the rural Liberty School, north of Nacogdoches, in 1836. Whitaker became a Mason about 1839 and a member of Milam Lodge No. 2 of Nacogdoches. He was also a longtime member of the Texas Veterans Association, serving as both first and second vice president and as supervisor of the Nacogdoches district. He was a Baptist. He married Henrietta M. Fitts on August 25, 1841, in Nacogdoches County, and they became the parents of eight children. He died on January 23, 1893, in Nacogdoches County and was buried in Old North Church Cemetery north of Nacogdoches.

Old North Church Cemetery
Nacogdoches

COORDINATES

31° 40.039, -094° 39.476

Joseph Eve (1784-1843)

    Joseph Eve, Kentucky legislator, judge, and chargé d'affaires of the United States to the Republic of Texas, was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, on July 17, 1784. By 1807 he had moved to Kentucky, where he received a grant of 300 acres on Spruce Creek in Knox County in 1808. Over the next fifteen years he acquired additional grants in Knox, Clay, Livingston, and Whitley counties. On November 11, 1811, he married Betsy Withers Ballinger of Garrard County, Kentucky. Eve and his wife had no children.

    Eve was admitted to practice law in Knox County in 1807 and energetically entered county politics. He became a trustee, like his father-in-law, for the county seat of Barbourville in 1810. He also became a trustee for his church. The county elected him its representative in the Kentucky legislature in 1810, 1811, and 1815. During the War of 1812, he rose to the rank of colonel. After the war, from 1817 to 1821, he served as the Knox County state senator. In 1819 he was president of the Bank of Barbourville. From 1828 to 1836 he was a circuit judge in Kentucky. Often too generous for his own interests, Eve endorsed loans for some of his friends who went bankrupt, leaving him close to losing his own slaves and homestead.

    Eve was a supporter of Henry Clay and advocated internal improvements by both state and national governments and high protective tariffs for United States industries; he reluctantly sponsored the national bank as well. As a National Republican and member of the Kentucky electoral college in 1833, he voted for Clay. He then campaigned on behalf of the Whigs and the election of William Henry Harrison to the presidency in 1840. As a reward for his diligent efforts, Eve was appointed chargé d'affaires to the Republic of Texas on April 15, 1841.

    He greatly admired Sam Houston and sponsored the annexation of Texas. He toured Texas from Galveston to the new capital, Austin, and was favorably impressed with the productivity of the land. He was fully confident that Mexico could never reconquer Texas. Following Secretary of State Daniel Webster's instructions of June 14, 1841, Eve obtained the ratification of the boundary line surveyed by a joint commission of the Republic of Texas and the United States. Both parties agreed that the line was the Sabine River and, from near the southeast corner of what is now Panola County, the thirty-second parallel north to the Red River. Eve sought to negotiate a new commercial treaty with the Texas government, but disagreement over certain provisions of the convention prevented its acceptance by either side. Further negotiations were soon dropped with the renewal of American interest in the annexation of Texas.

    Throughout 1842 Mexican attacks increased, and Texans encouraged Eve to lay the annexation issue before his government. Eve sympathized with the Texans' plight but regarded Houston's response to the attacks, the attempted naval blockade of Mexican ports, as ineffectual. He persuaded Houston to rescind his blockade proclamation since it adversely affected United States and British attempts to end current hostilities. Fearful that financial misery would cause Texas to depend upon some stronger nation, particularly Great Britain, Eve implored President John Tyler not to lose the opportunity to annex the republic. Although willing to acquire Texas, Tyler felt the timing was not right for passing annexation in the Senate. Instead, the president continued to offer the mediation of the United States government with Mexico on behalf of Texas.

    Mediation failed, however, on September 11, 1842, when Mexican general Adrián Woll captured and held San Antonio for nine days. The Mexican incursions led Houston to remove the government from Austin to Houston, then to Washington-on-the-Brazos. While the republic had no permanent capital, Eve chose to move the legation archives to Galveston, where he could receive mail from the United States faster and where, he hoped, the sea air would help his tuberculosis.

    William S. Murphy replaced Eve on April 3, 1843, as the United States diplomat in Texas. Assistant Secretary of State Fletcher Webster, an ardent antiannexationist, took the first opportunity to recall Eve for a slight infraction of the rules-Eve had violated his private instructions by drawing an advance upon his salary. During the past winter, Eve and his wife had suffered from bouts of fever. Eve died in Galveston in mid-June 1843 and was buried there. His wife returned to their home in Barbourville, Kentucky. Source

Trinity Episcopal Cemetery
Galveston

COORDINATES

29° 17.632, -094° 48.676

George Moffit Patrick (1801-1889)

    George Moffitt Patrick, physician and soldier, was born on September 30, 1801, in Albemarle County, Virginia. In 1803 he accompanied his parents to Fayette County, Kentucky, where he received his primary education. He subsequently earned a medical degree at Transylvania University at Lexington, Kentucky. He immigrated to the Harrisburg district of the Austin colony, Texas, in January 1828 and established himself as a farmer. In 1831 he was elected second alcalde of Anahuac and in 1832 was chosen regidor. Patrick was among the volunteers under the command of Capt. William B. Travis who captured the Mexican fort and garrison at Anahuac in July 1835. He represented Liberty Municipality in the Consultation of 1835 and on November 13 signed the articles that established the provisional government of Texas. He withdrew from the Consultation due to illness in his family but served as a liaison officer between the provisional government at San Felipe and the army then besieging Bexar. On November 30, with William A. Pettus, he reported "much dissatisfaction and inquietude pervading the army" but assured the council that "if their wants are supplied - no fears can be entertained of their abandoning the siege of Bexar." On March 25, 1836, the council appointed Patrick to organize the Harrisburg County militia and instructed him to order two-thirds of the troops immediately into active duty. "At great personal expense and labor" he mustered twenty recruits into what became Capt. Moseley Baker's company of Gen. Sam Houston's army. During the Runaway Scrape, Patrick's farm Deepwater was for a time the seat of the Texas government, and as the Mexican army approached, he accompanied President David G. Burnet and his cabinet first to Morgan's Point and then to Galveston where, for a time, he served as captain of the schooner Flash. Following the battle of San Jacinto, Houston moved his army from the battlefield onto Patrick's farm on Buffalo Bayou because, according to Robert Hancock Hunter, "the de[a]d Mexicans began [to] smell." A Texas Centennial marker was erected in 1936 at the site of the former home of Patrick in the present community of Deer Park. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.919, -097° 43.649

John "Big Hawk" Hawkins (1969-2006)

    Rap musician Big Hawk was born John Edward Hawkins in Houston, Texas, on November 15, 1969. He started his rap career in 1994 along with his younger brother, Patrick (known as Fat Pat), and the legendary DJ Screw (born Robert Earl Davis, Jr.). Hawk and other members of Screwed Up Click released their first album Screwed for Life on D.E.A. Records, the label Big Hawk had formed earlier the same year. D.E.A. was short for Dead End Records, which he had named after the dead-end street where he grew up in Houston. Hawk’s best-known songs include Back, Back and Playas Get Chose, both of which were collaborations with fellow rapper Lil’ O, and a solo hit Chillin’ Wit My Broad. Hawk, also known as the “Five-Star General” became the leader of Screwed Up Click, in part due to the deaths of DJ Screw and other founding members.

    In 2000 he released a solo album, Under Hawk’s Wings, and in 2002 he established the label Ghetto Dreams Entertainment and released a second work, HAWK. Its single, You Already Know, reached Number 45 on Billboard’s rap charts. Hawk released Wreckin’ 2K4 with fellow rapper Lil’ Keke in 2003. He was featured on the song Swang by Houston rapper Trae in 2005 and recorded a song as a promotion for World Cup soccer in early 2006. Big Hawk advocated non-violence in his music and was known for being an ambassador for Houston rap because of his ability to get along with rappers from all over the area. Big Hawk’s fate was perhaps foreshadowed by the deaths of his brother Fat Pat, who was shot and killed in 1998, and that of numerous other members of the Screwed Up Click, including DJ Screw (drug overdose), Big Mello (car accident) and Big Moe (heart attack). He was murdered outside the home of a friend on the night of May 1, 2006. He was shot several times and eventually died at the scene. Neither his vehicle nor his possessions were taken, leading police to believe that his murder was not a robbery attempt. A public memorial service for the fallen rapper, held on May 8, 2006, in Houston, drew hundreds of fans. Big Hawk was survived by his wife Meshah Henderson Hawkins and two sons. His album Endangered Species was released posthumously in 2007. Source

Block 4

Paradise South Cemetery

Pearland

COORDINATES

29° 34.135, -095° 20.960

William Polk Milby (1809-1887)

    William Polk Milby, Republic of Texas congressman and Calhoun County merchant, was born in Delaware on January 5, 1809. After first moving to Maryland, he traveled to Texas by way of Louisiana about 1841 and settled initially in Liberty County. He was elected to represent Liberty in the Seventh Congress of the Republic of Texas. He then moved to Port Lavaca and served as county clerk of Calhoun County from 1848 to 1858. In 1853 he acquired land six miles southwest of Indianola, where he tried to develop the town of Cayloma. Five years later he served as commissioner of the Indianola Railroad Company. By 1860 Milby was living in Indianola, where he owned $55,000 in real and personal property, including two slaves. Milby supported secession and was badly hurt by the Civil War and a fire that destroyed his mercantile house in 1867. By 1870 his property was valued at only $1,600. The Indianola storm (1875) destroyed his home. Ironically, he had been one of a three-man commission that had cooperated with the federal signal service's coastal reporting station. Milby and his wife, Mary, a native of Pennsylvania, had at least eight children. Milby was a Mason and Episcopalian. He died on February 2, 1887. Source

Section 34
Glendale Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 43.180, -095° 16.458