Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956)

Mildred Ella (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias, athlete, Ladies Professional Golf Association founder, and olympian, was born on June 26, 1911, in Port Arthur, Texas, the sixth of seven children of Norwegian immigrants Ole Nickolene and Hannah Marie (Olson) Didriksen. Ole Didriksen was a seaman and carpenter, and his wife was an accomplished skater in Norway. In 1915 the family moved to Beaumont, Texas, where the children, with the encouragement of both parents, became skilled performers on the rustic gymnasium equipment that their father built in the backyard. Mildred Didrikson, who changed the spelling of her surname, acquired her nickname during sandlot baseball games with the neighborhood boys, who thought she batted like Babe Ruth. The nickname also originated from the Norwegian word “baden” meaning baby, an endearing term used by her mother.

A talented basketball player in high school, Didrikson was recruited during her senior year in 1930 to do office work at Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas and to spark the company's semiprofessional women's basketball team, the Golden Cyclones. Between 1930 and 1932 she led the team to two finals and a national championship and was voted All-American each season. Her exceptional athletic versatility prompted Employers Casualty to expand its women's sports program beyond basketball. Didrikson represented the company as a one-woman team in eight of ten track and field events at the 1932 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Championships. She placed in seven events, taking first place in five - shot put, javelin and baseball throws, eighty-meter hurdles, and long jump; she tied for first in the high jump and finished fourth in the discus throw. In three hours Didrikson singlehandedly amassed thirty points, eight more than the entire second-place team, and broke four world records. Her performances in the javelin throw, hurdles, and high jump qualified her to enter the 1932 Olympics, where she again broke world records in all three events. She won gold medals for the javelin and hurdles and, despite clearing the same height as the top finisher in the high jump, was awarded the silver medal because she went over the bar head first, a foul at that time.

Didrikson received a heroine's welcome on her return to Texas. She had started another basketball season with the Golden Cyclones when the Amateur Athletic Union disqualified her from amateur competition because her name appeared in an automobile advertisement. Her family was badly in need of money, and Didrikson turned professional to earn what she could from her status as a sports celebrity. Never hesitant to capitalize on her own abilities or to turn a profit from showmanship, she spent 1932-34 self-promoting and barnstorming. She did a brief stint in vaudeville playing the harmonica and running on a treadmill and pitched in some major league spring-training games; she also toured with a billiards exhibition, a men's and women's basketball team called Babe Didrikson's All-Americans, and an otherwise all-male, bearded baseball road team called the House of David.

Since golf was one of the few sports that accommodated women athletes, Didrikson made up her mind to become a championship player, and between engagements she spent the spring and summer of 1933 in California taking lessons from Stan Kertes. Her first tournament was the Fort Worth Women's Invitational in November 1932; at her second, the Texas Women's Amateur Championship the following April, she captured the title. Complaints from more socially polished members of the Texas Women's Golf Association led the United States Association to rule her ineligible to compete as an amateur, thus disqualifying her from virtually all tournament play. Didrikson resumed the lucrative routine of exhibition tours and endorsements, impressing audiences with smashing drives that regularly exceeded 240 yards. She met George Zaharias, a well-known professional wrestler and sports promoter, when she qualified at the 1938 Los Angeles Open, a men's Professional Golfers' Association tournament. They were married on December 23, 1938, and Zaharias thereafter managed his wife's career.

She regained her amateur standing in 1943 and went on to win win thirteen consecutive tournaments (despite her claim that the streak was seventeen), including the British Women's Amateur Championship (she was the first American to win it), before she turned professional in 1947. The following year Didrikson helped found the Ladies Professional Golf Association with Patty Berg, Bettye Mims Danoff, and Betty Jameson in order to provide the handful of professional women golfers with a tournament circuit. She was herself the LPGA's leading money winner between 1949 and 1951. She served as its president from 1952 to 1955. In 1950 the Associated Press voted her Woman Athlete of the Half-Century.

In 1950 Babe met Betty Dodd, an aspiring young Texas golfer. In public Babe claimed Betty was her golf protegee and “pal” who helped her with medical issues. In reality, their relationship became intimate. They traveled the circuit together and shared a home (with George as well) until Babe’s death in 1956. They were inseparable. At that time both went to great lengths to hide their true relationship as the 1950s was rife with homophobia and what historians call perceived threats of the “Lavender Menace.”

In April 1953 Didrikson underwent a colostomy to remove cancerous tissue. Despite medical predictions that she would never be able to play championship golf again, she was in tournament competition fourteen weeks after surgery, and the Golf Writers of America voted her the Ben Hogan Trophy as comeback player of the year. In 1954 she won five tournaments, including the United States Women's Open. Portrayed as a courageous survivor in the press, Didrikson played for cancer fund benefits and maintained her usual buoyant public persona, but in June 1955 she was forced to reenter John Sealy Hospital at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) for further diagnosis. Medical treatment was unable to contain the spreading cancer, and Didrikson spent much of the remaining fifteen months of her life in the hospital. In September 1955 she and her husband established the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Fund, which financed a tumor clinic at UTMB.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias died at John Sealy Hospital on September 27, 1956, at the age of forty-five, and was buried in Beaumont. After her death, Betty Dodd’s golf career blossomed. Didrikson's exuberant confidence, self-congratulatory manner, and cultivation of her celebrity status irritated some fellow athletes, but she was the most popular female golfer of her own time and since. She enjoyed playing to the gallery in her golf matches, and her wisecracks and exhibitions of virtuosity delighted spectators. She was voted Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press six times during her career. Between 1940 and 1950 she won every women's golf title, including the world championship (four times) and the United States Women's Open (three times). She established a national audience for women's golf and was the first woman ever to serve as a resident professional at a golf club. In 1955, a year before her death, she established the Babe Zaharias Trophy to honor outstanding female athletes.

Posthumously, Babe continues to receive glory and recognition. In 1976 the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum and Visitor Center opened in Beaumont, Texas. A U.S. postage stamp was produced in her honor in 1981, and in 1983 she was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. At the turn of the twenty-first century, she was voted by the Associated Press the Greatest Female Athlete of the first half of the twentieth century. ESPN, the television powerhouse, ranked her at number ten, the highest ranked female, of the top fifty athletes of the century. In 2019 she became the third athlete to be honored with the AAU’s Gussie Crawford Lifetime Achievement Award. And in 2021 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Finally, the Chicago-based Legacy Project, that honors LGBTQ+ people inducted her into its Legacy Walk in 2018. Source

Zaharias Circle
Forest Lawn Memorial Park
Beaumont

30° 07.620, -094° 05.927

Nicholas Mosby Dawson (1808-1848)

Nicholas Mosby Dawson, hero of the Texas Revolution, was born in Woolford, Kentucky, in 1808. He later moved with his parents to White County, Tennessee, where he attended school. He moved to Texas in 1834 and settled in Fayette County near the home of a relative, William Mosby Eastland. Dawson enlisted in the revolutionary army on January 24, 1836, and within a week was elected to the rank of second lieutenant of Company B, Texas Volunteers. He participated in the battle of San Jacinto. He served as captain of a militia company in 1840 during an Indian campaign in what is now Mitchell County. In August 1837 he was a lieutenant in Company C and in 1842 was captain of a company of volunteers under John H. Moore. He was residing in Fayette County when Adrián Woll invaded Texas in the fall of 1842. Dawson organized a small company of some fifteen men and left La Grange on September 16, 1842. Soon his company numbered fifty-three men, recruited from settlements in Fayette, Gonzales, and DeWitt counties. While attempting to join Texas forces under Mathew Caldwell on Salado Creek near San Antonio, Dawson and his men were surrounded by a large number of Mexican cavalry on September 18. The following battle, known as the Dawson Massacre, resulted in the death or capture of nearly all the Texans. Dawson was among the casualties. On September 18, 1848, his remains and those of thirty-five other victims of the battle were buried along with casualties from the Mier expedition in a vault on Monument Hill near La Grange. Dawson County is named for Nicholas Dawson. Source


Monument Hill State Historic Site
La Grange

29° 53.339, -096° 52.618

George Whitfield Terrell (1803-1846)

George Whitfield Terrell, early settler, jurist, and diplomat, was born in Nelson County, Kentucky, in 1803, the son of Col. James Terrell. As a youth he moved to Tennessee, where he was admitted to the bar in 1827 and in 1828 was appointed district attorney by Sam Houston, then governor of Tennessee. Terrell was Houston's attorney general when Houston resigned the governorship. He served in the Tennessee legislature from 1829 to 1836 and moved to Mississippi, where he met financial reverses that caused him to move to Texas in 1837. Mirabeau B. Lamar appointed him district attorney of San Augustine County in 1840; he later served as district judge. Terrell was secretary of state of the Republic of Texas under David G. Burnet for a short time in 1841 and in December 1841 was made attorney general of the republic by Sam Houston. From 1842 to 1844 Terrell was Indian commissioner and as such negotiated the Indian treaty at Bird's Fort on September 29, 1843. He was appointed chargé d'affaires to France, Great Britain, and Spain in December 1844 and continued in that capacity under President Anson Jones. Upon his return to Texas in 1845, Terrell was again made Indian commissioner. He was known as an opponent of annexation. He died on May 13, 1846. Source

Note: His stone is incorrect in stating that he came to Texas in 1840, as he actually arrived on December 20, 1839. It is also incorrect in that he served as Secretary of State in 1841. He was nominated and confirmed by the Senate for the position, but he declined it for personal reasons.

Section 4
Oakwood Cemetery
Austin

30° 16.589, -097° 43.691

James Wilson Henderson (1817-1880)

James Wilson Henderson, governor, was born in Sumner County, Tennessee, on August 15, 1817. At the age of nineteen he left college near Georgetown, Kentucky, to travel to Texas, expecting to participate in the struggle for independence. He arrived in Texas shortly after the battle of San Jacinto and was sent back to the United States on recruiting service. When he returned to Texas, Sam Houston offered him a commission in the ranger service, but he declined, having decided to settle in Harris County and become a surveyor. While he was county surveyor of Harris County, Henderson began reading law in his spare time and was admitted to the bar. In 1842 he interrupted his practice to enlist as Orderly Sargeant to Capt. Jack Hays from September 1842 to January 7, 1843, on the Somervell expedition. On September 4, 1843, he defeated Col. James Morgan for a seat in the House of Representatives, to which he was reelected in 1844. After annexation Henderson was elected to the House of the First Texas Legislature. In 1847 he was reelected and chosen speaker, defeating former president Mirabeau B. Lamar.

On June 6, 1848, Henderson was married to Laura A. Hooker. He was defeated for lieutenant governor in 1849 but elected to the position on August 4, 1851. Governor Peter H. Bell resigned his office, effective November 23, 1853, and on that day Henderson was inaugurated governor of Texas; he served until December 21. He was reelected to the legislature in 1857. His wife died on July 21, 1856, leaving him with two sons. Later he was married to Saphira Elizabeth Price; they had three children.

When the Civil War broke out Henderson joined the Confederate Army and was made a captain under Gen. John B. Magruder. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1866, a member of the executive committee at the Democratic state convention in 1868, and vice president of the state Democratic convention in 1871. He was afflicted with paralysis in 1877 and died at the home of his sister in Houston on August 30, 1880. Source

Section F3
Glenwood Cemetery
Houston

29° 45.917, -095° 23.085

Juan Nepomuceno Seguin (1806-1890)

Juan Seguín, political and military figure of the Texas Revolution and Republic of Texas, was born in San Antonio on October 27, 1806, the elder of two sons of Juan José María Erasmo Seguín and María Josefa Becerra. Although he had little formal schooling, Juan was encouraged by his father to read and write, and he appears to have taken some interest in music. At age nineteen he married María Gertrudis Flores de Abrego, a member of one of San Antonio's most important ranching families. They had ten children, among whom Santiago was a mayor of Nuevo Laredo and Juan, Jr., was an officer in the Mexican military in the 1860s and 1870s. Seguín began his long career of public service at an early age. He helped his mother run his father's post office while the latter served in Congress in 1823–24. Seguín's election as alderman in December 1828 demonstrated his great potential. He subsequently served on various electoral boards before being elected alcalde in December 1833. He acted for most of 1834 as political chief of the Department of Bexar, after the previous chief became ill and retired.

Seguín's military career began in 1835. In the spring he responded to the Federalist state governor's call for support against the Centralist opposition by leading a militia company to Monclova. After the battle of Gonzales in October 1835, Stephen F. Austin granted a captain's commission to Seguín, who raised a company of thirty-seven. His company was involved in the fall of 1835 in scouting and supply operations for the revolutionary army, and on December 5 it participated in the assault on Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos's army at San Antonio. Seguín entered the Alamo with the other Texan military when Antonio López de Santa Anna's army arrived, but was sent out as a courier. Upon reaching Gonzales he organized a company that functioned as the rear guard of Sam Houston's army, was the only Tejano unit to fight at the battle of San Jacinto, and afterward observed the Mexican army's retreat. Seguín accepted the Mexican surrender of San Antonio on June 4, 1836, and served as the city's military commander through the fall of 1837; during this time he directed burial services for the remains of the Alamo dead. He resigned his commission upon election to the Texas Senate at the end of the year.

Seguín, the only Mexican Texan in the Senate of the republic, served in the Second, Third, and Fourth Congress. He served on the Committee of Claims and Accounts and, despite his lack of English, was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. Among his legislative initiatives were efforts to have the laws of the new republic printed in Spanish. In the spring of 1840 he resigned his Senate seat to assist Gen. Antonio Canales, a Federalist, in an abortive campaign against the Centralists, but upon his return to San Antonio at the end of the year he found himself selected mayor. In this office Seguín became embroiled in growing hostilities between Anglos and Mexican Texans. He faced personal problems as well. He had gained the enmity of some residents by speculating in land. He financed his expedition in support of Canales by mortgaging property and undertook a smuggling venture in order to pay off the debt. Although upon his return from Mexico he came under suspicion of having betrayed the failed Texan Santa Fe expedition, he still managed to be reelected mayor at the end of 1841. His continuing conflicts with Anglo squatters on city property, combined with his business correspondence with Mexico, incriminated him in Gen. Rafael Vásquez's invasion of San Antonio in March 1842. In fear for his safety, Seguín resigned as mayor on April 18, 1842, and shortly thereafter fled to Mexico with his family.

He spent six years in Mexico and then attempted to reestablish himself in Texas. While living in Mexico he participated, according to him under duress, in Gen. Adrián Woll's invasion of Texas in September 1842. Afterward his company served as a frontier defense unit, protecting the Rio Grande crossings and fighting Indians. During the Mexican War his company saw action against United States forces. At the end of the war he decided to return to Texas despite the consequences. He settled on land adjacent to his father's ranch in what is now Wilson County. During the 1850s he became involved in local politics and served as a Bexar County constable and an election-precinct chairman. His business dealings took him back to Mexico on occasion, and at the end of the 1860s, after a brief tenure as Wilson county judge, Seguín retired to Nuevo Laredo, where his son Santiago had established himself. He died there on August 27, 1890. His remains were returned to Texas in 1974 and buried at Seguin, the town named in his honor, during ceremonies on July 4, 1976. Source

Juan N. Seguin Memorial Plaza

Seguin

29° 33.704, -097° 58.251