John McFarlan (?-1826)

John McFarlan (McFarlane or McFarland), one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, with his brother Achilles McFarlan, owned a cabin at the Atascosito Crossing of the Brazos River as early as May 1823; he was thus apparently the first settler at the site of San Felipe de Austin. McFarlan was judge of the alcalde election in December 1823 and was issued a life-time license by Stephen F. Austin and the Baron de Bastrop to operate the ferry at San Felipe, with the condition that he render an account every six months. On August 10, 1824, McFarlan received title to 1¼ sitios of land that later became part of Waller County. The census of March 1826 classified him as a single man aged over fifty, a farmer and stock raiser who owned five slaves. He apparently died before December 1826, when Samuel C. Hady wrote Austin that McFarlan`s estate lacked sufficient funds to pay his debts. In March 1827 John Sibley asked Austin to settle his accounts against the John McFarlan estate. Source

Note: Unmarked. During the Texas Revolution, the town of San Felipe was largely destroyed by Mexican troops chasing after the Texan army. Nothing was spared, not even the town graveyard. The majority of those buried here prior to 1836 are no longer marked, so although John McFarland is known to be buried here, the exact location has been lost. The photo below shows the oldest section of the cemetery where it is possible he still rests.


San Felipe de Austin Cemetery
San Felipe

N/A

Carl Nettles Reynolds (1903-1978)

Carl Nettles Reynolds, Major League Baseball player, was born to a farming family in LaRue, Henderson County, Texas, on February 1, 1903. He was the fourth child of Robert Peel Reynolds and Ann Elizabeth (Nettles) Reynolds. Reynolds attended the Alexander Institute (later Lon Morris College, closed in 2012) in Jacksonville, Texas. Moving on to Southwestern University in Georgetown, he was a multi-sports star and earned letters in baseball, football, basketball, and track. Primarily a shortstop on the baseball team, Reynolds was discovered during a game between Southwestern and Trinity College in Waxahachie in 1926 by Roy and Bessie Largent, a husband-and-wife scouting team employed by the Chicago White Sox. Roy Largent had come to the game to scout a Trinity pitcher but was impressed by Reynolds, who was subsequently signed by the duo. In early 1927 Reynolds, who had become a football and basketball coach at Lon Morris College, resigned to join the White Sox spring training camp in Shreveport.

Reynolds’s first stop as a professional was close to home, as the White Sox assigned him to the Palestine Pals of the Class D Lone Star League. Converted to an outfielder, he led the team in hits (180) and batting average (.372). Intrigued, the White Sox called Reynolds up for the final month of the season. He made his big-league debut on September 1, 1927, against the Cleveland Indians and got his first big league hit the next day. In 1928 Reynolds had his first full season with the White Sox, for whom he hit .323 in part-time duty. Promoted to full-time starter (primarily in right field) in 1929, he hit .317 and led the team in runs batted in (RBIs), albeit with a mere sixty-seven (the lack of offensive power was a major reason for the team’s 59–93 record). After the season, on November 9, 1929, Reynolds married eighteen-year-old Ruth Matilda Dayvault, who later became a nurse. They had two sons, Carl Jr. (born 1934) and Robert (born 1942).

In 1930 Reynolds had his best season. He drove home 104 runs while batting .359 with 202 hits, including eighteen triples and twenty-two home runs. Three of those home runs were consecutive - including two against future Hall-of-Famer Red Ruffing - and took place on July 2 in the second game of a doubleheader against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. After Reynolds slipped to .290 due to injuries in 1931, the White Sox traded him to the Washington Senators.

While with the Senators in 1932, Reynolds was involved in an incident that made headlines nationwide. During the first game of a July 4 doubleheader against the Yankees in Washington, Reynolds crashed into Yankee catcher Bill Dickey while scoring. It wasn’t clear that Reynolds had touched the plate, however, so his teammates in the Senators’ dugout yelled at him to go back and do so. Dickey, who had been knocked out in a play at the plate during a recent game, thought Reynolds was returning to take another shot at him, so he punched him. This was the only blow struck, but it broke Reynolds’s jaw. American League President Will Harridge fined Dickey $1,000 and suspended him for thirty days. With his jaws wired shut, Reynolds was out for almost six weeks. The injury led to a life-threatening incident. On July 19 Reynolds was in a taxicab when he became ill and started to vomit. Thinking quickly, his wife snipped the wires with a pair of manicure scissors so Reynolds could open his mouth, thus averting death by aspiration. When the Yankees returned to Washington in August, Reynolds and Dickey were both back in action, and police officers were stationed on the field to deter any misconduct. The players remained docile.

Reynolds finished the 1932 season with a creditable offensive year (a .305 batting average in 406 at bats). Nevertheless, the Senators traded him to the St. Louis Browns before the 1933 season. Reynolds responded with a decent season (a .286 batting average in 475 at bats), but there were few witnesses. The combination of the Great Depression, the team’s poor record (55-96), and competition from the St. Louis Cardinals’ colorful Gashouse Gang assured the Browns a dismal year at the box office at Sportsman’s Park (ironically, the Browns owned the ballpark and leased it out to the Cardinals). The Browns attracted just 88,113 fans for the entire season. It was not their worst showing, as they drew just 80,922 in 1935 - the all-time major league low.

At season’s end Reynolds was dealt to the Boston Red Sox. In the 1934 season he batted .303 and drove home eighty-six runs in 113 games. After he hit .270 in part-time duty in Boston the following season, Reynolds was traded back to the Senators, where he had a similar season (.276). Though he had a .306 lifetime batting average with 1,135 hits, the Senators traded him to a minor league club, the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association, before the 1937 season. Reynolds batted .355 with 218 hits, 17 home runs, and 110 runs batted in. At the conclusion of the minor league season, his contract was purchased by the Chicago Cubs, and he spent the remainder of the 1937 season with them. In 1938 the Cubs won the National League pennant. In the ensuing World Series, however, the Cubs were swept by the Yankees in four games, and Reynolds was hitless in thirteen plate appearances with just one base on balls. Nevertheless, the losing team received a paycheck of $4,675 per player.

Reynolds returned to the Cubs in 1939, but it was the worst year of his career, as he hit just .246 in part-time duty. At the age of thirty-six his major league career was over. He had a lifetime batting average of .302 and 1,357 hits. Reynolds had been an asset in the outfield, as he had a strong arm (he threw and batted right-handed), particularly important in center and right field, where he played most of his games. He was also fleet of foot for a heavy-set player (6 feet, 194 pounds).

In 1940 Reynolds accepted a position as player–manager with the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. This was his final year as a player. In 1941 he worked for the Angels as a coach and scout but did not play. After the season Reynolds returned to his farm in Wharton, Texas. He had purchased the farm in 1934 and spent the rest of his life there. As a prominent citizen in Wharton, he served on the boards of a local bank, a hospital, and Wharton County Junior College. Reynolds’s eldest son, Carl Jr., a first baseman, played baseball at Rice University. After graduating in 1956, he played two seasons of minor league ball in the Chicago Cubs system. He also carried on the family tradition of farming.

During the last years of his life, Reynolds suffered from myelofibrosis and myeloid metaplasia. He died on May 29, 1978, at Methodist Hospital of Houston. He was buried at Wharton City Cemetery next to his wife Ruth, who had died in 1974. His son Robert died in 2005, while Carl Jr. died in 2019. Both are also interred in the family plot. In 1971 Reynolds was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. In 1990 he was posthumously enshrined in the Southwestern University Hall of Honor. Source

Wharton City Cemetery
Wharton

29° 18.601, -096° 05.490

William Rabb (1770-1831)

William Rabb, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, the eldest son of Andrew and Mary (Scott) Rabb, was born on December 21, 1770, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. He married Mary Smalley about 1789 and they eventually had four sons, Andrew, John, Thomas, and Ulysses, and a daughter, Rachel, who later married Joseph Newman. Rabb and his family left Pennsylvania about 1803. After a brief sojourn with relatives in Ohio, Rabb reached his destination near the Mississippi River in Indiana Territory (later Illinois Territory) in 1804. There he built and operated a large gristmill on Cahokia Creek near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. He also served as Madison county judge and in 1814 was elected to the legislature of Illinois Territory, where he served for two terms. In 1818 the Rabbs moved to Clear Creek settlement on the north side of the upper Red River in Arkansas Territory, in what is now Choctaw County, Oklahoma. From there, Rabb made an exploratory trip into Texas in 1819 and chose an area on the east side of the Colorado River as the site he wished to acquire. When the federal government ceded the land north of the Red River to the Choctaw Indians in 1820, Rabb moved his family south of the river to Jonesborough, an area now in Red River County, Texas. Although the Arkansas Territory authorities attempted to exercise civil jurisdiction over the Jonesborough settlers, the Rabbs were technically in Spanish territory. In 1821 Rabb wrote a letter to the Spanish governor in San Antonio de Béxar which stated, among other things, that he intended to settle soon on the Colorado River as a member of Austin's colony. When and where Rabb first became involved in the plan of Moses Austin and his son, Stephen, to establish a colony in Texas is uncertain. Since Rabb is believed to have been a longstanding acquaintance of the Austins, he probably was aware of their plan at an early date. Somewhere along the line they reached an agreement whereby Rabb would build a gristmill in the proposed colony to help supply the settlers in exchange for a sizable grant of land.

Rabb and his wife and two unmarried sons left Jonesborough and arrived at his site on the Colorado River in December 1821. Probably for security reasons plus availability of fresh water from springs, they initially settled on the high ground west of the river at a place Rabb called Indian Hill. Located a short distance above present-day La Grange in Fayette County, it was directly across the river from the rich bottom land that he had chosen on his exploratory trip in 1819. When Stephen F. Austin returned from a journey to Mexico City in 1823 with the news that the Mexican authorities had reconfirmed his colonization contract and would honor land titles in the colony, Rabb returned to Jonesborough to fetch the remaining members of his family. They arrived in December 1823, and for a while the entire family remained at Indian Hill. However, in early 1824, they moved downriver to the little settlement of Egypt in present-day Wharton County in order to escape Indian harassment.

Title to Rabb's land grant was signed by Stephen Austin and Commissioner Baron de Bastrop on July 19, 1824. It was one of the earliest and largest grants made in Austin's first colony and comprised a total of five square leagues, or one "hacienda," of about 22,000 acres. Two leagues of approximately 9,000 acres were located in the area near the Gulf of Mexico known as Bay Prairie in present-day Matagorda County. The other three leagues of over 13,000 acres comprised the land granted to Rabb as the result of his agreement to build a gristmill in the upper portion of the colony. Situated on the east side of the Colorado River in present-day Fayette County, it is the site Rabb chose in 1819 and is the tract known today as Rabb's Prairie. Although he soon left Egypt and returned to Rabb's Prairie to begin work on the mill, Rabb was forced to abandon the project on several occasions due to threats of Indian attack. In 1830 the ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin, the governing council of Austin's colony, reviewed Rabb's situation and reconfirmed his title. Also, because of delays caused by Indian harassment, it approved an additional eighteen months for him to finish construction of the mill. With the help of his sons, Rabb completed his mill in 1831. Some of the material used in its construction came from New Orleans, but it was the transportation and installation of two large grinding stones, or burrs, that proved to be an accomplishment of considerable ingenuity and determination. The mill stones, each weighing around a ton, had been imported from Scotland and off-loaded at Matagorda at the mouth of the Colorado River. The problem facing Rabb was how to move these two ponderous objects to his mill in Rabb's Prairie, a distance of about 100 miles. Driftwood rafts and shallow water made it impractical to float them upriver on a barge. His solution was to make an axle, attach the mill stones on the ends to serve as wheels, and use oxen to pull the resulting vehicle overland to his mill. Rabb lived to see his mill in operation but died later in 1831. His wife died a few months afterward. They are believed to be buried in an old abandoned cemetery on a hillside overlooking Rabb's Prairie. Source

Note: This is a cenotaph. The small Rabb family cemetery outside of La Grange has been lost.

Confederate Field

Texas State Cemetery

Austin

30° 15.925, -097° 43.591 

George Krause Kitchen (1844-1922)

George K. Kitchen, Medal of Honor recipient, was born in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, on October 5, 1844, son of George Kitchen. Both of his parents were born in England. Kitchen married a woman named Annie, who died in 1915, and later a second wife named Emma. Sgt. George K. Kitchen was in Texas with Company H, Sixth United States Cavalry, on the upper Washita River on September 9, 1874, with Lyman's wagon train, attempting to reach Gen. Nelson A. Miles's forces on the Washita River, when the company was attacked by a large force of Indians. They engaged the enemy from September 9 to 14 under very difficult conditions. Kitchen was awarded the Medal of Honor for "gallantry in action." After leaving the army he lived in San Antonio for seventeen years and worked in the United States Post Office there. He died at Kelly Field No. 2 on November 22, 1922, and is buried in St. Mary's Cemetery, San Antonio. Source

CITATION
Gallantry in action.

Lot 67
St. Mary's Cemetery
San Antonio

29° 25.016, -098° 27.832