John R. Johnson (?-1852)

    John R. Johnson, soldier of the Republic of Texas, was born in Virginia and immigrated to Texas in 1834. He served at the siege of Bexar and on March 31, 1836, enlisted in Sam Houston's army at Jared Groce's plantation on the Brazos River. At the battle of San Jacinto he served as a private in Col. Sidney Sherman's Second Regiment, Texas Volunteers. In 1838 Sam Houston used Johnson as a trusted courier for army dispatches; it was during this time Johnson began working as the deputy surveyor for Liberty County. In August 1842 Johnson was a major in the Texas militia at Swartwout. During the Mexican War a John R. Johnson served as a private in Capt. Robert A. Gillespie's Company I of Col. John Coffee Hays's First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, and later in Capt. Walter P. Lane's Company A of Maj. Michael H. Chevallie's battalion of Texas Mounted Volunteers. In the latter company Johnson was elected second sergeant, promoted to first sergeant on September 1, 1847, and reduced to private on March 1, 1848. He served a third enlistment in Capt. Mirabeau B. Lamar's company of Col. Peter H. Bell's regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers. On October 14, 1845, Johnson received his Donation Certificate No. 1211 for 640 acres of land for having participated in the Battle of San Jacinto. He was living near Coldspring in San Jacinto Country when he died in 1852. His grave is unmarked.


Oakwood Cemetery
Coldspring

COORDINATES

N/A 

Jack William Wilson (1917-2001)

    Jack Wilson was born in Paris, Texas, on November 20, 1917. After graduation from high school, he attended Baylor where he lettered in track, basketball and football - a feat which brought the attention of professional scouts. In the 1942 NFL Draft he was the first round pick by the Los Angeles Rams. After a few years on the training team, he was called up to the Rams for the 1947 season. His stats as a halfback were less than stellar, with 123 rushing yards, 22 rushing attempts and one touchdown. The Rams kept him on for rest of the season before letting him go. Jack was the head track and field coach at Baylor during the 1950s while also serving as an assistant football coach. After coaching at Baylor, he worked as a glass bottle manufacturer at Owens-Illinois in Waco. In 1968, he was one of the first members elected to the Baylor Athletic Hall of Fame. Jack Wilson died in Waco on April 11, 2001 at the age of 84.

Hillcrest Mausoleum
Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park
Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 52.093, -096° 46.823

Martin Dies (1900-1972)

    Martin Dies, congressman, son of Olive M. (Cline) and Martin Dies, was born on November 5, 1900, in Colorado City, Texas. He attended Cluster Springs (Virginia) Academy, graduated from Beaumont (Texas) High School, and earned a law degree from National University in Washington, D.C., in 1920. Dies soon joined his father's law firm in Orange and in 1930 was elected to Congress to represent the Second Congressional District, his father's old seat; he was the youngest member of Congress. In his early years he supported much of the New Deal but turned against it in 1937. Dies achieved fame as the first chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, established in 1938 to investigate subversion. The Dies committee welcomed testimony against any suspected communists. The Texas Senate established a similar committee that attempted to ferret out communists at the University of Texas in 1941 but could not discover any. Dies ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate in 1941, finishing last in a four-way race won by Wilbert Lee (Pappy) O'Daniel. During World War II the Dies committee continued to oppose the New Deal and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, but in 1944 Dies announced his retirement after the CIO launched a vast voter-registration drive and found a candidate to oppose him.

    In 1952 he won election to a new congressman-at-large seat, but he was not allowed to return to the HUAC, which believed that he had damaged the cause of anticommunism. When he ran for the Senate in the special election of 1957, state leaders such as Lyndon B. Johnson and Samuel T. (Sam) Rayburn, believing that Dies was too conservative to defeat liberal challenger Ralph Yarborough, attempted to pressure him out of the race in favor of Lt. Gov. Ben Ramsey. Their effort failed, however, and they turned to another tactic. They attempted to change the laws pertaining to special elections, which required only a plurality, and make a majority vote necessary. The Texas leaders were hoping the change would necessitate a runoff and make a win for Yarborough more difficult. This gambit failed also, and Dies finished second to Yarborough. Dies married Myrtle M. Adams in 1920, and they had three sons. He practiced law in Lufkin between terms in Congress and after declining to run for reelection in 1958; he continued to warn that the United States was succumbing to communism. He wrote Martin Dies' Story (1963) and was the putative author of The Trojan Horse in America (1940), actually written by J. B. Matthews. From 1964 to 1967 Dies was a popular writer in American Opinion magazine. He died in Lufkin on November 14, 1972, and was buried there. Source 

Last Supper Mausoleum
Garden of Memories
Lufkin

COORDINATES

31° 15.931, -094° 44.485

Josiah Hughes Bell (1791-1838)

    Josiah Bell, Brazoria county planter, founder of East and West Columbia, Texas, and one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, was born on August 22, 1791, in Chester District, South Carolina, the son of John and Elizabeth (Hughes) Bell. His father died when he was five, and at age eleven the young man was apprenticed to two uncles in the hat business in Tennessee. He later moved to Missouri Territory, where he became justice of the peace of Bellevue Township in 1813 and served in the Indian wars growing out of the War of 1812. He was discharged from service by 1815 and manufactured hats and dealt in pelts for a time. In 1818 he sold his farm in Missouri and on December 1 of that year married Mary Eveline McKenzie of Kentucky, with whom he had eight children. After a period in Natchitoches, Louisiana, Bell came to Texas with Austin in 1821. He brought with him a family of slaves and settled on New Year Creek, near old Washington. There he served as síndico procurador in 1821 and alcalde in 1822. 

    From 1822 until August of 1823, when Austin was in Mexico, Bell took charge of Austin's colony. Horatio Chriesman made the colony's first survey on February 10, 1823, to locate Bell's land grants on the west side of the lower Brazos. Bell moved to what became known as Bell's Creek in January 1824, was made a militia lieutenant the same year, and was joined by his family in the fall. By 1829 a community known as Bell's Landing or Marion, which became an important inland port, grew up around a landing he constructed near his home. Bell developed a sugar plantation along the creek's banks and subsequently laid out the two towns that came to be known as East Columbia and West Columbia. He built the area's first hotel in 1832, constructed a school, and as an innovative town planner provided garden plots for new residents. In 1834 he called a meeting of the colonists to draw up representations to Mexico for Austin's release from prison. He was Austin's friend and dependable agent in settling differences and publicizing new regulations among the colonists. He followed Austin's conservative policy in dealing with Mexico before the Texas Revolution, but he was loyal to the Texas cause during the war. Bell sold the tract embracing both Marion and East Columbia to Walter C. White and James Knight in October 1837 and moved to West Columbia, where he died on May 17, 1838. The value of his estate was estimated at $140,000. Source 


Columbia Cemetery
West Columbia

COORDINATES

29° 08.422, -095° 38.863