William Henry Barnes (1841-1866)

    Born in St. Mary's County, Maryland, Barnes was a 23 year old farmer when he enlisted in the Union Army on February 11, 1864. Only a few months after his enlistment, the morning of September 29th, 1864 found Private Barnes on the outskirts of Richmond, VA. His regiment, the 38th U.S. Colored Troops (USCT), along with the 4th, 5th, 6th and 36th USCT were about to lead an attack on seasoned and entrenched Confederate soldiers, including five infantry regiments from the Texas Brigade, led by Col. Frederick Bass. The Battle of New Market Heights (a.k.a. Battle of Chaffin's Farm) would be the first major battle in Virginia where African American troops led an assault. It was a brutal morning for these men, and the last for many. After crossing hundreds of yards of rising ground, the 4th and 6th regiments neared the rebel lines and were killed in great numbers when their advance was stopped at the first line of barricades (abatis).

    Sgt. Major Christian Fleetwood, 4th USCT, described the battle in his diary. "It was a deadly hailstorm of bullets sweeping men down as hailstones sweep the leaves from trees. It was very evident that there was too much work cut out for our two regiments. We struggled through two lines of abatis, a few getting through the palisades, but it was sheer madness". A second assault was ordered that included the 5th, 36th and 38th but the results were similar to what had occurred to the 4th and 6th regiments. Colonel Alonzo G. Draper, commander of the 2nd Brigade USCT, filed a report while recuperating from wounds sustained in the battle in which he described the assault, "After passing about 300 yards through young pines, always under fire, we emerged upon the open plain about 800 yards from the enemy's works. Within twenty or thirty yards of the rebel line we found a swamp which broke the charge. Our men were falling by the scores. All the officers were striving constantly to get the men forward." Ultimately, the fire from the rebels began to lessen as they withdrew from their positions and the USCT continued to their objective and finally entered the confederate position after great loss of men killed outright or wounded. The battle of New Market Heights was considered a great success by the Union Army officers as it was determined they could count on African American soldiers to fight to the death if called upon. A soldier from the Texas Brigade, J.D. Pickens, summed up the fighting of the USCT they faced that day writing, "I want to say in this connection that, in my opinion, no troops up to that time had fought us with move bravery than did those Negroes".

    On April 6, 1865, Private William Henry Barnes was awarded the Medal of Honor. His citation reads: "Among the first to enter the enemy's works, although wounded." Fourteen of the 16 recipients of the Medal of Honor awarded to black soldiers in the Civil War were for action at New Market Heights. Barnes and approximately 200 more members of the USCT would also be awarded the Butler Medal, created by Gen. Benjamin Butler to honor the USCT under his command. After the end of the Civil War in May 1865, Barnes came to Texas with his 38th USCT after it was assigned to assist in Reconstruction as part of the 25th Corp. On July 1, 1865, William Barnes was promoted to Sergeant. This was the highest rank that he could achieve as a soldier in the Union Army. The service of the 38th USCT in Texas would include Brownsville and various points on the Rio Grande, Brazos Santiago Island, Galveston and finally Indianola. While the number of African American troops in Texas eventually became the majority of all Federal troops in the state, numbering close to 26,000, they began to withdraw in the fall of 1865 with the last leaving in 1867. On Christmas eve of 1866, Sgt. Barnes died in the City Hospital and was buried at Indianola. He had been ill since July 1866 with tuberculosis or "consumption" as it is described as the cause of death in his service records. After the Civil War, soldiers that had died at, or near, Indianola, were disinterred and reinterred in the San Antonio National Cemetery in a common grave. A marker was erected at the San Antonio National Cemetery in memory of William H. Barnes. From this marker, the group burial site where Barnes is interred can be seen. In 2013, a Texas Historical Marker in honor of Sgt. William H. Barnes was placed at the Indianola Cemetery. Source

CITATION

Among the first to enter the enemy's works; although wounded.

Section MA
San Antonio National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.276, -098° 28.022

Stephen Franklin Sparks (1819-1908)

    Stephen F. Sparks was born in Lawrence County, Mississippi, April 7, 1819, a son of Richard and Elizabeth (Cooper) Sparks. His father served in the War of 1812 and moved the family to San Augustine, Texas in 1834, later settling in Nacogdoches. On March 6, 1836, a volunteer company was organized at Nacogdoches and young Stephen left school and volunteered for service in the Texas Revolution on March 8. He was ordered to report to the Commander-in-Chief of the Texas Army, and was assigned to Hayden Arnold's Nacogdoches Company, with whom he fought at the Battle of San Jacinto. In 1854, Sparks moved his family to McClennan County, where his first wife Elizabeth died in childbirth. On September 1, 1856 he was awarded 640 acres of land for his service in the army . In 1890, he moved his family to Aransas County, where he would remain the rest of his life. Sparks was the last president of the Texas Veterans Association, as it was decided to dissolve the group due to the lack of living participants. He died in 1908 in Rockport and laid to rest at the cemetery there.

Section 1
Rockport Cemetery
Rockport

COORDINATES

28° 02.721, -097° 02.253

William Polk Hardeman (1816-1898)

    William P. (Gotch) Hardeman, Texas Ranger, soldier, and public servant, was born on November 4, 1816, in Williamson County, Tennessee. His father, Thomas Jones Hardeman, was an officer in the War of 1812 and a prominent Texas political figure. Mary (Polk) Hardeman, his mother, was an aunt of James K. Polk. Hardeman attended the University of Nashville and in the fall of 1835 moved to Matagorda County, Texas, with his father and a large group of Hardeman family members. Immediately after his arrival in Texas he joined the resistance movement against Mexico. He participated in the battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835. Shortly afterward he assisted his uncle, Bailey Hardeman, and others in bringing a cannon from Dimmitt's Landing to San Antonio for use against Mexican forces under Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos. Hardeman and his brother Thomas Monroe Hardeman accompanied a small relief column to the Alamo, but the garrison had fallen to Mexican forces shortly before their arrival. The Hardemans abandoned their exhausted horses and after a narrow escape on foot suffered severe hunger. Gotch was then sent by his uncle Bailey on an errand to summon militia. An illness resulting from exposure on this assignment probably kept him from action in the decisive battle of San Jacinto. He subsequently served for a number of years in the Texas Rangers. He accompanied Erastus (Deaf) Smith for four months of ranger duty on the frontier in 1837 and fought in Col. John Henry Moore's ranger force against the Comanches at Wallace's Creek on February 22, 1839. Three months later he participated in the Córdova campaign in East Texas, an aftermath of the Córdova Rebellion.

    Hardeman fought the Comanches in the battle of Plum Creek on August 11, 1840. In February 1842 he engaged in harassment of invading Mexican forces led by Gen. Rafael Vásquez. Nine months later he joined the Somervell expedition against Mexico. After the annexation of Texas by the United States, Hardeman served as a member of Benjamin McCulloch's Guadalupe valley rangers in Gen. Zachary Taylor's army. He engaged in the exploration of the Linares, China, and Cerralvo-San Juan River routes to the Mexican stronghold of Monterrey and scouted ahead of Taylor's main invading force. Hardeman's last Mexican War engagements were in the scouting expedition to Encarnación and the ensuing battle of Buena Vista. Subsequently he went to his Guadalupe County plantation, where he farmed with as many as thirty-one slaves. Fifteen years later he returned to military life. After voting for secession in 1861 as a member of the Secession Convention, he raised a force from Guadalupe and Caldwell counties, forming the 800-man Company A of Col. Spruce M. Baird's Fourth Texas Cavalry Regiment, part of Henry H. Sibley's New Mexico Brigade. He fought and was twice wounded at Valverde, where he participated in the successful charge against Alexander McRae's battery of artillery (the Valverde Battery), after which he was promoted to regimental major. In April 1862 Hardeman commanded the successful defense of the Confederate supply depot at Albuquerque against Col. Edward R. S. Canby's much larger force and was credited with saving the artillery.

    After the defeat of Sibley's column, Hardeman was reassigned to the Gulf theater of war. He participated in Gen. Richard Taylor's Red River campaign, which turned back the numerically superior army of Union general Nathaniel P. Banks, and eventually rose to the command of the Fourth Texas Cavalry. After successful campaigns at Yellow Bayou and Franklin, Hardeman was promoted to brigadier general. After the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, Hardeman, like his cousin Peter Hardeman and thousands of other Confederates, became an exile. He joined a company of fifteen high-ranking officers, eluded Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, and escaped to Mexico. There he served briefly as a battalion commander in Maximilian's army and became a settlement agent for a Confederate colony near Guadalajara. In 1866 he returned to Texas, where he served as inspector of railroads, superintendent of public buildings and grounds, and superintendent of the Texas Confederate Home in Austin. He also helped avert bloodshed in the Coke-Davis controversy of 1873-74 and was one of the founders of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). Hardeman was twice married, first to his uncle Bailey's widow Rebecca, and after her death to Sarah Hamilton. He had two children by the first marriage and five by the second. He died of Bright's disease on April 8, 1898, and was buried at the State Cemetery in Austin. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.917, -097° 43.631

James Augustus "Gus" Bailey (1834-1900)

    Gus was born in 1834 to carnival folk, and employed in his father's circus once he was grown enough to perform. In late 1857, he met Mollie Kirkland while working as a cornet player in the circus band. The two fell in love, and after her parents refused to let the two marry (Mollie was only fourteen, and her parents were well-off), they eloped. They swiped a few horses and a wagon from her family's plantation - for which Mollie was promptly disinherited - and married in March, 1858. With Mollie's sister Fanny and Gus' brother Alfred joining them, the young couple formed the Bailey Family Troupe, which traveled through Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas acting, dancing and singing, until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. Gus enlisted in the Forty-fourth Infantry Regiment at Selma, Alabama, but was later transferred to Hood's Texas Brigade, where he served as the regiment's bandmaster. 

    On the evening of August 28, 1862 the unit was marching through Thoroughfare Gap to the east slopes of the Bull Run Mountains, where they could see the flashes of Jackson's guns engaged at Groveton, only ten miles east. As they bed down for the night, a group of officers accidentally kicked over an empty oat barrel and sent it hurtling down the slope toward the Texas Brigade's bivouac. Frightened by the noise, a grey pack horse dashed up the hillside, still laden with frying pans, tin cups and other kitchen utensils. Aroused from their deep sleep, the veteran Texans panicked and scrambled several hundred yards downhill, tearing through a well-built fence in the process. Regaining their composure, the Texans laughed off their folly and Gus put the escapade to song. Originally called The Old Gray Mare (Came Tearing Out of the Wilderness), it became the brigade's marching song. When the war was over, the couple traveled throughout the South and then by riverboat with the Bailey Concert Company. Bailey's circus was a success, and at its peak claimed 31 wagons and about 200 animals, including camels and elephants. The circus primarily toured small towns and became well known throughout the state for being free of the cheating and con games typical of other carnivals, as well as it's practice of giving free tickets to veterans, both Union and Confederate. Gus became chronically ill, and, permanently weakened, was forced to retire from the day-to-day operations. He stayed at the circus' winter grounds in Blum while Mollie took over the business entirely. He succumbed to his illness on November 10, 1900 and buried with full military honors in Houston's Evergreen Cemetery.

Section B1
Evergreen Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 44.306, -095° 19.317

Humphrey Jackson (1784-1833)

    Humphrey Jackson, Harris County pioneer, member of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, and early San Jacinto District official, was born on November 24, 1784, in Belfast, Ireland, where his father owned flour and linen mills and was a member of the Irish Parliament that was dissolved in 1801. Jackson was educated in the law and immigrated to the United States in 1808. He settled at Berwick's Bayou, Louisiana, where he operated a sugar plantation near Vermillionville and served as a private with Baker's Louisiana Militia regiment at the battle of New Orleans in 1815. Jackson had married a Miss White, who died shortly without children. On October 13, 1814, he married Sarah Merriman, his first wife's cousin, with whom he had four children.

    Unable to run his plantation because he chose not to own slaves, Jackson traveled to Texas in September 1823 and built a log cabin outside Austin's colony on the San Jacinto River, a half mile west of the site of present Crosby. When it was discovered that he had settled outside the colony, Jackson petitioned the Baron de Bastrop, who on August 16, 1824, granted him title to a league and a labor of land, including the place where he had settled, in what is now Harris County. To become a legal colonist, Jackson next petitioned the Mexican government to form the San Jacinto District under control of the Austin colony; he was elected alcalde of the new district in 1824, 1825, and 1827, and served as ex officio militia captain of the San Jacinto area. In May 1825 he was appointed deputy constable in a case involving the schooner Mary. The census of March 1826 classified him as a farmer and stock raiser, a widower with a household including one servant, three sons, and a daughter. He offered Austin his services to help put down the Fredonian Rebellion in 1827 and in 1828 was regidor of Liberty Municipality. He was also a candidate for alcalde in 1830, when Francis W. Johnson was elected. Jackson was killed by a falling tree on January 18, 1833, and buried at Crosby. Jackson's Bayou in eastern Harris County is probably named for him. Source


Jackson Memorial Park
Crosby

COORDINATES

29° 54.474, -095° 04.069