Peter Johnson (1857-1943)

    Johnson was born December 29, 1857 in Sumerland, England. He was living in Michigan when he enlisted in the United States Navy and sent to fight in the Spanish-American War as a Fireman First Class aboard the U.S.S. Potomac. He was afterward transferred to the U.S.S. Vixen, where, on the night of May 28, 1898, a sudden explosion from the front boiler threatened to sink the ship and all aboard. At great personal risk, he entered the boiler room alone and made the necessary repairs to keep the fire contained until they could pull into safe harbor. For this brave action, he was awarded the Medal Of Honor for bravery on August 27, 1904. Johnson died on June 21, 1943 and buried in San Antonio.

CITATION

On board the U.S.S. Vixen on the night of 28 May 1898. Following the explosion of the lower front manhole gasket of boiler A of the vessel, Johnson displayed great coolness and self-possession in entering the fire room.

Section F
Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 28.571, -098° 25.913

Leon "Pappy" Selph (1914-1999)

    Leon "Pappy" Selph, honky-tonk fiddler and a "founding father" of honky-tonk music, was born on April 7, 1914, in Houston to Lee and Alvenie Selph. He began playing the violin at the age of seven and studied classical violin at the Columbia Conservatory in Houston. He graduated from those studies in 1928, and he performed with the Houston Youth Symphony when he was fourteen. Selph joined W. Lee O'Daniel's Light Crust Doughboys in 1931, when he was seventeen. Although O'Daniel paid Selph $20 a week to play for the band, the fiddler's primary duty was to teach the Doughboys, who could not read music, one new song a week to perform on their radio show. Bob Wills was one of his students. At the same time, Selph was approached to instruct some of the musicians at the Grand Ole Opry, and so he commuted between Fort Worth and Nashville. When one of the featured performers fell ill, Selph also got the opportunity to perform onstage at the Opry, and he played Orange Blossom Special to a standing ovation. Back in Fort Worth, members of the Light Crust Doughboys increasingly clashed with O’Daniel’s demands. When Wills moved to Waco to form the Texas Playboys, Selph joined him. Selph stayed with the Playboys until Wills moved the band to Tulsa in 1934, then moved back to Houston and formed his own band, the Blue Ridge Playboys. The group, which included legendary musicians Floyd Tillman, Moon Mullican, and Ted Daffan, signed with Columbia Records in the mid-1930s and achieved some regional success with recordings that included Give Me My Dime Back and the classic Orange Blossom Special.

    From the 1930s until World War II the Blue Ridge Playboys had their own national radio show on KPRC in Houston. The show was canceled at the outbreak of the war. Selph enlisted in the United States Navy and served as a firefighter. After the war he returned to Houston and joined the Houston Fire Department, where he worked for the next thirty years. He achieved the rank of captain in 1955. After he retired in 1972, he formed another band, with which he toured the Soviet Union and served as a cultural ambassador for the U.S. State Department. During his music career, he performed in some thirty states and fourteen foreign countries. His audience members included United States presidents, the King of Norway, and other dignitaries. He played at numerous venues, including clubs, hospitals, churches, and schools, around Houston and for many private and municipal functions. Selph was a mainstay for thirty-one years at the Houston Rodeo parade and was made an honorary life member of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Association. The city of Houston proclaimed June 9, 1991, as “Leon Pappy Selph Appreciation Day.” In 1996 he was inducted into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame. Selph had married his wife Inez about 1937; they had four children. Once he became a father, he used the nickname “Pappy” for the duration of his career. He continued to play local venues around Texas until his death on January 8, 1999, in Houston. Selph was survived by his wife, two sons, and two daughters. Source

Section 6
Brookside Memorial Park
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 54.848, -095° 18.707

Thomas Harrison (1823–1891)

    Thomas Harrison, Confederate Army officer, was born on May 1, 1823, in Jefferson County, Alabama, and raised in Monroe County, Mississippi. In 1843 he moved to Brazoria County, Texas, where he took up the study of law in the office of his brother-in-law, William H. Jack. He later returned to Mississippi, where he established a practice at Aberdeen, and at the outbreak of the Mexican War he joined the First Mississippi Rifles under Col. Jefferson Davis. Harrison returned to Texas after the war and settled in Houston. He represented Harris County for one term (1850) as a Democrat in the Texas legislature before moving to Marlin in 1851. He moved to Waco in 1855 and in 1857 ran a close but unsuccessful race against Robert E. B. Baylor for district judge. In 1858 he married Sarah Ellis McDonald, the niece of Governor John Ellis of North Carolina; the couple had five children. Harrison served as captain of a company of rangers under William Cornelius Dalrymple in 1860, pursuing Indian raiders on the Pease and Canadian rivers.

    At the outbreak of the Civil War he was elected captain of a local militia company that compelled the surrender of United States troops at Camp Cooper. He then transferred to the Eighth Texas Cavalry, better known as Terry's Texas Rangers. On November 8, 1862, after the deaths of Benjamin Franklin Terry and Thomas S. Lubbock, Harrison became colonel of the Terry Rangers. He was promoted to colonel of the regiment just before the battle of Murfreesboro (December 30, 1862-January 3, 1863). His command served under Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler through the Chickamauga (August-September, 1863), Chattanooga (October-November, 1863), and Atlanta (May 1-September 8, 1864) campaigns, and in the resistance to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's campaign in Georgia and the Carolinas. When Joseph E. Johnston surrendered at Durham Station, North Carolina, Harrison advised the Texans to cut their way through the Union lines and rally in the West. Characterized by one of his soldiers as "a small, nervous, irascible man," Harrison was never popular with the regiment because of his attempts to enforce discipline in the ranks through corporal punishment. Ranger lieutenant Frank Batchelor could find no fault with Harrison "except that he is addicted to getting drunk & does it when battle is pending & has thus lost the confidence of his men & injured our effectiveness against the enemy." 

    Harrison was wounded early in March 1865 in a cavalry skirmish near Johnsonville, South Carolina. Disabled from service, he had left his command to recover from his wound when, on or about March 15, he received official notice of his appointment by President Jefferson Davis as a brigadier general, to rank from January 14, 1865. The terms of the appointment required the taking of an oath of office, which Harrison fully intended to do, but his wounds and the surrender of General Johnston's army on April 26, 1865, prevented his doing so, and he never returned to his command. He went back to the army and without surrendering made his way to Macon, Mississippi, where he was paroled on May 31, 1865. Upon returning to Waco he swore a loyalty oath and in July 1865 applied to President Andrew Johnson for a special pardon; it was granted in 1866. Thereafter Harrison entered politics. He was elected district judge on June 25, 1866, for the Nineteenth District, Lampasas and McLennan counties, but was removed. He was a Democratic presidential elector in 1872. Unreconstructed to the end, he died in Waco on July 14, 1891, where he is buried. Source

Block 19
Oakwood Cemetery
Waco

COORDINATES

31° 32.141, -97° 06.513

José Antonio Navarro (1795-1871)

    José Antonio Navarro, a leading Mexican participant in the Texas Revolution, son of María Josefa (Ruiz) and Ángel Navarro, was born at San Antonio de Béxar on February 27, 1795. His father was a native of Corsica, and his mother was descended from a noble Spanish family. Navarro's early education was rudimentary, though he later read law in San Antonio and was licensed to practice. He was compelled to flee to the United States because of his support of the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition in 1813 but returned to Texas in 1816. A developing friendship with Stephen F. Austin served to deepen his interest in Texas colonization. Before Texas independence Navarro was elected to both the Coahuila and Texas state legislature and to the federal congress at Mexico City. He supported Texas statehood in 1835 and embraced the idea of independence the following year. Along with his uncle, José Francisco Ruiz, and Lorenzo de Zavala, he became one of the three Mexican signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Upon his election to the Texas Congress as a representative from Bexar, Navarro sought to advance the rights of Tejanos, whom many Anglo-Texans held in contempt after the Texas Revolution. He also generally endorsed the policies of President Mirabeau B. Lamar while opposing those of Sam Houston.

    As a supporter of Lamar, Navarro was selected as a commissioner to accompany the foolishly conceived Santa Fe expedition. Decimated by Indian attacks and suffering from hunger and thirst, those who survived the march from Austin tamely capitulated outside the gates of Santa Fe. After imprisonment under brutal conditions at Veracruz for fourteen months, Navarro escaped and returned to Texas. He had for a long time favored the annexation of Texas to the United States. He was the sole Hispanic delegate to the Convention of 1845, which was assembled to accept or reject the American proposal; after voting in the affirmative, he remained to help write the first state constitution, the Constitution of 1845. He was subsequently twice elected to the state Senate, though in 1849 he refused to run again. In 1846, in recognition of his contributions to Texas over the years, the legislature named the newly established Navarro County in his honor. The county seat was then designated Corsicana, in honor of his father's Corsican birth. As a devout Catholic, Navarro strongly condemned Sam Houston's association with the nativist and anti-Catholic American (Know-Nothing) party. He was equally critical of Houston's pro-Union vote on the Kansas-Nebraska issue. Always a strong advocate of states' rights, in 1861 he defended the right of Texas to secede from the Union. Although he was too advanced in years to participate in the Civil War, his four sons served in the Confederate military. In 1825 Navarro married Margarita de la Garza; they had seven children. He died on January 13, 1871. Source

Section 16
San Fernando Cemetery #1
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 24.932, -098° 30.631

Daniel O'Driscoll (?-1849)

    Daniel O'Driscoll was born in County Cork, Ireland, date unknown. In 1829, he came to Texas with the McMullen and McGloin colonists and joined the patriot army at the outbreak of the Texas Revolution. He fought in the Battle of Nueces Crossing (November 4, 1835), the Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836) and, after Texas had gained its independence, the Battle of the Nueces (July 6, 1842). He was a first lieutenant in the regular army of the Republic of Texas until September 14, 1838. He married Catherine Duggan in 1837 while stationed in Victoria and they had two children, Jeremiah and Robert. After he left the service, they moved to Refugio where he established a tavern and began raising cattle. O'Driscoll served as justice of Refugio County from 1846 until July 3, 1849, when he was killed in a horse carriage accident. His granddaughter Clara would do her part for Texas as well, as the "Savior of the Alamo".



Mount Calvary Cemetery
Refugio

COORDINATES

28° 18.112, -097° 16.968