Joseph Sovereign (1810-1877)

    Joseph Sovereign was born in Portugal in 1790. Nothing else is known of him until the age of 45. In December 1835, he arrived in Texas for the first time before moving to New Orleans, where he joined Captain John M. Allen's volunteer company in late February, 1836. A few days later, upon arrival in Texas, the company was reorganized and Sovereign was assigned to Captain William S. Fisher's Company with the rank of private. He officially enlisted in the Texian Army on March 16. It was with Fisher's company that he fought at the Battle of San Jacinto. Evidently he was an excellent soldier, because on August 1st he was already commanding a company in Colonel C. L. Harrison's regiment. Sovereign remained in the Army until June 16, 1838. Over the next two decades, Sovereign moved between New Orleans and Texas. In April 1860, a San Antonio newspaper reported that a man known as "Portuguese Joe" (Sovereign) was shot twice with a revolver in the house of a Mexican by someone called Printer. Shortly after this nearly fatal incident, Sovereign may have gone to New Orleans for better medical treatment for his wounds. He was living in Galveston when he applied for his pension on August 13, 1870. After his arrest in New Orleans for violating a city ordinance against illegal gambling. He moved back to Texas for the final time and settled in Houston. On May 23, 1873, Sovereign attended the first annual reunion of the Texas Veterans Association, held in Houston. He died on January 16, 1877 of what was referred to as "exhaustion due to a lack of food or water" on his death certificate.

Note: Unmarked. Founders Memorial Park, originally founded in 1836 as Houston's first city cemetery, was rapidly filled due to a yellow fever epidemic and closed to further burials around 1840. The cemetery became neglected over a period of time, often vandalized and was heavily damaged by the 1900 hurricane. In 1936, despite a massive clean up effort, a century of neglect had taken its toll. The vast majority of grave markers were either destroyed or missing and poor record keeping prevented locating individual graves. Several cenotaphs were placed in random areas throughout the park in honor of the more high-profile citizens buried there, but a great number of graves go unmarked to this day. Joseph Sovereign's is one of them.

Founders Memorial Park
Houston

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