Zachary Scott (1914-1965)

    Zachary Thomson Scott, actor, the son of Sallie Lee (Masterson) and Zachary Thomson Scott, was born in Austin, Texas, on February 21, 1914. His acting career began at Austin High School. From 1932 to 1934 he attended the University of Texas, where he performed leading roles and served as president for the Curtain Club; he was also on the track team. He interrupted his schooling at the age of nineteen to work his way to England on a freighter. There he joined a repertory company and for the next three years gained acting experience. He returned to the United States and married Elaine Anderson on February 21, 1935. They had two daughters. The couple lived in New York for a short time but soon returned to the University of Texas, where Scott earned a B.A. in 1939. During this period he worked as director of the Little Theater in Austin and taught dramatics at St. Mary's Academy. He then gave up dramatic pursuits and worked at various jobs, including that of an oilfield worker, but the lure of the stage eventually caused him to move his family to New York. He was soon acting in various Broadway productions.

    In 1943, Warner Brothers Studio discovered Scott while he was appearing in Those Endearing Young Charms. With the starring role in The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), he began a film career that extended through thirty motion pictures. Scott is best remembered for his work in such popular films as Mildred Pierce (1945), The Southerner (1945), Hollywood Canteen (1944), Danger Signal (1945), and Cass Timberlane (1947). He received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal in The Southerner. During the 1940s Scott's roles, with the exception of The Southerner, were those of a suave, debonair sophisticate, but after 1950 his career broadened. He sang the lead role in a production of The King and I (1956) and appeared on the London stage in such productions as Subway in the Sky (1957). He played numerous television roles and continued to make movies. In 1950 Scott and his wife were divorced. He later married actress Ruth Ford. In 1959 they appeared together on Broadway in Requiem for a Nun, a play that novelist William Faulkner had written for Mrs. Scott. Scott and his wife were performing readings from Faulkner's works at the University of Mississippi in early 1965 when Scott grew ill; he died on October 3, 1965, and was buried at Memorial Park in Austin. In 1972 the Zachary Scott Theatre opened in Austin, and in 1988 a chair in drama was established at the University of Texas honoring the Scott family. Source

Section 4
Austin Memorial Park Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 19.836, -097° 44.969

Able Allison Lewis (1761-1838)

    Able Lewis was born in about 1761, probably in North Carolina, where he later served for 477 days in Capt. Thomas Price's South Carolina 96th District Company. He married Martha "Patsy" Wofford in 1795, and the pair lived in Missouri and Alabama before coming to Texas with their seven children to settle in the Sabine District of San Augustine County. He died before 1839 and was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery about six miles east of San Augustine, Texas. Source

Chapel Hill Cemetery
Chapel Hill

COORDINATES

31° 29.210, -094° 01.172

Richard William "Dick" Dowling (1838-1867)

    Dick Dowling, businessman and Civil War officer, son of William and Mary Dowling, was born in Tuam, Galway County, Ireland, in 1838. After 1846 the family migrated to the United States and settled in New Orleans. In the early 1850s, after the deaths of his parents, Dick Dowling worked his way to Texas and eventually settled in Houston. The likeable, red-headed Irishman quickly made a reputation as an enterprising businessman. In October 1857 he opened the Shades, the first of his successful saloons. He probably received financial backing for this enterprise from Benjamin Digby Odlum, whose daughter, Elizabeth Ann, Dowling married in November 1857. By 1860 he had sold his interest in the Shades and had purchased the popular Bank of Bacchus near the Harris County Courthouse. Still later he operated the Hudgpeth Bathing Saloon as well as a Galveston-based liquor-importing firm. 

    With the outbreak of the Civil War Dowling joined the Jefferson Davis Guards as first lieutenant. Capt. Frederick H. Odlum was commander. During the first part of 1861 Dowling and his associates raided United States Army outposts on the Texas-Mexico border. When the guards were designated Company F of the Third Texas Artillery Battalion in October 1861, Dowling's theater became the upper Texas Gulf Coast. By 1862 the battalion was upgraded to a full regiment, the First Texas Heavy Artillery, under the overall command of Col. J. J. Cook. Dowling's early Civil War exploits were consistent but not spectacular. On January 1, 1863, he participated in Gen. John B. Magruder's recapture of the port of Galveston. Three weeks later, after the transfer of his company to Sabine Pass, which controlled access to the Sabine River, he earned his first individual praise. As artillery commander aboard the steamer Josiah A. Bell, he took part in a naval battle on January 21, 1863, with two United States vessels. In a two-hour engagement the Confederate forces achieved a victory, in part because of Dowling's accuracy with the eight-inch Columbiad gun, which he commanded. Not only was he singled out for making some of the "prettiest shots" but also for saving the Bell's magazine from flooding. 

    Throughout the spring and summer of 1863 Odlum, Dowling, and the guards manned defensive positions at Sabine Pass, including Fort Griffin, a nondescript post on the west side of the pass that controlled both the Texas and Louisiana channels of the river. By August 1863 Odlum was in charge of forces at nearby Sabine City, and Dowling commanded Company F, which consisted of forty-seven men armed with six cannons, at Fort Griffin. On September 8, 1863, the United States forces attacked the area in what became known as the battle of Sabine Pass. Dowling directed such intense and accurate fire from his guns that two of the United States gunboats, the Clifton and the Sachem, were disabled, and the remaining United States vessels withdrew. As a result of federal ineptitude and Dowling's leadership, Dowling and his men captured two ships and 350 prisoners and routed the invasion without a single casualty. The battle at Sabine Pass was the pinnacle of Dowling's career. During the remainder of the war he was a recruiting officer for the Confederacy, until his discharge with the rank of major in 1865. He returned to Houston, managed the businesses he had owned before the war, and acquired new businesses, including real estate, oil and gas leases, and an interest in a steamboat. His financial successes appeared to ensure a bright future, but he became ill with yellow fever and died on September 23, 1867. He was survived by his wife, a daughter, and a son and was buried in St. Vincent's Cemetery, Houston. Source


St Vincent's Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 45.550, -095° 20.667

Frances Sanger Mossiker (1906-1985)

    Frances Mossiker, writer, was born on April 9, 1906, in Dallas, Texas, the daughter of Elihu and Evelyn (Beekman) Sanger. She was raised in wealth derived from the family business, the prosperous manufacturing and retail establishment Sanger Brothers. She frequently visited her mother's family in France and became fluent in French and German. She attended the Hockaday School and Forest Avenue High School and attempted to join the circus at fifteen but was stopped by her grandfather, Alexander Sanger. She enrolled at Smith College but was prevented by college policy from remaining a student after she eloped with Frank Beaston, an actor, about 1922. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard in 1927, did graduate work at the Sorbonne in Paris, then moved to Detroit and to Hollywood with her husband; the marriage ended in divorce about 1929, and she returned to Dallas. Frances Beaston worked as a radio commentator in Dallas and Fort Worth. She married businessman Jacob Mossiker on October 15, 1935. The couple traveled widely and lived comfortably. They had no children. 

    When she was in her early fifties, while recovering from a radical mastectomy, Frances Mossiker began to research the disappearance of a diamond necklace in eighteenth-century France. Through family and friends she gained access to primary documents in France, and the result was the nonfiction mystery The Queen's Necklace, published in 1961. The book won the Carr P. Collins award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Mossiker was the first woman to win the prize. She followed this book with the Literary Guild selection Napoleon and Josephine: The Biography of a Marriage (1964), The Affair of the Poisons (1969), More Than a Queen: The Story of Josephine Bonaparte (1971), Pocahontas: The Life and Legend (1976), and Madame de Sevigne: A Life and Letters (1983). She donated her papers to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, to Boston University, and to Smith College. She died on May 12, 1985, in Dallas and was entombed in Hillcrest Mausoleum. Source

Hillcrest Mausoleum
Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery
Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 52.093, -096° 46.815