"Blind" Lemon Jefferson (1893-1929)

Blind Lemon Jefferson, a seminal blues guitarist and songster, was born on a farm in Couchman, near Wortham, Freestone County, Texas, in the mid-1890s. Sources differ as to the exact birthdate. Census records indicate that he was born on September 24, 1893, while apparently Jefferson himself wrote the date of October 26, 1894, on his World War I draft registration. He was the son of Alec and Clarissy Banks Jefferson. His parents were sharecroppers. There are numerous contradictory accounts of where Lemon lived, performed, and died, complicated further by the lack of photographic documentation; to date, only two photographs of him have been identified, and even these are misleading. The cause of his blindness isn't known, nor whether he had some sight.

Little is known about Jefferson's early life. He must have heard songsters and bluesmen, like Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas and "Texas" Alexander. Both Thomas and Alexander traveled around East Texas and performed a variety of blues and dance tunes. Clearly, Jefferson was an heir to the blues songster tradition, though the specifics of his musical training are vague. Legends of his prowess as a bluesman abound among the musicians who heard him, and sightings of Jefferson in different places around the country are plentiful.

By his teens, he began spending time in Dallas. About 1912 he started performing in the Deep Ellum and Central Track areas of Dallas, where he met Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, one of the most legendary musical figures to travel and live in Texas. In interviews he gave in the 1940s, Lead Belly gave various dates for his initial meeting with Jefferson, sometimes placing it as early as 1904. But he mentioned 1912 most consistently, and that seems plausible. Jefferson would then have been eighteen or nineteen years old. The two became musical partners in Dallas and the outlying areas of East Texas. Lead Belly learned much about the blues from Blind Lemon, and he had plenty to contribute as a musician and a showman.

Though Jefferson was known to perform almost daily at the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue in Dallas, there is no evidence that he ever lived in the city. The 1920 census shows him living in Freestone County with an older half-brother, Nit C. Banks, and his family. Jefferson's occupation is listed as "musician" and his employer as "general public." Sometime after 1920, Jefferson met Roberta Ransom, who was ten years his senior. They married in 1927, the year that Ransom's son by a previous marriage, Theaul Howard, died. Howard's son, also named Theaul, remained in the area and retired in nearby Ferris, Texas.

In 1925 Jefferson was discovered by a Paramount recording scout and taken to Chicago to make records. Though he was not the first folk (or "country") blues singer-guitarist, or the first to make commercial recordings, Jefferson was the first to attain a national audience. His extremely successful recording career began in 1926 and continued until 1929. He recorded 110 sides (including all alternate takes), of which seven were not issued and six are not yet available in any format. In addition to blues, he recorded two spiritual songs, "I Want to be Like Jesus in My Heart" and "All I Want is That Pure Religion," released under the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates. Overall, Jefferson's recordings display an extraordinary virtuosity. His compositions are rooted in tradition, but are innovative in his guitar solos, his two-octave vocal range, and the complexity of his lyrics, which are at once ironic, humorous, sad, and poignant.

Jefferson's approach to creating his blues varied. Some of his songs use essentially the same melodic and guitar parts. Others contain virtually no repetition. Some are highly rhythmic and related to different dances, the names of which he called out at times between or in the middle of stanzas. He made extensive use of single-note runs, often apparently picked with his thumb, and he played in a variety of keys and tunings.

Jefferson is widely recognized as a profound influence upon the development of the Texas blues tradition and the growth of American popular music. His significance has been acknowledged by blues, jazz, and rock musicians, from Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, and T-Bone Walker to Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Carl Perkins, Jefferson Airplane, and the Beatles. In the 1970s, Jefferson was parodied as "Blind Mellow Jelly" by Redd Foxx in his popular Sanford and Son television series, and by the 1990s there was a popular alternative rock band called Blind Melon. A caricature of Blind Lemon appears on the inside of a Swedish blues magazine, called Jefferson. He appears in the same characteristic pose as his publicity photo, but instead of wearing a suit and tie, he is depicted in a Hawaiian-style shirt. In each issue, the editors put new words in the singer's mouth: "Can I change my shirt now? Is the world ready for me yet?" Alan Govenar and Akin Babatunde have composed a musical, Blind Lemon: Prince of Country Blues, staged at the Majestic Theatre, Dallas (1999), and the Addison WaterTower Theatre (2001), and have also developed a touring musical revue, entitled Blind Lemon Blues.

Jefferson died in Chicago on December 22, 1929, and was buried in the Wortham Negro Cemetery. His grave was unmarked until 1967, when a Texas Historical Marker was dedicated to him. Musicologist Alan Lomax and Mance Lipscomb were among those in attendance at the dedication ceremony. Jefferson was inducted in the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980. In 1997 the town of Wortham began a blues festival named for the singer, and a new granite headstone was placed at his gravesite. The inscription included lyrics from one of the bluesman's songs: "Lord, it's one kind favor I'll ask of you. See that my grave is kept clean." In 2007 the name of the cemetery was changed to Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery. Among Jefferson's most well-known songs are "Matchbox Blues," "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," "That Black Snake Moan," "Mosquito Blues," "One Dime Blues," "Tin Cup Blues," "Hangman's Blues," "'Lectric Chair Blues," and "Black Horse Blues." All of Blind Lemon Jefferson's recordings have been reissued by Document Records. TSHAOnline

Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery
Wortham

31° 47.863, -096° 27.804

Seth Ingram (1790-1857)

Seth Ingram, surveyor, merchant, and public official, was born in Vermont on June 19, 1790. During the War of 1812 he served as a sergeant in the Eleventh Regiment, United States Infantry. On April 26, 1822, he and his brother Ira Ingram, a Nashville, Tennessee, bookstore proprietor, became co-owners of a single share of stock in the newly organized Texas Association. That same year Seth arrived in Texas with letters of introduction and recommendation as a surveyor from Joseph H. Hawkins of New Orleans. He was engaged by Stephen F. Austin as a surveyor for his colony in August 1823 and platted the town of San Felipe de Austin in late 1823 and early 1824. For such work he was paid at the rate of five dollars a mile in property or three dollars a mile in cash. Ingram took part in colony elections in August and December of 1823 and April of 1824. In the summer of 1824 he served as first lieutenant in the colonial militia. As one of Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, on July 29, 1824, he received title to two leagues and one labor of land that later became part of Wharton and Austin counties; six years later he obtained an additional league near Matagorda Bay in what became southwestern Matagorda County. By 1827 Seth and Ira had formed a partnership with Hosea H. League to operate a general store in San Felipe. This establishment stood near Stephen F. Austin's cabin on the banks of Bullinger's Creek a half mile west of the Brazos River.

Late in the summer of 1830 Ira Ingram quarreled with John G. Holtham, a lawyer of unsavory reputation, over Holtham's drunken intrusion into Ingram's yard. Holtham demanded an apology for being expelled from the premises. When Ira ignored him, he circulated handbills defaming Ira as a "coward, a rogue, and a man without honor." On September 2, 1830, Seth Ingram confronted Holtham as he was posting one such notice in the streets of San Felipe and ordered him to remove it. When Holtham refused, pistols were drawn, and Ingram killed Holtham. Ingram was arrested along with Hosea League, who had been a bystander during the incident, and both were confined almost incommunicado for sixteen months, much of the time in heavy irons. As the municipality had no jail, the two were chained to the walls of the half-completed meetinghouse of the San Felipe ayuntamiento. With the colony's inherently cumbersome legal machinery moving at a suspiciously lethargic pace, frustrating the adjudication of their case indefinitely, the pair were finally released on bond in January 1832 but were arrested again a short time later after a murder in the colony.

Although in the estimation of Stephen F. Austin, Ingram was as fine a citizen as could be found in the colony, League was reportedly a very unpopular man with few friends and many influential enemies. In the fall of 1831, however, more than 700 signatures were obtained on a petition for the prisoners' release. During his confinement Ingram wrote to Austin requesting additional grants of land to alleviate his financial distress, pointing out that his work as a surveyor had profited the colony, while he himself had been forced into poverty through long imprisonment. At last, sometime in late 1832, the pair were tried, acquitted, and released. In December of that year Austin directed Ingram to survey a league on Karankawa Bay for Sam Houston.

By 1834 the Ingram brothers had moved to Matagorda, where both were members of the Committee of Safety and Vigilance in September 1835. Seth served as one of the executors of his brother's estate in October 1837. As a justice of the peace he appears to have officiated at his own marriage to Susanna Rice on December 5, 1837. He was one of the trustees of Matagorda University upon its incorporation in February 1845. According to Matagorda County marriage records, Ingram took Sarah M. Davis as his second wife on February 9, 1846, and less than four years later, on December 24, 1849, he wed Mary E. Carter. The census of 1850 described Ingram as a notary public owning $2,000 in real property, while his wife Mary held an estate worth $10,000. Ingram died on May 12, 1857, and was buried at Matagorda. TSHAOnline

Section E
Matagorda Cemetery
Matagorda

28° 42.029, -095° 57.282

Edwin Hawley "Eddie" Dyer (1900-1964)

Edwin Hawley Dyer, baseball player and manager, son of Joseph Dyer, was born in Morgan City, Louisiana, on October 11, 1900. After attending public schools there, he enrolled in Rice Institute, Houston, where he played football and baseball. He was a member of the class of 1924 but did not graduate until 1936, after playing with various minor-league baseball teams. As manager of the Houston club of the Texas League he won league championships in 1939, 1940, and 1941, and in 1942 he was named minor-league manager of the year for his direction of the Columbus, Ohio, team. Thereafter, he joined the St. Louis Cardinals and was manager of that club when it won the World Series in 1946 by beating the Boston Red Sox four games to three. After twenty-three years as a player, manager, and coach, Dyer moved to Houston in 1948 and opened an insurance office. He relinquished managership of the Cardinals in 1950. On January 2, 1962, he suffered a stroke and on April 20, 1964, died of a heart attack. His survivors were his wife, the former Geraldine Jennings of Timpson, a son, and a daughter. Dyer was buried at the Garden of Gethsemane in Houston. He was described in the Official Encyclopedia of Baseball as a "slow-speaking and quick-thinking Texan" and was considered one of the best teachers and developers of young baseball talent. He discovered such men as Stan Musial, Howard Pollet, and Jeffre Cross. Pollet and Cross were associated with him in his Houston business. TSHAOnline

Section 53
Forest Park Lawndale
Houston

29° 43.032, -095° 18.227

Lloyd Herbert Hughes (1921-1943)

Lloyd Herbert Hughes, Jr., Medal of Honor recipient, was born in Alexandria, Louisiana, on July 12, 1921, the son of Lloyd Herbert Hughes, Sr., and Mildred Mae (Rainey) Hughes. Hughes’s parents divorced sometime after his birth. Mildred Hughes found employment as a postmaster in Onalaska in Polk County, Texas, in November 1923. In 1924 his mother married John Raymond Jordan. Between 1927 and 1931 the Jordan family lived in Oak Hurst in San Jacinto County, Huntsville, Josserand, and Refugio, Texas. By 1931 the Jordan family added four sons in addition to young Lloyd who was called “Pete” by family and friends.

Hughes experienced success in academics and athletics in school. After beginning school in Oak Hurst in 1927, he spent most of his early years in the Refugio school system. Hughes was valedictorian of his seventh-grade graduation class. In high school, he served as the captain on both the football and basketball teams. He also found employment as a roughneck in the oil industry and with a newspaper and ice route during the summers and after school. After graduating from Refugio High School in the spring of 1939, Hughes enrolled at Texas A&M in the fall as a petroleum engineering major.

Assigned to the infantry in the Corps of Cadets, Hughes experienced academic problems during his first semester and withdrew at the end of the term. He then moved to Corpus Christi (where the Jordan family had moved in early 1939) and attended Corpus Christi Junior College (now Del Mar College) for two terms where his grades improved. He enrolled at Texas A&M in September 1941 and remained there until leaving school on December 3, 1941, due to his desire to assist his family and ailing stepfather. On January 28, 1942, Hughes enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet in San Antonio. After completing his primary pilot training in Tulsa and his basic pilot training at Enid, Oklahoma, he finished the advanced pilot training at Lubbock, Texas. On November 8, Hughes married Hazel Dean Ewing in San Antonio. He was assigned to the Four Engine Transition School, Combat Crew School at Tarrant Air Base in Fort Worth and finished his training and received his pilot’s wings and his commission as a second lieutenant on November 10, 1942.

In early 1943 Hughes was assigned as a pilot to the newly-formed 389th Heavy Bombardment Group at Biggs Army Air Field, Texas. This group was designated as part of Operation Tidal Wave (a low level bombing attack by B-24 heavy bombers on the Nazi-held oil refineries at Ploesti, Romania). After final instruction at Lowry Field, Colorado, and receiving crew formations and assignments to a B-24, the group arrived in England in June for flight training at treetop level. The group departed for Benghazi, Libya, on June 30, and in July Hughes’s unit flew four combat missions over Italy and the Mediterranean and spent ten days of intense low-level training for the raid on Ploesti.

In the early morning of August 1, Hughes’s plane (Ole Kickapoo) departed Benghazi as part of the 179 loaded B-24 Liberators (divided into five groups) for the 2,400-mile roundtrip to Ploesti. The 389th (nicknamed the “Sky Scorpions”) flew in the rear with two other groups. With Hughes as the pilot, Ole Kickapoo in the last formation approached its target region with enemy defenders fully alerted. Flying through intense anti-aircraft fire, Hughes’s plane took several direct hits that caused gasoline leaks in the bomb bay and the left wing. Aware of the danger and unwilling to leave the formation, Hughes piloted the plane to his assigned target in a blazing area where the bomb load was dropped. Flying away from the target with the left wing aflame, Hughes sought to land the aircraft in a dry riverbed, but the plane “crashed and was consumed.” Only three men of the ten-man crew survived the crash, and one died from burns two days later. The two survivors remained prisoners of war until the end of the conflict. Romanian authorities retrieved the bodies of Hughes and the other crewmen and buried them in Bolovan Cemetery. Fifty-four B-24s did not make it back to Benghazi. Military reports indicated that Hughes’s target area was so damaged that it did not resume production during the war. For his “heroic decision to complete his mission regardless of the consequences in utter disregard of his own life,” the twenty-two-year-old Texan was recommended for the Medal of Honor; four other airmen also received the medal for their performance in Operation Tidal Wave. On April 18, 1944, Hazel Ewing Hughes was presented her husband’s posthumous Medal of Honor by Lt. Gen. Barton Yount in a ceremony at Kelly Field.

Second Lieutenant Lloyd Herbert Hughes, Jr., was honored in a number of ways years after his tragic death. In 1950 his body was returned to Texas, and on April 12 he was buried with full military honors at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio. Texas A&M renamed a dormitory Lloyd H. Hughes Hall in 1969. In Corpus Christi, Del Mar College added Hughes to its Wall of Honor in 1995. A portrait of Hughes hangs in the Memorial Student Center at Texas A&M. The Sam Houston Sanders Corps of Cadets Center at Texas A&M also displays his original Medal of Honor beneath a bronze plaque of the former cadet. Hughes was the first Texas Aggie to receive the Medal of Honor. TSHAOnline

CITATION

For conspicuous gallantry in action and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. On August 1943, 2d Lt. Hughes served in the capacity of pilot of a heavy bombardment aircraft participating in a long and hazardous minimum-altitude attack against the Axis oil refineries of Ploesti, Rumania, launched from the northern shores of Africa. Flying in the last formation to attack the target, he arrived in the target area after previous flights had thoroughly alerted the enemy defenses. Approaching the target through intense and accurate antiaircraft fire and dense balloon barrages at dangerously low altitude, his plane received several direct hits from both large and small caliber antiaircraft guns which seriously damaged his aircraft, causing sheets of escaping gasoline to stream from the bomb bay and from the left wing. This damage was inflicted at a time prior to reaching the target when 2d Lt. Hughes could have made a forced landing in any of the grain fields readily available at that time. The target area was blazing with burning oil tanks and damaged refinery installations from which flames leaped high above the bombing level of the formation. With full knowledge of the consequences of entering this blazing inferno when his airplane was profusely leaking gasoline in two separate locations, 2d Lt. Hughes, motivated only by his high conception of duty which called for the destruction of his assigned target at any cost, did not elect to make a forced landing or turn back from the attack. Instead, rather than jeopardize the formation and the success of the attack, he unhesitatingly entered the blazing area and dropped his bomb load with great precision. After successfully bombing the objective, his aircraft emerged from the conflagration with the left wing aflame. Only then did he attempt a forced landing, but because of the advanced stage of the fire enveloping his aircraft the plane crashed and was consumed. By 2d Lt. Hughes' heroic decision to complete his mission regardless of the consequences in utter disregard of his own life, and by his gallant and valorous execution of this decision, he has rendered a service to our country in the defeat of our enemies which will everlastingly be outstanding in the annals of our Nation's history. 

Section U
Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery
San Antonio

29° 28.688, -098° 25.822

John Steward Roberts (1796-1871)

John S. Roberts, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, East Texas merchant, and political figure, was born in Virginia on July 13, 1796. At age sixteen he enlisted in the Tennessee Militia for service in the War of 1812; he participated in the Battle of New Orleans as a member of Col. John Coffee's regiment. He was discharged in May 1815 and turned his eyes westward toward Louisiana. By 1822 he was a resident of Natchitoches, where he became a deputy sheriff in 1826. The same year, he joined the Ayish Bayou forces that took part in the Fredonian Rebellion, led by Haden and Benjamin W. Edwards against the Mexican government of Texas. Roberts was a major in the Fredonian forces and served as a judge at the impeachment trial of Samuel Norris, alcalde of the Nacogdoches District, and José Antonio Sepúlveda, captain of the Nacogdoches Militia. Roberts married Harriet Fenley Collier on December 26, 1826, soon after the murder of her husband, Robert, and settled temporarily on her ranch in the Sabine District of East Texas. The next year, however, for reasons of security, the family-including Robert Collier's two children from a previous marriage, Susan and Nathaniel, and Harriet's son, John Fenley Collier-moved first to San Augustine and finally to Nacogdoches.

From 1827, when he entered the mercantile business with John Durst, to 1832, when he joined the rebel forces at the battle of Nacogdoches, Roberts was a general merchant and man of affairs in Nacogdoches, where his son Lycurgus was born on April 26, 1830. From the battle of Nacogdoches until the early days of the Texas Revolution in 1835, he pursued his career as a merchant and enlarged his fortune by purchasing cheap land grants. Roberts enlisted in the Nacogdoches Independent Volunteers on October 4, 1835, as a first lieutenant (he was later promoted to captain) under Capt. Thomas J. Rusk and saw distinguished service in the siege of Bexar (November 25-December 5). He was elected a delegate to the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos and signed the Declaration of Independence March 2, 1836, after which he quickly departed for Nacogdoches.

After the revolution Roberts formed a partnership with John Durst and George Allen to engage in the mercantile business at a location across Fredonia Street east of the Old Stone Fort on the town square in Nacogdoches. The next year the firm was doing business as Roberts, Allen, and Company; in 1838 Durst bought out Allen, and the firm of Roberts, Durst and [Frederick T.] Phillips was formed. Later that same year the business was sold to one Francis von der Hoya. Meanwhile, on May 18, 1837, Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Rusk appointed Roberts quartermaster of the Texas Militia; between that date and July 10, 1839, he served as quartermaster of militia on four different occasions, for a total of more than seventeen months. During this time, by an act of the Congress of the republic dated January 10, 1839, he was authorized to adopt Harriet's son, John Collier, and change his name to John F. Roberts.

Roberts and Durst were adventurous in business, but for Roberts the speculation ended in the fall of 1838, when there began a series of law suits, the nature of which is not known, that resulted in his financial ruin. In the late 1840s he first sought to protect the financial interests of his wife and stepson in the estate of Robert Collier. About this time he entered the grocery and saloon business in Nacogdoches-first on the east side of the town square, and later in the Old Stone Fort, title to which had passed into Harriet's hand. He operated this business until his death on August 9, 1871. His body was interred in the old Oak Grove Cemetery in Nacogdoches. TSHAOnline

Oak Grove Cemetery
Nacogdoches

31° 36.203, -094° 38.974

Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960)

Karle Wilson Baker, writer, daughter of William Thomas Murphey and Kate Florence (Montgomery) Wilson, was born on October 13, 1878, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her first name was originally spelled Karl; the e was added later, first appearing in Kate Wilson's diary in 1893. She attended public schools, Little Rock Academy, and Ouachita Baptist College and returned to graduate from Little Rock Academy, a high school, in 1898. She attended the University of Chicago periodically from 1898 to 1901 and later attended Columbia University (1919) and the University of California at Berkeley (1926-27). The only university degree that she held, however, was an honorary doctorate of letters conferred in 1924 by Southern Methodist University.

From 1897 to 1901 Karle Wilson alternately studied at the University of Chicago and taught at Southwest Virginia Institute in Bristol, Virginia. In 1901 she joined her family, which had moved to Nacogdoches, Texas. She went back to Little Rock to teach school for two years but returned to Nacogdoches, and there, on August 8, 1907, she married Thomas E. Baker, a banker. They had a son and daughter. Karle Baker devoted the remainder of her life to maintaining her household, to writing, and to teaching (from 1925 to 1934) at Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College (now Stephen F. Austin State University). She wrote personal and historical essays, novels, nature poetry, and short stories. Her early writing appeared in such journals as Atlantic Monthly, Century, Harper's, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Scribner's, Putnam's, and the Yale Review, under the pen name of Charlotte Wilson. Yale University Press published her first volume of poetry, ninety-two lyrics collected under the name of the title poem, Blue Smoke (1919), which received favorable reviews in the United States and England. Yale also published a second collection of her poems, Burning Bush (1922), as well as two prose volumes, The Garden of Plynck (1920), a children's fantasy novel, and Old Coins (1923), twenty-seven short allegorical sketches. Baker was anthologized in The Best Poems of 1923, English and American, published in London, and in 1925 she won the Southern Prize of the Poetry Society of South Carolina, a competition open to poets living in the states of the former Confederacy.

In 1931 a third volume of her poems, Dreamers on Horseback, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. By that time, however, she had begun to concentrate mainly on prose writing. As early as 1925 she had written The Texas Flag Primer, a Texas history for children that was adopted for use in the public schools. In 1930 The Birds of Tanglewood, a collection of essays based on her birdwatching, appeared. Tanglewood was the name that she gave to an area around her parents' second home in Nacogdoches. A second reader for children, Two Little Texans, was published in 1932. Her most notable prose works were two novels published when she was in her late fifties and early sixties. Family Style (1937), a study of human motivation and reaction to sudden wealth, is set against the background of the East Texas oil boom. Star of the Wilderness (1942) is a historical novel in which Dr. James Grant, a Texas revolutionary, figures. It later became a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

In 1958 Baker was designated an honorary vice president of the Poetry Society of Texas, of which she was a charter member. She had served in 1938-39 as president of the Texas Institute of Letters, of which she was a charter member and the first woman fellow. Still other recognition was given her by the Authors League of America, the Philosophical Society of Texas, and the Poetry Society of America. She died on November 9, 1960, and is buried in Nacogdoches. TSHAOnline

Oak Grove Cemetery
Nacogdoches

31° 36.206, -094° 38.904

Theron Eugene "Ted" Daffan (1912-1996)

Early steel guitarist and songwriter Theron Eugene (Ted) Daffan was born in Beauregard Parish, Louisiana, on September 21, 1912, the son of Carl and Della Daffan. Ted Daffan pioneered in the electrification of instruments and was an active figure in the Houston-area country-dance-band scene of the 1930s. His most lasting contribution to country music was in songwriting.

The Daffans moved from Louisiana to Houston, where Ted graduated from high school in 1930. Having developed a fascination with electronics at an early age, he opened a repair shop for radios and electric musical instruments. The shop served as a center of experimentation with pickups and amplifiers. Daffan also developed an early interest in Hawaiian guitar and played in a Hawaiian music group called the Blue Islanders that performed on Houston radio station KTRH in 1933. Drawn to country music mainly through the influence of Milton Brown, in 1934 Daffan joined the Blue Ridge Playboys, an influential group whose membership included two other legendary early honky-tonk figures, Floyd Tillman and Moon Mullican. He also performed with several other Houston-area bands, including the Bar-X Cowboys and Shelly Lee Alley's Alley Cats, before starting his own band, the Texans, in 1940. The Texans leaned more toward honky-tonk than swing.

Daffan is generally credited with writing the first truck-driving song, "Truck Driver's Blues," in 1939; the song became a hit for Cliff Bruner's Texas Wanderers, and its success led to Daffan's Texans being signed by Columbia Records in 1940. Three of the songs he wrote and recorded in the early 1940s became honky-tonk classics: "Worried Mind," "Born to Lose," and "Headin' Down the Wrong Highway." Daffan was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Association Hall of Fame as a charter member in 1970. Among the artists who recorded his songs were Ray Charles, who performed versions of "Born to Lose" and "No Letter Today," and Les Paul and Mary Ford, who recorded "I'm a Fool to Care."

Daffan moved to California in 1944 and led a band at the Venice Pier Ballroom for a short time before returning to Texas in 1946. After leading a band in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, he returned to Houston by the early 1950s. Although his recording career slowed after World War II, he continued a successful career as a songwriter and stayed involved in the music business. From 1955 to 1971 he ran his own record label, Daffan Records, which featured releases by Floyd Tillman, Jerry Irby, and Dickie McBride, among others. Daffan moved to Nashville in 1958 to form a music publishing company with Hank Snow but returned in 1961 to Houston, where he formed his own music-publishing business and continued to live until his death on October 6, 1996. He was buried in Forest Park Cemetery in Houston. Daffan was married to Lela Bell McGuire; they had one daughter, Dorothy Jean. He later married Fannie Lee “Bobbie” Martin; they had no children. Daffan was inducted into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame in 1995. His song "Born to Lose" received a BMI "one million air play" award in 1992. TSHAOnline

  
Section 20
Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery
Houston

29° 43.108, -095° 18.238

Zeno Phillips (1802-1835)

Zeno Philips, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, on July 19, 1824, received title to a sitio of land in what is now Brazoria County. The census of March 1826 classified him as a farmer and stock raiser, a single man aged between twenty-five and forty, with one servant and twenty-two slaves. In March 1829 Philips and John R. Harris acted as partners in one of the first large contracts for cotton in Texas, when they bought about 100 bales from Jared E. Groce. Philips was a lieutenant colonel in the local militia in August 1829. The same year he was defeated as a candidate for regidor. In December 1830 he was administering the estate of Joseph White. TSHAOnline

Note: Unmarked. This small field was originally the site of the Phillips family cemetery. Although there were once several stones, none exist now. Outside of the historical marker at the gate, nothing remains that denotes this as a burying ground. 


Phillips Family Cemetery
West Columbia

29° 09.202, -095° 42.439

Teala Loring (1922-2007)

A talented and personable B-movie actress, Teala Loring was born in Denver, Colorado, as Marcia Eloise Griffin, one of five siblings. Two of her sisters were actresses Debra Paget and Lisa Gaye. Her mother was a vaudeville dancer, comedienne and nightclub singer who billed herself as Marguerite "Maggie" Gibson. Marcia grew up in a show business environment and made her first foray to the stage at the age of three. At 17, her family moved permanently to California and the following year Marcia became a Paramount starlet under the name Judith Gibson. As it turned out, there already was a Judith Gibson on the lot and producer Irwin Allen's suggestion of a change of moniker to a rarely used "good Irish name" (that being 'Teala') was happily accepted. Like so many other aspiring ingénues, Teala ran the usual gamut of ornamental bit parts in films like Holiday Inn (1942), The Powers Girl (1943) and Double Indemnity (1944). She had a brief furlough, though, when Paramount dispatched her to act on Broadway for a stint in Let's Face It with Danny Kaye. By 1944, she had made the decision not to renew her contract. Thus began the uneasy transition to Poverty Row and appearances in genre films for the likes of Sam Katzman's Banner Pictures, PRC and Monogram. She was third and fifth-billed, respectively, still on loan-out from Paramount, in Delinquent Daughters (1944) and Return of the Ape Man (1944) (with Bela Lugosi). After that, Teala found a (by her own admission) comfortable niche in assorted franchises ranging from the Bowery Boys to Charlie Chan and the Cisco Kid. She joined fading star Kay Francis in Allotment Wives (1945) and appeared in the lurid Black Market Babies (1945), which publicity touted as "an exciting tale of crime and corruption". Towards the end of her career, she also made two westerns despite being wary of horses. Having retired from acting in 1950, she commenced raising a rather large family of six children, eventually added to by fifteen grandchildren. She died in 2007 from injuries sustained in a traffic collision at the age of 84. IMDb

Section S1

Houston National Cemetery

Houston

29° 55.948, -095° 27.333

William Sparks (1761-1848)

William Sparks, militia soldier, farmer, and Baptist elder, was born to Matthew Sparks and Sarah (Thompson) Sparks on April 3, 1761, near Salisbury in Rowan County, North Carolina. Just prior to the American Revolution, the family moved to New River in Wilkes County (now Ashe County), North Carolina. Of Matthew’s known ten sons, three - John, Matthew Jr., and William - provided military service during the Revolutionary War. At the age of seventeen, William Sparks joined the Wilkes County Militia Regiment in 1778 as a mounted rifleman in companies commanded first by Capt. John Cleveland and later by Capt. John Beverly. At the end of the campaign, he was discharged and joined a company of mounted minuteman under the command of Capt. Andrew Baker and his brother, Lt. John Sparks. He served in this unit until the end of the war.

In 1784 Matthew Sparks moved his family to Georgia, in the newly-created county of Franklin, near present-day Athens. This land formerly belonged to the Creek Indians (known as the Oconee), but after the war, the British ceded their ally’s land to the Americans, and the area was opened to settlement by the Georgia legislature in February 1784, which precipitated the twelve-year Oconee War. As a result of attacks by the Creeks, the Sparks family constructed “Sparks Fort”; the structure was eventually burned during an attack in 1788.

Around 1791 William Sparks married Mary “Polly” Fielder in Franklin County, Georgia. They had seven children: Richard, Sarah, John, James, Edith, Levi, and Eli. In March 1791 Sparks received a land grant of 420 acres in Franklin County.  Before 1811 he moved his family across the Oconee River into Morgan County, Georgia. On September 16, 1811, William received a passport from the Georgia governor to travel through the Creek Nations with his family (consisting of his wife, five children, and two enslaved persons) and others to the Mississippi Territory, where the family settled near the village of Silver Creek, on the east side of the Pearl River, in newly-formed Marion County (present-day Lawrence County).

William Sparks was a deeply religious man of the Baptist faith, and throughout his life he served in a variety of church leadership positions and provided financial support. He and his wife Polly were members of the Silver Creek Baptist Church, which he represented at the Mississippi Baptist Association convention in October 1818. The following year, he and others were authorized to organize the Bethany Baptist Church at White Sandy Creek in Lawrence County. Sparks deeded two acres of land to Bethany Baptist Church on May 17, 1823, and was named a church trustee in 1824.

Sparks’s wife, Polly, most likely died sometime after November 1830. She and William sold their property in Lawrence County in November 1830 for their move to Yazoo County (which is now Holmes County). Polly Fielder Sparks is no longer found in any records in Mississippi after 1830 and is not on any documents with William after he moved to Texas.

According to his Revolutionary War pension application, William Sparks arrived in Texas in March 1836 and settled in the Nacogdoches area near his son Richard (who arrived in Texas in early 1834) and other relatives, in what was then called Sparks Settlement. All of his seven children and their families eventually settled in Texas.  While Sparks did not take an active role in the Texas Revolution, his family was well-represented in the Revolutionary Army, including his sons Richard and Eli, as well as two of his grandsons (William “Billy” Fielder and Stephen Franklin). If William Sparks arrived in Nacogdoches by the time of the Runaway Scrape, he would have taken shelter in the two-story log fort built by his son Richard. Families stayed inside the stockade and fort, located five miles north of Nacogdoches (where the community of Redfield is located today) until news reached them of Sam Houston’s victory at the battle of San Jacinto.

Sparks quickly rose to prominence within the Nacogdoches community. In August 1837 he was selected to be the moderator between a deputation from the Ionie (Ironi) and Anadaco (Anadoia) tribes of American Indians and the citizens of Nacogdoches. His son Richard, was a member of the committee of citizens charged with representing Nacogdoches in the peace negotiations.

As he did in Mississippi, William Sparks involved himself with the local Protestant community. His daughter-in-law, Massie Wadlington Sparks (wife of James), is credited with forming the faith community that became the first Baptist church in Texas. The first service was held under a live oak tree, just after the battle of San Jacinto, and led by a preacher Massie had invited. In October 1836 the community built a one-room log cabin to serve as a school house, named the Liberty School House, where church services were also held, and in May 1838 the Union Church was organized in the Liberty School House. It was named Union because it was a community of followers of various Protestant denominations. Each denomination met on a different day of the week. Sparks served the church as a deacon until April 1844, when he “petitioned the church to release [him] . . . as he was to [sic] old and infirm to attend to them any longer.” The Union Church was eventually renamed the Old North Baptist Church and is considered to be the oldest Baptist church in Texas.

Sparks is recorded as paying taxes to the Republic of Texas in 1837, 1839, 1840, 1845, and 1846. The 1840 Republic of Texas tax roll states that he owned 2,214 acres of land, in addition to two enslaved persons.

William Sparks died in 1848 and is presumed to have been buried on the land his son donated; now called the Old North Church Cemetery. Memorial plaques from both the Sons of the American Revolution and the Daughters of the American Revolution honoring William’s service during the American Revolution have been erected at the cemetery. TSHAOnline

Old North Church Cemetery
Nacogdoches

31° 40.053, -094° 39.468

Carl Nettles Reynolds (1903-1978)

Carl Nettles Reynolds, Major League Baseball player, was born to a farming family in LaRue, Henderson County, Texas, on February 1, 1903. He was the fourth child of Robert Peel Reynolds and Ann Elizabeth (Nettles) Reynolds. Reynolds attended the Alexander Institute (later Lon Morris College, closed in 2012) in Jacksonville, Texas. Moving on to Southwestern University in Georgetown, he was a multi-sports star and earned letters in baseball, football, basketball, and track. Primarily a shortstop on the baseball team, Reynolds was discovered during a game between Southwestern and Trinity College in Waxahachie in 1926 by Roy and Bessie Largent, a husband-and-wife scouting team employed by the Chicago White Sox. Roy Largent had come to the game to scout a Trinity pitcher but was impressed by Reynolds, who was subsequently signed by the duo. In early 1927 Reynolds, who had become a football and basketball coach at Lon Morris College, resigned to join the White Sox spring training camp in Shreveport.

Reynolds’s first stop as a professional was close to home, as the White Sox assigned him to the Palestine Pals of the Class D Lone Star League. Converted to an outfielder, he led the team in hits (180) and batting average (.372). Intrigued, the White Sox called Reynolds up for the final month of the season. He made his big-league debut on September 1, 1927, against the Cleveland Indians and got his first big league hit the next day. In 1928 Reynolds had his first full season with the White Sox, for whom he hit .323 in part-time duty. Promoted to full-time starter (primarily in right field) in 1929, he hit .317 and led the team in runs batted in (RBIs), albeit with a mere sixty-seven (the lack of offensive power was a major reason for the team’s 59–93 record). After the season, on November 9, 1929, Reynolds married eighteen-year-old Ruth Matilda Dayvault, who later became a nurse. They had two sons, Carl Jr. (born 1934) and Robert (born 1942).

In 1930 Reynolds had his best season. He drove home 104 runs while batting .359 with 202 hits, including eighteen triples and twenty-two home runs. Three of those home runs were consecutive - including two against future Hall-of-Famer Red Ruffing - and took place on July 2 in the second game of a doubleheader against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. After Reynolds slipped to .290 due to injuries in 1931, the White Sox traded him to the Washington Senators.

While with the Senators in 1932, Reynolds was involved in an incident that made headlines nationwide. During the first game of a July 4 doubleheader against the Yankees in Washington, Reynolds crashed into Yankee catcher Bill Dickey while scoring. It wasn’t clear that Reynolds had touched the plate, however, so his teammates in the Senators’ dugout yelled at him to go back and do so. Dickey, who had been knocked out in a play at the plate during a recent game, thought Reynolds was returning to take another shot at him, so he punched him. This was the only blow struck, but it broke Reynolds’s jaw. American League President Will Harridge fined Dickey $1,000 and suspended him for thirty days. With his jaws wired shut, Reynolds was out for almost six weeks. The injury led to a life-threatening incident. On July 19 Reynolds was in a taxicab when he became ill and started to vomit. Thinking quickly, his wife snipped the wires with a pair of manicure scissors so Reynolds could open his mouth, thus averting death by aspiration. When the Yankees returned to Washington in August, Reynolds and Dickey were both back in action, and police officers were stationed on the field to deter any misconduct. The players remained docile.

Reynolds finished the 1932 season with a creditable offensive year (a .305 batting average in 406 at bats). Nevertheless, the Senators traded him to the St. Louis Browns before the 1933 season. Reynolds responded with a decent season (a .286 batting average in 475 at bats), but there were few witnesses. The combination of the Great Depression, the team’s poor record (55–96), and competition from the St. Louis Cardinals’ colorful Gashouse Gang assured the Browns a dismal year at the box office at Sportsman’s Park (ironically, the Browns owned the ballpark and leased it out to the Cardinals). The Browns attracted just 88,113 fans for the entire season. It was not their worst showing, as they drew just 80,922 in 1935–the all-time major league low.

At season’s end Reynolds was dealt to the Boston Red Sox. In the 1934 season he batted .303 and drove home eighty-six runs in 113 games. After he hit .270 in part-time duty in Boston the following season, Reynolds was traded back to the Senators, where he had a similar season (.276). Though he had a .306 lifetime batting average with 1,135 hits, the Senators traded him to a minor league club, the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association, before the 1937 season. Reynolds batted .355 with 218 hits, 17 home runs, and 110 runs batted in. At the conclusion of the minor league season, his contract was purchased by the Chicago Cubs, and he spent the remainder of the 1937 season with them. In 1938 the Cubs won the National League pennant. In the ensuing World Series, however, the Cubs were swept by the Yankees in four games, and Reynolds was hitless in thirteen plate appearances with just one base on balls. Nevertheless, the losing team received a paycheck of $4,675 per player.

Reynolds returned to the Cubs in 1939, but it was the worst year of his career, as he hit just .246 in part-time duty. At the age of thirty-six his major league career was over. He had a lifetime batting average of .302 and 1,357 hits. Reynolds had been an asset in the outfield, as he had a strong arm (he threw and batted right-handed), particularly important in center and right field, where he played most of his games. He was also fleet of foot for a heavy-set player (6 feet, 194 pounds).

In 1940 Reynolds accepted a position as player-manager with the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. This was his final year as a player. In 1941 he worked for the Angels as a coach and scout but did not play. After the season Reynolds returned to his farm in Wharton, Texas. He had purchased the farm in 1934 and spent the rest of his life there. As a prominent citizen in Wharton, he served on the boards of a local bank, a hospital, and Wharton County Junior College. Reynolds’s eldest son, Carl Jr., a first baseman, played baseball at Rice University. After graduating in 1956, he played two seasons of minor league ball in the Chicago Cubs system. He also carried on the family tradition of farming.

During the last years of his life, Reynolds suffered from myelofibrosis and myeloid metaplasia. He died on May 29, 1978, at Methodist Hospital of Houston. He was buried at Wharton City Cemetery next to his wife Ruth, who had died in 1974. His son Robert died in 2005, while Carl Jr. died in 2019. Both are also interred in the family plot. In 1971 Reynolds was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. In 1990 he was posthumously enshrined in the Southwestern University Hall of Honor. TSHAOnline

Wharton City Cemetery
Wharton

29° 18.601, -096° 05.490

John Reynolds Hughes (1855-1947)

John Reynolds Hughes, Texas Ranger, was born on February 11, 1855, in Henry County, near Cambridge, Illinois, to Thomas and Jane “Jennie” Augusta (Bond) Hughes. In 1865 the family moved to Dixon, Illinois, where John attended country schools sporadically. Later they moved to Mound City, Kansas. At age fourteen Hughes left home to work on a neighboring cattle ranch but soon left there for Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). He lived among the Choctaw and Osage Indians for four years before moving to the Comanche Nation in 1874; there he traded in the Fort Sill area and became friends with Quanah Parker. After six years in Indian Territory and after a brief stint as a traildriver on the Chisholm Trail, Hughes bought a farm near Liberty Hill, Travis County, Texas, and entered the horse business. In May 1886 he set out to find a band of men who had stolen horses from his and neighboring ranches, and after trailing them for several months he killed some of the thieves and captured the rest in New Mexico; he returned the horses to his neighbors. This exploit gained the attention of the Texas Rangers. Ranger Ira Aten enlisted Hughes’s help in tracking an accused murderer, and Hughes assisted in finding the fugitive. He was persuaded to enlist in the Rangers at Georgetown, sworn in on August 10, 1887, and assigned to Company D, Frontier Battalion, at Camp Wood. He served mainly along the border between Texas and Mexico. In 1893 Hughes was a sergeant in charge of a Ranger detachment at Alpine.

Following the death of Capt. Frank Jones of Company D in 1893, John Hughes was made captain of the border company and sought more collaborative relationships with both local and Mexican officials. He was frequently in the El Paso area. To quell crossover violence and supposed banditry, Hughes developed relationships with the revolution’s leadership, such as Francisco Villa, and local Mexican residents. At the turn of the twentieth century, smuggling, ranch raids, and political instability in Mexico contributed to tension and the official and public perception of lawlessness along the border. Tensions between the Mexican community and the Rangers became highly localized and retained an element of racial animosity. Unlike many of his predecessors, Captain Hughes eased tensions through diplomacy as he did in 1908 when a group of vigilantes demanded that S. A. Wright, an Anglo who killed a Mexican resident, be handed over to the mob. Hughes convinced the mob to stand down and took the prisoner safely to face justice. He served mainly along the border between Texas and Mexico. Known as the “Border Boss,” he contended with cattle rustling, thefts at the Shafter silver mines, and horse stealing, among other crimes. In October 1909 he led the team of Rangers in charge of protecting President William Howard Taft and Gen. Porfirio Díaz during their meeting in El Paso. He was later appointed senior captain, with headquarters in Austin, and in January 1915, having served as a captain and Ranger longer than any other man, he retired from the force. Zane Grey's novel The Lone Star Ranger (1914) is dedicated to Hughes and his Texas Rangers. 

Hughes never married and was a deeply religious man. He served for many years as a superintendent of a Sunday school in Ysleta, Texas. He spent his later years prospecting and traveling by automobile. He became chairman of the board of directors and largest single stockholder of the Citizens Industrial Bank of Austin but maintained his residence at his ranch in Ysleta, near El Paso. In 1940 he was selected the first recipient of the Certificate of Valor, an award inaugurated to call attention to the bravery of peace officers of the nation. Hughes moved to Austin to live with a niece, and on June 3, 1947, at the age of ninety-two, he took his own life with his pearl-handled Colt .45 pistol. He was in poor health and although never officially diagnosed according to close friends and family he suffered from depression. Hughes was the oldest living Ranger captain at the time of his death and the last of the so-called “Four Great Captains” - a reference to the captains of the four companies that emerged from the reorganization of the Rangers in 1901. He was buried in the State Cemetery. He is an inductee in the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. TSHAOnline

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

30° 15.939, -097° 43.636

Robert Wilson (1793-1856)

Robert Wilson, entrepreneur and politician, son of James and Elizabeth (Hardcastle) Wilson, was born on December 7, 1793, in Talbot County, Maryland. His academic education was supplemented by training in the carpentry and machinist trades. He served with Maryland troops during the War of 1812. With his new wife, Margaret Pendergrast, he moved to St. Louis in 1819. The family moved to Natchez in 1823, and Margaret died soon afterward from yellow fever. The couple's two sons were placed with relatives. In Natchez Wilson became a successful contractor and also opened a mercantile business. By 1827 he had formed a partnership with William Plunkett Harris to operate steamboats along the Mississippi and Red rivers. Within a year Wilson had joined his partner's Texas brother, John Richardson Harris, in developing Harrisburg. By the time John Harris died in 1829 from yellow fever, Wilson was living in Harrisburg, where he owned a gristmill and sawmill. He was later accused by Harris's widow of fraudulently claiming much of her late husband's business as his own. Before her suit was settled in 1838, promoters Augustus C. and John K. Allen had dropped plans to develop their new city of Houston on this disputed site.

Wilson married wealthy New Orleans widow Sarah Reed in 1830. At some point he built two customhouses for the Mexican government, at Galveston and Velasco. In 1832 he joined fellow Texans in laying siege to the garrison at Anahuac. Wilson subsequently provided two ships to transport the Mexican troops at Anahuac back to Mexico. In 1832 and 1833 he was elected a delegate to conventions in San Felipe that considered Texas grievances. Wilson volunteered for the army in 1835 and became a colonel. After participating in the siege of Bexar in November, he left for New Orleans to raise money and volunteers. When he returned in May 1836, after the San Jacinto victory, he found that his entire livelihood at Harrisburg had been burned by the Mexican army. Wilson was elected to the Texas Senate in 1836 and served a three year term. He became associated with the Allen brothers in developing Houston and also promoted the town of Hamilton (which merged with Harrisburg in 1839) and a railroad. In 1838 he was a candidate (apparently self-announced) for president, but he received only 252 votes against Mirabeau B. Lamar's 6,995. In 1844 Wilson again quixotically ran for president but was ignored. The next year he was defeated for a delegate position to the convention that approved annexation. For the last ten years of his life he avoided politics and focused on the real estate business. His more successful son James Theodore Wilson twice served as mayor of Houston after the Civil War. Robert Wilson died on May 25, 1856, and was buried in a family cemetery in Houston. His remains were later moved to Glenwood Cemetery. TSHAOnline

Section C-2
Glenwood Cemetery
Houston

29° 46.030, -095° 23.251

Don Deadric Robey (1903-1975)

Don Deadric Robey, music entrepreneur, was born on November 1, 1903, in Houston. A life-long passion for music led Robey into promotional work for ballroom dances in the Houston area. In the late 1930s he spent three years in Los Angeles, where he operated a nightclub called the Harlem Grill. After returning to Houston, he opened the famous Bronze Peacock Dinner Club in 1945. He booked top jazz bands and orchestras to play the club, which became a huge success.

Building from this venture, with his assistant Evelyn Johnson, Robey opened record stores and started Buffalo Booking Agency a talent-management agency, by 1950. The first client he had signed was a twenty-three-year-old singer and guitarist named Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. Dissatisfied with the way Aladdin Records was handling Brown, Robey decided to start his own record company in 1949; he named it Peacock Records after his nightclub. Over the years Robey added an impressive array of talent to his label, with artists including Memphis Slim, Marie Adams, Floyd Dixon, and Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton, whose 1953 recording of "Hound Dog" was later imitated by Elvis Presley. Robey added a gospel division to Peacock Records with artists such as the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Sensational Nightingales, and the Mighty Clouds of Joy. Peacock became one of the leading gospel labels in the United States. Robey added a second gospel label, Song Bird, in 1963–64.

In August 1952 he formed a partnership with Duke Records owners David J. Mattis and Bill Fitzgerald. Less than a year later, in April 1953, Robey gained full control over the Duke label. He closed his Bronze Peacock Club and established the headquarters of both Duke and Peacock there. His acquisition of Duke brought recording rights to artists Johnny Ace, Junior Parker, Roscoe Gordon, and Bobby "Blue" Bland. Between 1957 and 1970, Bland recorded thirty-six songs that reached the Billboard R&B charts, thus becoming Robey's most consistently successful artist. A subsidiary label, Back Beat, was formed in 1957 and became a soul-music label in the 1960s. The talent roster on Back Beat included Joe Hinton, O.V. Wright, and Carl Carlton.

At the height of his music-promotion and recording success, Robey had more than a hundred artists and groups under contract to his various labels. At his headquarters, he built an in-house studio that served largely as both a rehearsal complex and a facility for making demo recordings. He made a considerable number of his released recordings at Houston’s ACA and Gold Star studios. Although controversial because of his shrewd business practices and dealings with artists, he is credited with substantially influencing the development of Texas blues by finding and recording blues musicians. His music director, Joe Scott, helped define Texas blues through his distinctive arrangements.

Robey's business began to decline in the mid-1960s. He sold Duke-Peacock Records and the subsidiary labels to ABC–Dunhill on May 23, 1973, with the agreement that he would stay on as consultant and oversee the release of catalog materials, a position he held until his death. He was a leader in the United Negro College Fund Drive, a member of Douglass Burrell Consistory No. 56, Doric Temple No. 76, and Sanderson Commandery No. 2 K.T.; and a Century Member of the YMCA, NAACP, and Chamber of Commerce. He died of a heart attack in Houston on June 16, 1975, and was survived by his wife of fifteen years, Murphy L. Robey, three children, three sisters, and seven grandchildren. The Masonic Lodge performed graveside services for him at Paradise North Cemetery in Houston. On April 16, 2011, the Harris County Historical Commission dedicated a Texas Historical Marker to Robey’s Peacock Records at its original offices (now the Louis Robey Professional Building) on Lyons Avenue. TSHAOnline

Paradise North Cemetery
Houston

29° 53.306, -095° 27.289

Abner Pickens Blocker (1856-1943)

Abner (Ab) Pickens Blocker, trail driver, youngest of the three sons of Abner Pickens and Cornelia Randolph (Murphy) Blocker, was born on January 30, 1856, on the family ranch near Austin, Texas. He spent his youth in farm and ranch work and in 1876 joined his older brothers, William B. and John R. Blocker, on their range in Blanco County. In 1877 he helped deliver 3,000 steers to John Sparks in Wyoming. Over the next seventeen years he drove longhorn cattle up the trails from Texas to various buyers in Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, and as far north as the Canadian border. In the summer of 1885 he delivered 2,500 head from Tom Green County to B. H. (Barbecue) Campbell, manager of the Capitol Syndicate's Buffalo Springs division in Dallam County. Campbell had contracted to buy cattle for the newly established XIT Ranch, and this was the first herd from South and West Texas to arrive. Blocker devised the XIT brand, for which the syndicate's ranch was named. Afterward he was involved in the dispute at Fort Supply, Oklahoma, resulting from the attempts of Kansas ranchers to quarantine the herds of his brother and other South Texas cattlemen and keep the Texans from crossing their land.

Beginning in 1887 Blocker tried cotton farming for two years, but a period of drought soon put him back in the saddle. In 1890 he was made range boss of his brother's Chupadero Ranch, near Eagle Pass. His last overland trail drive was to Deadwood, South Dakota, with Harris Franklin's herd in 1893. In 1896 he married Florence Baldwin; they had a daughter. The family resided on a ranch in La Salle County, fifteen miles southeast of Cotulla, until a prolonged drought ruined them financially. In 1903, after living in Oklahoma for a year, the Blockers returned to Eagle Pass and subsequently took up residence again at the Chupadero Ranch. There they remained until 1912, when Blocker began working for the (later the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association). He died in San Antonio on August 9, 1943, and was buried in Dignowity Cemetery. TSHAOnline

Section B
Dignowity Cemetery
San Antonio

29° 25.408, -098° 28.020

Joel Walter Robison (1815-1889)

Joel Walter Robison, soldier and legislator, was born in Washington County, Georgia, on October 4 or 5, 1815, the son of John G. Robison. He moved to Texas from Georgia with his parents and one sister in 1831 and settled first near Columbia in Brazoria County. With his father, he served in Capt. Henry Stevenson Brown's company at the battle of Velasco on June 26, 1832. In 1833 the family moved to a farm on the west bank of Cummings Creek in Fayette County, and Robison became a volunteer Indian fighter in the company of Capt. John York. He served at the siege of Bexar in 1835 and took part in the Grass Fight and the battle of Concepción. At the battle of San Jacinto, Robison was a private in Capt. William Jones Elliott Heard's Company F of Col. Edward Burleson's First Regiment, Texas Volunteers, and was one of the party that captured Antonio López de Santa Anna. The Mexican general is said to have entered the Texan camp riding double on Robison's horse. On December 14, 1836, Sam Houston commissioned Robison a first lieutenant in the Texas Rangers. In 1837 Robison married Emily Almeida Alexander, who was born in Kentucky in 1821. They became the parents of seven children. In 1840 Robison owned 6,652 acres in Fayette County, and on January 31, 1840, he was elected commissioner of the Fayette County land office. His brother-in-law, Jerome B. Alexander, was killed in the Dawson Massacre in 1842. Robison became a prosperous planter and was elected in 1860 as a Democrat to the Eighth Legislature, where he favored secession. He served until 1862. From 1870 until 1879 he owned a store in Warrenton in partnership with one of his sons. At the end of the Reconstruction period he was elected to the Constitutional Convention of 1875. Emily Robison died in 1887, and Joel died at his home in Warrenton on August 4, 1889. Both were buried in the Florida Chapel Cemetery near Round Top, but in 1932 their remains were moved to the State Cemetery in Austin. Robison, an active Mason, was second vice president of the Texas Veterans Association at the time of his death. TSHAOnline

Monument Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

30° 15.914, -097° 43.638

Ernest Anyz "Chief" Koy (1909-2007)

Ernest Anyz “Ernie” Koy, Major League Baseball player, was born in Sealy, Texas, on September 17, 1909, to Frank and Lucille (Lambert) Koy. The nickname “Chief” was bestowed on him, as was often the case with players who had American Indian ancestry. In 1928 Koy graduated from Sealy High School. He began his collegiate athletic career at Blinn College in Brenham, Texas, and later transferred to the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). Moving on to the University of Texas at Austin, Koy played fullback on the football team from 1930 to 1932 and outfield on the baseball team from 1931 to 1933. He was a member of the All-Southwest Conference teams in both baseball and football during those years. In football, he was the leading scorer in the conference in 1931 and served as co-captain of the team in 1932. In baseball, he was an All-American outfielder and captain of the 1933 team.

Signed by the New York Yankees after graduating from the University of Texas in 1933, Koy spent five seasons in the Yankees minor league organization. He began his professional career with the Durham Bulls of the Class B Piedmont League. In 1937 he was promoted to the Binghamton Triplets of the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League. Later in the season Koy was promoted to the Newark Bears of the Double-A International League, with whom he played through 1936. He spent 1937 with the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, another Double-A affiliate (one of three that season) of the Yankees. During the baseball off-season, he was also an assistant football coach at Sam Houston State Teachers College (now Sam Houston State University). Throughout his minor league career, Koy put up good numbers, but gaining the ultimate promotion to the Yankees was difficult in those days. In 1936 and 1937, when Koy was playing for their top minor league teams, the Yankees were World Series champions. They were awash with talent and able to maintain more than one Double-A affiliate.

Just before the 1938 season Koy, at age twenty-eight, was sold to the Brooklyn Dodgers. On opening day in 1938 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, Koy started at left field for the Dodgers. Notably, he was third in the batting order, a space usually occupied by the team’s best pure hitter, one who can hit for average as well as power. Koy hit a solo home run in his first major league at bat off Wayne LaMaster of the Philadelphia Phillies. He finished the day with three hits in five at bats in a 12–5 Brooklyn victory. Koy went on to have a solid rookie year. He batted .299 in full-time duty with eleven home runs and seventy-six runs batted in. Befitting a former fullback (he stood 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds), he blended power and speed, as indicated by his thirteen triples. His record of fifteen stolen bases was only one behind league leader Stan Hack of the Chicago Cubs. A highlight of Koy’s rookie year was that Babe Ruth, three years after retiring as a player, appeared as a Dodgers coach on June 19 and remained with the team through the end of the season. Dodgers president Larry MacPhail said he signed Ruth for his “inspirational value,” which apparently was lacking, as the Dodgers finished the season in seventh (out of eight) place with a 69-80 record.

After a slight sophomore slump in 1939, Koy underperformed at the start of the 1940 season and was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in a multi-player deal. He finished strongly for the Cardinals, batting .310 in 383 plate appearances. Nevertheless, the Cardinals sold him to the Cincinnati Reds early in the 1941 season. A year later the Philadelphia Phillies (then the Phils) purchased him from the Reds. At age thirty-one he had been demoted to part-time status. He played his last professional game in 1942. In 1942 Koy joined the U.S. Navy and served through the duration of World War II. After his discharge in 1946 at age thirty-six, he was officially released by the Phillies. He retired from the major leagues with 515 hits and a .279 batting average.

On March 10, 1936, Koy married Jane Moore Cameron in Bellville, Texas. Their son, Ernie Koy, Jr., born in 1942, went on to play football for the University of Texas at Austin’s 1963 national championship team under head coach Darrell Royal. He followed up with a six-year career as a running back for the New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL). Koy’s younger son, Ted Koy, born in 1947, followed a similar career path. After playing with the undefeated 1969 University of Texas team, he played in the NFL, mostly as a tight end, for five seasons with the Oakland Raiders and Buffalo Bills. Koy’s daughter, Margaret Koy Kistler, became one of the first female sportswriters in Texas. Her byline appeared in the Bellville Times, the Daily Texan, the Abilene Reporter-News, the Dallas Morning News, and the Temple Daily Telegram.

A longtime resident of Bellville, Texas, Ernie Koy, Sr., died there at the age of ninety-seven on January 1, 2007. He was buried in Oak Knoll Cemetery in Bellville. He was survived by his wife of more than seventy years and their three grown children (his daughter Margaret passed a little more than a year after him, and his wife Jane lived to be 102). In 1960 Koy was named to the Longhorn Hall of Honor - he was joined by his sons Ted in 1995 and Ernie Jr. in 1998. In 1986 Koy was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. TSHAOnline

Oak Knoll Cemetery
Bellville

29° 56.744, -096° 14.997

Paul Francis Buskirk (1923-2002)

Paul Francis Buskirk, mandolin player and multi-instrumentalist, was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, on April 8, 1923, the son of Lottie Mamel and John Everett Buskirk. He lived much of his life in the Houston area. Paul Buskirk was a popular multi-instrumentalist who appeared on the Grand Ole Opry and at many other venues throughout the United States and around the world. Buskirk performed with a number of prominent musicians, including Chet Atkins, Tex Ritter, Roy Acuff, Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price, Eddy Arnold, and Rex Allen. However, he is perhaps best-known for his close personal and professional relationship with singer–songwriter Willie Nelson.

Paul Buskirk began playing music at the age of eleven and performed with his parent’s family band. He learned violin and applied those lessons to learning the mandolin. He became an accomplished guitarist and later worked for Gene Austin. He also mastered the banjo and dobro. However, it was his skill on the mandolin that garnered Buskirk the greatest fame. He has been described by country music historian Bill Malone as a “superb mandolin player…who was one of the first ‘modern’ exponents of that instrument (that is, jazz-influenced) in country music….” Fellow mandolinist Red Rictor recalled “that during an era when bluegrass king Bill Monroe totally dominated the instrument, Buskirk had a reputation for actually having figured out a different way of playing on mandolin.”

He was a member of the Blue Ridge Mountain Folk (in Texas), which included the Callahan Brothers (Joe and Bill), and toured the Southwest. The group recorded for Decca in 1941. During World War II Buskirk served in the United States Army. Back in Texas, reportedly while operating a music store in Pasadena, Buskirk gave a young Willie Nelson guitar lessons and later gave him a job teaching music lessons. Thus began a longtime musical association between Nelson and Buskirk, who is credited as having helped give Nelson his start in the music business. Buskirk purchased the rights to Nelson’s gospel song “Family Bible” for fifty dollars. They co-wrote the song “Night Life.” Originally recorded in Houston with Nelson and the band Paul Buskirk and His Little Men, the song went on to be a country hit for Faron Young and was covered by numerous other artists. At a number of his state fair performances, Buskirk's opening act was a young Elvis Presley.

Buskirk helped produce and he performed on Nelson’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow album in 1981. In 1992 Nelson helped produce Buskirk’s record Nacogdoches Waltz. Later in life and after retirement, Buskirk lived in Nacogdoches. He was a Mason as well as a Shriner.

Paul Buskirk died of cancer in Nacogdoches on March 16, 2002, at the age of seventy-eight. He was preceded in death by his wife Mary Francis Buskirk and his two daughters Dorothy Kathleen and Paula Gail. He was survived by his brothers Wilbert and Harold. Paul Buskirk is memorialized with a music scholarship established in his name at Stephen F. Austin University. TSHAOnline

Lower Melrose Cemetery
Nacogdoches

31° 33.913, -094° 28.933