Jimmy Don Cox (1951-2012)

    Cox was born in Dallas on July 18, 1951, and adopted by Jake and Artie Cox of San Angelo, Texas, at nine months of age. In the spring of 1969, Jimmy graduated from Lake View High School, enlisted in the US Navy and was sent to Vietnam to fight in the war. After being discharged, he got a job as a wrangler at the Wickenburg Inn Tennis & Guest Ranch near Wickenburg, Arizona. During his downtime, he started tinkering with painting and bronze sculpture and over time became quite adept at it, with many of his works in museums all over the country. When asked what his favorite subject, said he favored painting and sculpting the "$10 a day" cowboys. He was also an actor, known for The Young Riders (1989), Gunsmoke: To the Last Man (1992) and The Good Old Boys (1995). On June 7, 2012, Cox died of cancer at the Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston and buried in the veteran's cemetery.

Section C-13

Houston National Cemetery

Houston

COORDINATES

29° 55.833, -095° 26.798

Henry Noble Potter (1822-1863)

    Henry N. Potter, Galveston County legislator, was born in 1822 in Connecticut and was educated in New York. In 1838 he moved to Texas, where he received a conditional certificate for land in 1839 and an unconditional certificate in 1845. He was elected Galveston city attorney in 1839 and held the position for only a month before the council abrogated the office on August 28 and ordered his accounts audited. Potter represented Galveston County in the Seventh Congress of the Republic of Texas in 1842 and 1843, and in 1851 he ran unsuccessfully for the United States Congress. He died soon after the Civil War. Source


Trinity Episcopal Cemetery
Galveston

COORDINATES

29° 17.604, -094° 48.681

John Austin Wharton (1828-1865)

    John Austin Wharton, Confederate major-general, the son of Sarah Ann (Groce) and William Harris Wharton, was born near Nashville, Tennessee, on July 3, 1828. Wharton was brought to Galveston as an infant and spent his early years on a Brazoria County plantation. At the age of eight he was sent to the home of his uncle, Leonard W. Groce, for instruction under a Mr. Deans from Boston, who later founded a school at Galveston which Wharton attended until he was fifteen. From 1846 to 1850 Wharton attended South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), where he served as a commander in the student cadet corps. In 1848 he married Eliza Penelope Johnson, daughter of David Johnson, the governor of South Carolina. Following college, Wharton returned to Texas and studied law with former United States Senator William Preston, Jack Harris, and Elisha M. Pease, all well-known and successful lawyers. After he was licensed to practice, Wharton established the firm of Wharton and Terry with Clint Terry at Brazoria. 

    In 1860 Wharton served as a Breckinridge presidential elector and later represented Brazoria County at the state Secession Convention, voting for secession. In addition to his career in law and politics, Wharton was also a planter of considerable means. The 1860 tax roll for Brazoria County showed that he owned $167,004 of taxable property, including 135 slaves. When the war began Wharton was elected captain of Company B, Eighth Texas Cavalry, better known as Terry's Texas Rangers. He rose to command the regiment after the deaths of Col. Benjamin F. Terry and Lt. Col. Thomas S. Lubbock. Wharton led his troop with distinction at the battle of Shiloh, where he was wounded. His leadership in the course of Gen. Braxton Bragg's 1862 Kentucky invasion earned him a promotion to the rank of brigadier general on November 18, 1862. His actions at the battle of Chickamauga in the fall of 1863 earned him another promotion, to the rank of major general. In February 1864 the general was transferred to Richard Taylor's Trans-Mississippi Department in Louisiana. Upon his arrival he was assigned to lead the cavalry and took part in the closing scenes of the Red River campaign. 

    On April 6, 1865, while visiting Gen. John B. Magruder's headquarters at the Fannin Hotel in Houston, Wharton was killed by fellow officer George W. Baylor in a personal quarrel that grew out of "an unpleasant misunderstanding over military matters." Even though Wharton was found to have been unarmed, Baylor was acquitted of murder charges in 1868. Wharton was originally buried at Hempstead but was later moved to the State Cemetery in Austin. Source

Confederate Field
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.904, -097° 43.603

Elizabeth Plemmons Tumlinson (1778-1829)

    Lara Elizabeth Plemmons Tumlinson, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred, was born to John and Elizabeth Jane Plemmons in Lincoln County, North Carolina, on July 7, 1778. In 1796 she married John Jackson Tumlinson and they had eleven children (or more). In 1821 Elizabeth and her husband left Arkansas for Texas to settle in the colony being established by Stephen F. Austin. Elizabeth was widowed in July 1823 when her husband, who was serving as alcalde of the Colorado District, was killed by American Indians. In 1824, Elizabeth received a league and a labor of land that had been selected by her husband, on the Colorado River at the site of present-day Columbus. Elizabeth lived on this property until her death on January 5, 1829. Following her death the land was divided into six sections among her heirs on December 19, 1833. Eventually, she was buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin. Source 

 

Note: This is likely a cenotaph 

Confederate Field 

Texas State Cemetery 

Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.925, -097° 43.591

Benjamin Rush Milam (1788-1835)

    Ben Milam, soldier, colonizer, and entrepreneur, was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, on October 20, 1788, the fifth of the six children of Moses and Elizabeth Pattie (Boyd) Milam. He had little or no formal schooling. He enlisted in the Kentucky militia and fought for several months in the War of 1812. When his period of enlistment was completed he returned to Frankfort. In 1818 he was in Texas trading with the Comanche Indians on the Colorado River when he met David G. Burnet. The two became friends. In New Orleans in 1819 Milam met José Félix Trespalacios and James Long, who were planning an expedition to help the revolutionaries in Mexico and Texas gain independence from Spain. Milam joined Trespalacios and was commissioned a colonel. While they sailed to Veracruz, Long marched to La Bahía, which he easily captured, only to discover that the people and soldiers there were revolutionaries, not Royalists. They gave him a hostile reception, and he moved on to San Antonio. In Veracruz and Mexico City, Trespalacios and Milam met with the same reception that Long had received and were imprisoned. Ultimately, with General Long, they were able to legitimize their purposes and intentions to the new revolutionary government which, in turn, accepted and treated them with respect and generosity.

    Long was shot and killed by a guard under circumstances that convinced Milam that the killing was plotted by Trespalacios. Milam and several friends then planned to kill Trespalacios. The plot was discovered, however, and Milam and his friends were imprisoned in Mexico City. Through the influence of Joel R. Poinsett, United States minister, all were released. By the spring of 1824 Milam returned to Mexico, which now had adopted the Constitution of 1824 and had a republican form of government. In Mexico City he met Arthur G. Wavell, an Englishman who had become a general in the Mexican army. Trespalacios, now prominent in the new government also, made overtures to Milam to renew their friendship, and Milam accepted. He was granted Mexican citizenship and commissioned a colonel in the Mexican army in 1824. In 1825-26 he became Wavell's partner in a silver mine in Nuevo León; the two also obtained empresario grants in Texas. Wavell managed the mining in Mexico and leased the most productive mine to an English company, which by 1828 was unable to fulfill the terms of their contract. In 1829 Milam sought to organize a new mining company in partnership with David G. Burnet, but they were unable to raise the necessary capital. In April 1830 the Mexican Congress passed a law prohibiting further immigration of United States citizens into Texas. This was one reason why Milam, as Wavell's agent for his Red River colony, and Robert M. Williamson, as agent for Milam's colony, were not able to introduce the required number of settlers specified in their empresario contracts, which were due to expire in 1832. During this time Milam removed the great Red River raft of debris, which for years had blocked traffic in the upper part of the Red River for all vessels except canoes and small, flat-bottomed boats. He then purchased a steamboat, the Alps, the first of its kind to pass through the channel.

    In 1835 Milam went to Monclova, the capital of Coahuila and Texas, to urge the new governor, Agustín Viesca, to send a land commissioner to Texas to provide the settlers with land titles. Viesca agreed to do this. However, before Milam could leave the city, word came that Antonio López de Santa Anna had overthrown the representative government of Mexico, had established a dictatorship, and was en route to Texas with an army. Viesca fled with Milam, but both were captured and imprisoned at Monterrey. Milam eventually escaped and headed for the Texas border, which he reached in October 1835. By accident he encountered a company of soldiers commanded by George Collinsworth, from whom he heard of the movement in Texas for independence. Milam joined them, helped capture Goliad, and then marched with them to join the main army to capture San Antonio. While returning from a scouting mission in the southwest on December 4, 1835, Milam learned that a majority of the army had decided not to attack San Antonio as planned but to go into winter quarters. Convinced that this decision would be a disaster for the cause of independence, Milam then made his famous, impassioned plea: "Who will go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?" Three hundred volunteered, and the attack, which began at dawn on December 5, ended on December 9 with the surrender of Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos and the Mexican army. Milam did not survive to witness the victory, however. On December 7 he was shot in the head by a sniper and died instantly. In 1897 the Daughters of the Republic of Texas erected a monument at Milam's gravesite in Milam Park, San Antonio. The marker was moved in 1976, and the location of the grave was forgotten until 1993, when a burial was unearthed that archeologists think is probably Milam's. Source


Milam Park
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.570, -098° 29.978