DeWitt Clinton Giddings (1827-1903)

    Dewitt Clinton Giddings, Democratic politician and early Texas businessman, the youngest of eight children of James and Lucy (Demming) Giddings, was born on July 18, 1827, in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. His father, a farmer, had been a sea captain. Giddings financed his education as a civil engineer in New York by teaching school part-time. In 1847 he was employed as a railroad engineer, and in 1850 he began legal studies in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. In 1852 he joined his brother Jabez D. Giddings in Brenham, Texas. In 1853 Dewitt Giddings was admitted to the Texas bar, received license to practice before the state district and supreme courts, and became his brother's junior partner in Brenham. Giddings specialized in civil and probate cases and developed a lucrative legal practice and statewide reputation in state and federal courts before the Civil War. In 1859 he was construction superintendent of the Washington County Railroad. The Giddings brothers arranged a county school-fund loan and contributed financially to make possible completion of the railroad in 1860. In 1862, despite Unionist sentiment, D. C. Giddings enlisted as a private in the Confederate Twenty-first Texas Cavalry (First Texas Lancers). He was elected captain and then lieutenant colonel. In absence of Col. William Carter, Giddings was actual commander of this regiment during the war. He was briefly captured and exchanged in 1862. He participated in Arkansas and Louisiana campaigns and John S. Marmaduke's Missouri raid.

    In 1867 Giddings aided yellow fever victims in Brenham; the same year, he was elected foreman of Hook and Ladder Company No. 1, which, despite its name, was organized to resist the actions of Union troops. Giddings was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1866. He served on the Resolutions Committee of the conservative state convention in 1868. As a Democrat, he won the 1871 special election for United States congressman from the Third Texas District, in part because of his efforts to gain broad ethnic support. After Republican governor Edmund J. Davis certified the reelection of his opponent, William T. Clark, Giddings won his appeal to the United States House of Representatives, which unanimously seated him in 1872 . He was the first Southern Democrat to enter Congress during Reconstruction. He was reelected to the Forty-third Congress and as an advocate of silver defeated independent candidate George Washington Jones to serve in the Forty-fifth Congress (1877-79). After the Civil War Giddings and his brother J. D. became land agents and owners of holdings throughout Texas. They founded the Giddings and Giddings bank at Brenham in 1866. Dewitt Giddings earned a large commission during Governor Richard Coke's term when he successively recovered $339,000 in proceeds from state-owned bonds sold in Europe during the war.

    After his brother's death, Giddings managed bank operations and in 1884 became sole owner of the Giddings bank. By 1874 he was a large stockholder in Texas Mutual Life Insurance of Galveston. He chartered the short-lived Brazos Valley, Brenham and Gulf Railway Company in 1888 to promote lower railroad rates. His activities focused on banking after 1875. Giddings was a Texas presidential elector at large in 1876, a member of the Platforms and Resolutions Committee at Texas Democratic conventions in 1884, 1888, 1892, and 1894, and a Texas delegate to the national Democratic convention in 1884, 1888, and 1892. In 1886 he ran unsuccessfully against Lawrence Sullivan (Sul) Ross for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Giddings campaigned against a proposed state prohibition amendment and was chairman of the Anti-Prohibition State Convention in May 1887. As an opponent of Governor James S. Hogg's reelection, Giddings was chairman of the June 1892 state Democratic platform committee, coauthor of the committee's minority report opposing free silver at the Car-Stable Convention (August 1892), and member of the Turner Hall Convention platform committee. In August 1894 he supported the national Democratic party platform as chairman of the state Democratic platform committee. He was a delegate of the Texas Gold Democratic Conference to the Memphis Convention (1895) and delegate at large of Texas Gold Democrats to the Indianapolis Convention. He also served on the state Deep Water Convention Resolutions Committee to promote federal appropriations for a Gulf of Mexico port in 1888. In the 1880s he supported Populists within Washington County to destroy Republican domination of county politics. Giddings was the leading proponent of the establishment in Brenham of the state's first public schools. In 1860 he married Malinda C. Lusk, the daughter of Samuel C. Lusk. They had five children. Mrs. Giddings died in 1869. Giddings died of heart disease in Brenham on August 19, 1903, and was buried in Prairie Lea cemetery. Source 

Section 3
Prairie Lea Cemetery
Brenham

COORDINATES

30° 09.329, -096° 24.559

Corwin "Amazing Grace" Hawkins (1965-1994)

    Corwin Hawkins attended St. Peter's Catholic School in Houston, and, after graduation, decided he wanted to be an entertainer. He was fascinated by the drag culture and began competing - and quickly started winning - female impersonator competitions. In 1991, his favorite and most popular character "Amazing Grace" was crowned Miss Gay Texas; the next year he took the title of Texas Entertainer of the Year and went on to capture the 1992 National Entertainer of the Year title in Louisville, Kentucky. He was also awarded an invitational tryout at the L. A. Improv. After appearing on Def Comedy Jam, BET and HBO Comedy specials, he was discovered by Keenan Ivory Wayans and hired for the role of "Wayman" in the film A Low Down Dirty Shame, a part originally written for RuPaul. Sadly, he was unable to capitalize on his new-found fame; he passed away on August 5, 1994 at Baylor Hospital in Dallas of pneumonia. He was 29 years old.

Section 18
Houston Memorial Gardens
Pearland

COORDINATES

29° 33.780, -095° 21.116

David Thomas (1801?-1836)

    David Thomas, signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, ad interim attorney general, and acting secretary of war for the Republic of Texas, was born in Tennessee about 1801, came to Texas in 1835, and he joined the United States Independent Volunteer Cavalry company, organized at Nacogdoches on December 10, 1835. At the request of Francis W. Johnson, the Military Affairs Committee of the General Council recommended a volunteer Matamoros expedition in January 1836, and Thomas was commissioned first lieutenant for the expedition. He was one of the four representatives of Refugio Municipality at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos and there signed the Declaration of Independence. Apparently he was a lawyer, for on March 17 the convention elected him ad interim attorney general of the republic. Later, when Secretary of War Thomas J. Rusk left the cabinet to join Sam Houston's army, Thomas was named acting secretary of war. He thus held two government positions at the same time. ]

    On or about April 16, 1836, Thomas was mortally wounded by the accidental discharge of a firearm while aboard the steamship Cayuga en route from Lynch's Ferry to Galveston. Settler John J. Linn, who was at Galveston when the ship arrived, implied that Thomas died there three days after being shot. According to other claims, however, he remained on board the Cayuga and arrived at the San Jacinto battlefield about April 22. In a third version he died on board the Cayuga and was buried near the home of Vice President Lorenzo de Zavala on Buffalo Bayou, but it was also reported that he was taken off the ship and died in Zavala's home. In 1932 the state of Texas erected a monument to the memory of Thomas at a spot designated by Adina de Zavala, granddaughter of Lorenzo de Zavala, as the gravesite in the old Zavala cemetery. In 1936 Thomas's name was also included on a monument in Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site to the memory of "those courageous souls, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention held here on March 1-17, 1836, who declared Texas free, organized a republic, and framed a constitution." Source 

Note: This is a cenotaph. The Zavala family cemetery, where Lorenzo was laid to rest, was originally located on a curve of Buffalo Bayou, directly across from the San Jacinto battlefield. In the early 1900s, it was discovered that due to natural erosion the graves were slowly sliding into the water. The Zavala family decided against exhuming and relocating the bodies for religious reasons, so as a compromise the remaining headstones were transferred to the battlefield. No bodies were recovered.

Zavala Plaza   
San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site
La Porte

COORDINATES

29° 45.215, -095° 05.387

Jesse Billingsley (1810-1880)

    Jesse Billingsley, San Jacinto soldier, ranger, and legislator, was born on October 10, 1810, in Rutherford County, Tennessee, the son of Jeptha and Miriam (Randolph) Billingsley. In 1834 he moved to Mina, Texas. On November 17, 1835, he joined Capt. Robert M. Coleman's company of Mina Volunteers - forty-nine Bastrop County men, including George B. Erath. Billingsley served until December 17. When this unit mustered into Sam Houston's army at the beginning of the Texas Revolution, it was designated Company B of Col. Edward Burleson's First Regiment, and on March 1, 1836, Billingsley was elected its captain. He commanded the company at the battle of San Jacinto, where he received a wound that crippled his left hand for life. The company disbanded at Mina on June 1. Billingsley thereafter served as a private in John C. Hunt's ranger company, from July 1 through October 1, 1836. 

    He was elected from Bastrop County to the House of Representatives of the First Congress of the Republic of Texas and is said to have "furnished his own grub, slept on his own blanket, and wor[n] a buckskin suit that he took from a Comanche Indian whom he killed in battle". Billingsley was reelected to the House of the Second Congress in 1837. In February 1839 he commanded a company of volunteers under Edward Burleson that pursued and engaged the band of Comanche raiders who had killed the widow of Robert Coleman and their son Albert and kidnapped their five-year-old son, Thomas. In 1842 Billingsley recruited volunteers to aid in the repulse of the invasion of Adrián Woll and fought with John C. Hays at the battle of Salado Creek. After annexation he served as a senator in the Fifth (1853-54) and Eighth (1859-61) legislatures. Billingsley died on October 1, 1880, and was buried in the front yard of his house near McDade. On September 3, 1929, he was reinterred in the State Cemetery at Austin. Source 

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.914, -097° 43.627