Jacob Littleton Standifer (1818-1902)

    Jacob Standifer was born September 11, 1818 in Union County, Illinois, the third son of Anderson and Elizabeth Standifer. After his father died unexpectedly, Jacob and the rest of his family migrated to Texas in 1829. Later that year, Jacob was given a land grant in Bastrop County (then Mina Municipality) and the family settled there. In 1836, at seventeen years old, Jacob, and his brothers William and James, enlisted in the Texas militia. The brothers were assigned to Jesse Billingsley's Company of Volunteers and marched eastwards towards Harrisburg. On April 21, 1836, after the Texian soldiers discovered they were mere a few hundred yards away from the Mexican soldiers, and their leader, Santa Ana, the call to battle was given. It only took twenty minutes for them to completely turn the Mexicans, either killing them or holding them as prisoners of war. The Battle of San Jacinto ended the revolution, and once Santa Ana was found hiding in tall grass a few days later, he was forced to sign an official document recognizing Texas as a separate, independent nation. The brothers returned home. Jacob married Maria Eggleston Millican sometime before 1849 and had four sons. When she died, Jacob married Martha Childs, on June 27, 1872. He died on January 7, 1902 at his home at the age of eighty-three of unknown causes and buried in the town cemetery, where he lies today

Elgin City Cemetery
Elgin

COORDINATES

30° 20.885, -097° 22.678

Huey Purvis Meaux (1929-2011)

    H. P. Meaux was the son of Cajun sharecroppers who worked in the cotton and rice fields around Kaplan near Lafayette, Louisiana. When Huey was twelve, the family moved to Winnie, Texas, near Port Arthur. He grew up in an atmosphere of hard field work during the week, punctuated by lively Saturday night dances. His father Stanislaus, also an accordionist, headed a band for which Huey played drums when he was a teenager. By the 1950s, after serving in the Army, Meaux opened a barbershop in Winnie and worked at night as a disc jockey for KPAC radio in Port Arthur. In this capacity he got to know other deejays and musicians in the business, such as Moon Mullican, J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and George Jones. Meaux was riding in a car with Richardson to Houston’s Gold Star Studios when the Bopper penned his hit Chantilly Lace. He also learned the ins and outs of the music business from Bill Hall, a local record producer and manager of the Bopper. In 1959, Meaux produced his first hit - Jivin’ Gene Bourgeois’s swamp-pop classic, Breaking Up is Hard to Do - in his own barbershop. He was on his way to pioneering the Gulf Coast “swamp pop” sound.

    In 1962 he produced Barbara Lynn’s You’ll Lose a Good Thing, which hit Number 8 on the charts. He also produced regional hits, such as Joe Barry’s I’m a Fool to Care, while working with other artists, including Lightnin’ Hopkins and Archie Bell. He found success with acts such as Sunny and the Sunliners, Roy Head and the Traits and Dale & Grace, whose song I’m Leaving It Up to You reached Number 1 on Billboard in October 1963. When the British Invasion landed in Texas in the early 1960s, Meaux, by this time based out of Houston, dissected the sound of the Beatles and other groups. In response he persuaded Doug Sahm and his group of Tex-Mex musicians from San Antonio’s West Side to pretend to be British, and the Crazy Cajun dubbed them the Sir Douglas Quintet. In 1965 the group’s She’s About a Mover became a hit. Later, when the Sir Douglas Quintet appeared on television with its Hispanic members, the truth was revealed. Meaux made use of the diverse array of ethnic music and musicians in Texas and the Gulf Coast to seek out stand-out sounds for the recording industry. According to writer Joe Nick Patoski, “For two generations of Gulf Coast rock and rollers - or any musicians from Baton Rouge to San Antonio - he was the pipeline to the big time.” Despite Meaux’s successes in the music business, the hedonistic Cajun also had the shady reputation of shortchanging his artists as well as womanizing. Around the end of the 1960s, he was prosecuted for violation of the Mann Act (driving a prostitute across state lines) and was sentenced to the state penitentiary.

    By late 1971 Meaux was out of prison and purchased the former Gold Star Studios at a bankruptcy auction. He now owned the Houston studio where he had produced many of his artists through his years of turning out hits, and he renamed the facility SugarHill Studios and set about remaking it as his own. Meaux also entertained listeners on his Friday night radio show on KPFT-FM in Houston. He regained success in 1974 with Freddy Fender’s comeback. Meaux released Fender’s Before the Last Teardrop Falls on his Crazy Cajun label. The song became a Number 1 country single and a pop crossover success along with his follow-up Wasted Days and Wasted Nights. After a successful run with Fender in the 1970s, Meaux scored one more hit with Rockin’ Sidney Simien’s novelty song (Don’t Mess With) My Toot-Toot in 1985. Meaux sold SugarHill Studios in 1986 but still leased an office there. In 1996 he was arrested and eventually plead guilty to two counts of sexual assault of a child, cocaine possession, child pornography, and bond jumping. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was released from prison in 2007 and lived out the remainder of his life in Winnie, Texas. Source


Fairview Cemetery
Winnie

COORDINATES

29° 48.115, -094° 23.356

Eugene McDermott (1899-1973)

    Eugene McDermott, scientist, industrialist, and philanthropist, was born on February 12, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York, to Owen and Emma (Cahill) McDermott. After receiving a master's degree from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919, he worked at the Goodyear Rubber Company as an engineer (1919-21) and at the Western Electric Company (1921-23). After completing an M.A. degree at Columbia in 1925, McDermott joined Everette Lee DeGolyer's Geophysical Research Corporation in Houston as a field supervisor. He was soon placed in charge of GRC's instrument laboratory in Bloomfield, New Jersey. In 1930 DeGolyer secretly financed McDermott and John C. Karcher in their organization of Geophysical Service, Incorporated, to exploit Karcher's development of the reflection seismograph. By means of underground explosions, this instrument determined formations of the earth's layers. The company contracted to conduct geophysical exploration for the oil industry and soon became one of the world's foremost geophysical service firms. 

    McDermott moved to Dallas to serve as vice president of GSI (1930-39); he became president in 1939 and chairman of the board in 1949. In 1951 he formed Texas Instruments, and GSI became a wholly owned subsidiary of the new electronics firm. McDermott continued as TI board chairman until 1958, then chaired the executive committee until 1964 and remained a company director until his death. During World War I he served in the United States Navy, and from 1941 to 1946 he was a civilian consultant to the Office of Scientific Research and Development. He contributed to various technical journals. His inventions, numbering around ten, ranged from geochemical applications to antisubmarine warfare. Nevertheless, he was concerned with what he saw as a tendency of science to neglect individual and economic growth. His service on a national committee to alert American businessmen to their stake in perceived population problems in the nation and the world reflected this concern, as did his commitment to education. Believing that education should be consistently excellent from the start, that "learning begins when a child starts looking at the world," McDermott and his wife, Margaret (Milam), whom he married on December 1, 1954, worked diligently to promote quality education with the goal of "maximizing everyone's capacities for thinking and doing." They gave stock valued at $1.25 million toward building the Stevens Institute of Technology Center in 1954 and to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for scholarships in 1960. Other schools receiving McDermott's financial support included the Lamplighter School, the Dallas junior college system, Southern Methodist University, the University of Dallas, Hockaday School, and the University of Texas System. 

    McDermott also helped found St. Mark's School of Texas and establish the University of Texas at Dallas. He was a member of the MIT Corporation from 1960 to 1973, a trustee of the board of governors of SMU, trustee and chairman of the executive committee of the Excellence in Education Foundation, a trustee of St. Mark's and the Area Educational TV Foundation, and a member of the Coordinating Board of Texas Colleges and Universities (now the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board) from 1965 to 1971. He also was chairman of a visiting committee in the Harvard University psychology department and a member of a similar committee at MIT. In 1949 McDermott collaborated with William Sheldon on four books, including Varieties of Delinquent Youth. He was also involved in scientific medical projects at various universities, including Columbia, the University of California, and Southwestern Medical School (now the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas), where he supported a visiting professorship in anesthesiology and a research laboratory and in 1973 established the Eugene McDermott Center for the Study of Human Growth and Development. He was a trustee of Stevens Institute, the Presbyterian Hospital-Children's Medical Center, the SMU Foundation for Science and Engineering, the Eugene McDermott Foundation, the Biological Humanics Foundation (which he founded in 1954), the Texas Research Foundation, and the Southwestern Medical Foundation. The McDermotts contributed $200,000 towards establishing the Margo Jones Memorial Theater at SMU in 1965 and served as directors of the SMU Fine Arts Association. McDermott served as director of the Dallas Theater Center. The McDermotts established a trust fund for the Dallas Art Association, and their financing renovated the Gillespie County Courthouse in Fredericksburg. 

    McDermott was a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, of which he was president (1933-34), the Seismological Society of America, the American Physicians Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Mathematical Society, the American Geographical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition to honorary degrees from Stevens Institute of Technology (1960), the University of Dallas (1973), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1972), he received papal honors for his outstanding work for Christianity (1966), an award from the Texas State Historical Survey Committee for the courthouse renovation (with his wife, 1967), the Bene Merenti medal (1966), the Santa Rita Gold Medal from the University of Texas for his work in higher education (1972), and the Linz Award for service to Dallas (1972). McDermott was the father of one daughter. He died at his home in Dallas on August 23, 1973, after an illness of several months. Source

Monument Garden
Sparkman Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery       
Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 52.107, -096° 46.701

St Clair Patton (1802-1849)

    St Clair was born October 1, 1802 in Kentucky, the fifth of seven children born to John Dyer and Margaret (Hester) Patton. The Patton family emigrated to Texas in March 1832 and settled in what is now West Columbia in Brazoria County. On March 1, 1836, St Clair enlisted in the Texian militia to fight for independence from Mexico. As a member of Captain William H. Patton's Columbia Company, he fought at the Battle of San Jacinto and afterward discharged on June 1. St Clair died in Brazoria County on December 2, 1849 and buried in the Patton family cemetery, now located in the Varner-Hogg Plantation State Park in West Columbia.


Patton Family Cemetery
West Columbia

COORDINATES
29° 09.857, -095° 38.422

Hamilton Prioleau Bee (1822-1897)

    Hamilton P. Bee, Confederate brigadier general, the son of Anne and Barnard E. Bee, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on July 22, 1822. The family moved to Texas while he was still a youth. In 1839 he served as secretary for the commission that established the boundary between the Republic of Texas and the United States, and in 1843 Texas president Sam Houston dispatched Bee, with Joseph C. Eldridge and Thomas S. Torrey to convene a peace council with the Comanches. On August 9, 1843, the commissioners obtained the promise of the Penatekas to attend a council with Houston the following April. The meeting culminated in the Treaty of Tehuacana Creek. In 1846 Bee was named secretary of the Texas Senate. During the Mexican War he served briefly as a private in Benjamin McCulloch's famed Company A - the "Spy Company" - of Col. John Coffee Hays's First Regiment, Texas Mounted Rifles, before transferring in October 1846, as a second lieutenant, to Mirabeau B. Lamar's independent company of Texas cavalry. Bee volunteered for a second term in October 1847 and was elected first lieutenant of Lamar's Company, now a component of Col. Peter Hansborough Bell's Regiment, Texas Volunteers. After the war Bee moved to Laredo and was elected to the Texas legislature, where he served from 1849 through 1859. From 1855 through 1857 he was speaker of the House.

    He was elected brigadier general of militia in 1861 and appointed brigadier general in the Confederate Army to rank from March 4, 1862. His brigade was composed of August C. Buchel's First, Nicholas C. Gould's Twenty-third, Xavier B. Debray's Twenty-sixth, James B. Likin's Thirty-fifth, Peter C. Woods's Thirty-sixth, and Alexander W. Terrell's Texas cavalry regiments. Given command of the lower Rio Grande district, with headquarters at Brownsville, Bee expedited the import of munitions from Europe through Mexico and the export of cotton in payment. On November 4, 1863, he was credited with saving millions of dollars of Confederate stores and munitions from capture by a federal expeditionary force under Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks. After transfer to a field command in the spring of 1864, Bee led his brigade in the Red River campaign under Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor. Having had only slight training or experience in the art of war and having served only in an administrative capacity to that time, he was less than skillful in handling troops. While he was leading a cavalry charge at the battle of Pleasant Hill, two horses were shot from beneath him, and he suffered a slight face wound. Though he was afterward the object of some heavy criticism, he was assigned to the command of Thomas Green's division in Gen. John A. Wharton's cavalry corps in February 1865 and was later given a brigade of infantry in Gen. Samuel Bell Maxey's division. After the war Bee went to Mexico for a time. In 1876 he returned to San Antonio, where he remained until his death, on October 3, 1897. He is buried in the Confederate Cemetery in San Antonio. Bee was married to Mildred Tarver of Alabama in 1854, and they had six children. He was the brother of Gen. Barnard Elliott Bee, Jr. Source

Section 4
Confederate Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.194, -098° 27.806