Lucy F. Farrow (1851–1911)

    Lucy Farrow, instrumental in the early foundations of Pentecostalism, was the niece of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and born into slavery in Norfolk, Virginia in 1851. In 1905, when she was pastoring a small Holiness church in Houston, Texas, she worked for Charles Fox Parham during his Houston crusade during that summer as a cook, then when Parham's Houston meeting closed, he invited Farrow to accompany them to Kansas as a governess for his children. During this time, she asked her friend William J. Seymour to care for her church in her absence. Through her interactions with Parham, she was  and the first African-American person to be recorded as having spoken in tongues. 

    On her return, she encouraged Seymour to enroll in the Bible College Parham started in January of 1906, where he would eventually be convinced of many of Parham's teachings. Later in 1906, when William Seymour became the pastor of a Holiness church in Los Angeles, he sent for Farrow to join him in what would become known as the Azusa Street Revival. She would be known as the "anointed handmaiden" who laid her hands on many who received the Holy Spirit and the gift of glossolalia. She would travel to Johnsonville, Liberia, and reportedly experienced the ability the gift of xenolalia and spoke the Kru language, preaching to the Kru people and spreading the Pentecostal message in Africa. After eventually returning to Los Angeles, then later to Houston, Farrow contracted tuberculosis and died in 1911. Source

Olivewood Cemetery 

Houston

COORDINATES

29.7733, -095.3927

Samuel Thompson (1765-1843)

    Samuel Thompson, physician, participant in the Revolutionary War, and alcalde of San Augustine Municipality, Texas, was born in 1765, the son of George Thompson of England. He was a resident of the Spartanburg District of South Carolina when he enlisted for service in the American Revolution in 1778 or 1779, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, under Capt. Joseph Wofford. He was an express carrier and wagoner and fought in the battle of Cowpens. Thompson married Precius Wofford after the war, and the couple owned three slaves. They sailed with other members of the Thompson family to Coahuila and Texas in 1826. 

    Dr. Thompson is listed in Stephen F. Austin's register of families, and the first census of Texas enrolled him as a physician owning eighteen slaves. In 1834 and 1835 Thompson was alcalde in San Augustine. Thompson Academy was founded about 1839. The institution, about seven miles east of San Augustine, was donated by Thompson and named after him. He died in 1843 in San Augustine County and was buried on the original Thompson settlement. Source


Chapel Hill Cemetery
Chapel Hill

COORDINATES

31° 29.217, -094° 01.183

Benjamin Franklin Hardin (1803-1878)

    Benjamin Franklin (Frank) Hardin, surveyor, soldier, and legislator, the fourth son of Swan and Jerusha (Blackburn) Hardin, was born in Franklin County, Georgia, on January 25, 1803, and grew up in Maury County, Tennessee. He moved to Texas in 1826 and served under Stephen F. Austin against the Fredonian Rebellion of 1827. Hardin, who discontinued writing his first name in later years, was one of the Hardin brothers who, with their father, escaped into Texas after their feud with a prominent family in Maury County left two dead. Because their adversaries held various offices there, including one who was prosecuting attorney, the Hardins thought they would not receive a fair trail for murder; nevertheless, the Tennessee governor managed to have Franklin arrested and held at La Bahía (present Goliad), Texas, but when Tennessee officers failed to come for him, he was released, and he and his brothers were free to continue their services in Texas.

    Hardin was elected secretary of the ayuntamiento of Liberty in 1831 and was surveyor of the Atascosita District from 1834 to 1836. He was first lieutenant of infantry and fought in the siege of Bexar under Col. Francis White Johnson. Hardin served as a lieutenant in Capt. William M. Logan's company until June 1836. He carried the San Jacinto victory dispatch for Sam Houston to the United States border. Between July 7, 1836, and October 7, 1836, he was captain of a newly organized company and joined an expedition against the Indians. Hardin was put in charge of guarding Mexican officers interned at his brother's plantation until they were repatriated in 1837. He was Liberty county surveyor (1838-45) and served as colonel of the Second Brigade of the Texas militia (1842-43). In 1839 he was appointed postmaster by Sam Houston and moved his family from his plantation north of Liberty to a house in town, known as Seven Pines, where he lived with his wife and six children and a slave known as Aunt Harriet. Harriet had moved to Texas with the Hardins in 1826 and lived to be nearly 100 years old. Hardin continued to live near Liberty, where he was district surveyor from 1849 to 1852. He served in the Texas legislature in 1857, when Hardin County was formed from Liberty County and named in honor of the Hardin family. In the legislature he helped to get a surveyors' bill passed and the University of Texas founded and served as chairman of the Public Lands Committee. He married Cynthia O'Brien in 1839; they had six children. Hardin was a Methodist. He died at his residence in Liberty on April 21, 1878. State historical markers were placed at the Hardin family cemetery in 1936 and the Liberty home site, Seven Pines, in 1988. Source 


City Cemetery
Liberty

COORDINATES

30° 03.791, -094° 48.168

Woodward Maurice "Tex" Ritter (1905-1974)

    Tex Ritter, country singer and movie star, son of James Everett and Elizabeth (Matthews) Ritter, was born Woodward Maurice Ritter on January 12, 1905, in Murvaul, Panola County. Ritter's signature as a student at the University of Texas shows that he spelled his first name Woodard (not Woodward), and a delayed birth certificate filed in Panola County in 1942 also shows the spelling Woodard; however, all printed sources use the spelling Woodward. He moved to Nederland in Jefferson County, to live with a sister, and graduated from South Park High School in nearby Beaumont. He attended the University of Texas from 1922 to 1927, spending one year in the law school there, 1925-26. As a student he was influenced by J. Frank Dobie, Oscar J. Fox, and John A. Lomax, who encouraged his study of authentic cowboy songs. Ritter, more interested in music, did not take a degree; for a time he was president of the Men's Glee Club at the university. He also attended Northwestern University for one year in 1929 before he began singing western and mountain songs on radio station KPRC in Houston in 1929. The following year he was with a musical troupe touring the South and the Midwest; by 1931 he was in New York and had joined the Theatre Guild. 

    His role in Green Grow the Lilacs (predecessor to the musical Oklahoma) drew attention to the young "cowboy," and he became the featured singer with the Madison Square Garden Rodeo in 1932. Further recognition led to his starring in one of the first western radio programs to be featured in New York, The Lone Star Rangers. His early appeal to New Yorkers as the embodiment of a Texas cowboy, in spite of his roots in the rural southern music tradition, undoubtedly led to his first movie contract in 1936. Tex appeared in eighty-five movies, including seventy-eight Westerns, and was ranked among the top ten money-making stars in Hollywood for six years. Although his movies owed much to the genre begun by other singing cowboys such as Gene Autry, Ritter used traditional folk songs in his movies rather than the modern "western" ditties. Films such as Arizona Frontier (1940), The Utah Trail (1938), and Roll Wagons Roll (1939) earned him a reputation for ambitious plots and vigorous action not always found in low-budget Westerns. 

    Tex Ritter's successful recordings, which began with Rye Whiskey in 1931, included over the years High Noon (1952), Boll Weevil (1945), Wayward Wind, Hillbilly Heaven, and You Are My Sunshine (1946). Ranch Party, a television series featuring Ritter, ran from 1959 to 1962. His version of High Noon from the highly-acclaimed movie High Noon won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1953. He was married to Dorothy Fay Southworth on June 14, 1941; they were the parents of two sons. His younger son, John, became well-known through his television shows, Three's Company and Hearts Afire. In 1964 Tex Ritter was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, only the fifth person to be so honored; he also served as president of the Country Music Association from 1963 to 1965 and joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1965. In 1970 he made an unsuccessful bid for the United States Senate seat from Tennessee. He died in Nashville, Tennessee, on January 2, 1974; funeral services were held in Nederland, Texas, near Port Neches, and he was buried at Oak Bluff Memorial Park in nearby Port Neches. In 1980 he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. The Texas Ritter Museum opened on October 18, 1992, in Carthage, Texas, (in Panola County) and contained memorabilia from his career. In 1998 he was an inaugural inductee into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame, also located in Carthage, and in 2003 both the Texas Ritter Museum and Texas Country Music Hall of Fame were housed together. Ritter has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is also honored in the Museum of the Gulf Coast’s Music Hall of Fame in Port Arthur. Source

Section 8
Oak Bluff Memorial Park
Port Neches

COORDINATES

30° 00.096, -093° 57.759

William "Bill" Goyens (1794-1856)

    William Goyens (or Goings), early Nacogdoches settler and businessman, was born in Moore County, North Carolina, in 1794, the son of William Goings, a free mulatto, and a white woman. He came to Galveston, Texas, in 1820 and lived at Nacogdoches for the rest of his life. Although he could not write much beyond his signature, he was a good businessman. He was a blacksmith and wagonmaker and engaged in hauling freight from Natchitoches, Louisiana. On a trip to Louisiana in 1826, he was seized by William English, who sought to sell him into slavery. In return for his liberty, Goyens was induced to deliver to English his slave woman and to sign a note agreeing to peonage for himself, though reserving the right to trade on his own behalf. After his return to Nacogdoches, he successfully filed suit for annulment of these obligations. During the Mexican Texas era, Goyens often served as conciliator in the settlement of lawsuits under the Mexican laws. He was appointed as agent to deal with the Cherokees, and on numerous occasions he negotiated treaties with the Comanches and other Indians, for he was trusted not only by them but also by the Mexicans and Anglo-Americans in East Texas. He also operated an inn in connection with his home near the site of what is now the courthouse in Nacogdoches. In 1832 he married Mary Pate Sibley, who was white. Sibley had one son, Henry Sibley, by a former marriage, but Goyens and Mary had no children.

    During the Texas Revolution, Goyens was given the important task of keeping the Cherokees friendly with the Texans, and he was interpreter with Gen. Sam Houston and his party in negotiating a treaty. After the revolution he purchased what was afterwards known as Goyens' Hill, four miles west of Nacogdoches. By 1841 his property included 4,160 acres of farmland, several town lots, and nine slaves. He built a large two-story mansion with a sawmill and gristmill west of his home on Moral Creek, where he and his wife lived until their deaths. During his later life Goyens amassed considerable wealth in real estate, despite constant efforts by his white neighbors to take away what he was accumulating. He always employed the best lawyers in Nacogdoches, including Thomas J. Rusk and Charles S. Taylor, to defend him and was generally successful in his litigation. By 1856, Goyens owned 12,423 acres of land, including 4,428 acres in Angelina County. He died on June 20, 1856, soon after the death of his wife; they were both buried in a Nacogdoches County cemetery near the junction of Aylitos Creek with the Moral. At his grave a marker was erected by the Texas Centennial Commission in 1936. Many traditions grew up in Nacogdoches about this unusual man, and sometimes it is hard to tell just what is true and what is tradition. Source

Note: This is a cenotaph. When construction encroached on the original gravesite, his marker (but not his body) was moved to the courthouse grounds.


Nacogdoches County Courthouse grounds
Nacogdoches

COORDINATES 

31° 36.209, -094° 39.384