Eli Noland (1803-1841)

    As is often the case with early Texas settlers, little is known of Eli Noland's history. He was born in Ohio, December, 1803, and arrived in Texas sometime in 1835. He enlisted in the Texas army as a member of William S. Fisher's Company of Velasco Blues and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, where he was slightly wounded. Noland was married to Elizabeth Shewmaker at the time of his death on December 17, 1841, and was buried in Houston's City Cemetery.

Note: This is a cenotaph. Founders Memorial Park, originally founded in 1836 as Houston's first city cemetery, was rapidly filled due to a yellow fever epidemic and closed to further burials around 1840. The cemetery became neglected over a period of time, often vandalized and was heavily damaged by the 1900 hurricane. In 1936, despite a massive clean up effort, a century of neglect had taken its toll. The vast majority of grave markers were either destroyed or missing and poor record keeping prevented locating individual graves. Several cenotaphs were placed in random areas throughout the park in honor of the more high-profile citizens buried there, but a great number of graves go unmarked to this day.


Founders Memorial Park
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 45.434, -095° 22.740

Rolland Garland "Red" Bastien (1931-2012)

    Red Bastien was born in Bottineau, North Dakota on January 27, 1931. He was an athlete while in high school and began his professional career as a wrestler in carnivals in the Midwest. He competed in the Chicago area from 1956 and was noted for his aerial moves. He held the NWA Pacific Northwest Tag Team titles several times that decade, teaming with Andre Drapp and Roy Heffernan. He partnered with Lou Klein as the Bastien Brothers, to capture the WWWF U.S. Tag Team Championship in 1960. They held the titles several times, battling Eddie and Jerry Graham and the Fabulous Kangaroos. Bastien also teamed frequently with Billy Red Lyons in the 1960s and early 1970s. 

    He was AWA Tag Team champ with Hercules Cortez and the Crusher in the early 70s, before moving on to the World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas, where he held the Texas title and the tag team belts with Tex McKenzie. He retired from the ring later in the decade, but remained as a trainer and promoter. Bastien was instrumental in advancing the careers of Steve "Sting" Borden and Jim "Ultimate Warrior" Hellwig in the mid-1980s, forming Power Team USA with them and two other body builders he discovered at a Gold's Gym. He was active in the Cauliflower Alley Club for retired wrestlers in his later years, serving as president from 2001-2007. Red Bastien passed away of Alzheimer's disease on August 11, 2012 in Dallas.

Hillcrest Mausoleum
Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park
Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 52.105, -096° 46.826

Richard Ellis (1781-1846)

    Richard Ellis, planter, jurist, and legislator, son of Ambrose and Cecilia (Stokes) Ellis, was born in the "Tidewater Section" (probably Lunenburg County) of Virginia, on February 14, 1781. After a common-school education he possibly attended college, but no record of attendance has survived. In any event, he studied law with the Richmond firm of Wirt and Wickham until 1806, when he was admitted to the Virginia bar and joined that law firm. Sometime between 1813 and 1817 Ellis left Virginia and settled at Huntsville, Madison County, and later at Tuscumbia, Franklin County, Alabama, where he established a plantation and continued the practice of law. Then, in 1818, he was elected one of two delegates to represent Franklin County at the Alabama Constitutional Convention. The next year saw him elected a judge of the Fourth Circuit Court of Alabama, an election that automatically made him an associate justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. During his tenure on the bench, Ellis had a reputation for firm administration and a rough manner that made him unpopular with the other members of the bar. 

    In 1829 he helped to found and served on the first board of trustees of La Grange College in Franklin County, Alabama. The college had a Methodist connection, which may indicate that Ellis was a Methodist. Ellis made his first trip to Texas in 1826 not as a colonist but in a futile effort to collect a debt from a Colonel Pettus. In December Stephen F. Austin induced him, along with James Kerr and James Cummings, to go to Nacogdoches in an unsuccessful effort to persuade Haden Edwards to abandon his revolt against the Mexican government. It was not until February 22, 1834, that Ellis moved his family and more than twenty-five slaves to Pecan Point in the disputed territory claimed by Mexico as part of Old Red River County and by the United States as part of Miller County, Arkansas. Ellis's land grant of 4,428.4 acres (one league and one labor) was located near Spanish Bluff in what became Bowie County, Texas. He established a considerable cotton plantation there and entertained lavishly at his elegant home. 

    Late in 1835 he was chosen by Miller and Sevier counties as a delegate to the Arkansas constitutional convention scheduled to meet at Little Rock on January 4, 1836. Ill health forced him to decline, and he resigned his seat by January 21, 1836. Near the end of the month he was selected as one of five delegates from around Pecan Point to the Texas constitutional convention scheduled to meet at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 1, 1836. As the convention opened Ellis was unanimously elected president. On March 2, 1836, he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence as president of the convention. Although some observers were critical of him as a presiding officer, the general verdict is that he had a good grasp of parliamentary procedure and that he presided with a remarkable degree of gentleness and urbanity. Most importantly, he held the convention together for the seventeen days needed to draft a constitution for the Republic of Texas. Between October 3, 1836, when he was first elected, and February 5, 1840, when he retired from public life, Ellis represented his district as a senator in the First, Second, Third, and Fourth congresses of the Republic of Texas. 

    On January 9, 1806, he married Mary West Dandridge, daughter of Nathaniel West and Sarah (Watson) Dandridge of Hanover County, Virginia. The bride was a second cousin of Martha Custis Washington and a first cousin of Dolly Madison. Richard and Mary Ellis had at least two children. An obituary printed in the Clarksville Northern Standard reports that Ellis died at his home in Bowie County on December 20, 1846, at age sixty-five and states, "Judge Ellis came to his death suddenly by his clothes taking fire." He was buried in the family cemetery near New Boston, Texas, but in 1929 his remains and those of his wife, who died on October 2, 1837, were transferred to the State Cemetery in Austin. A son, Nathaniel Dandridge Ellis, also settled in Old Red River County and was granted a league and labor of land as the head of a household. Ellis County, formed in 1849, most probably was named in Richard Ellis's honor. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.925, -097° 43.645

William Pryor (?-1833)

    William Pryor, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, was born in either Virginia or Alabama. He received title to a labor of land now in Waller County on August 24, 1824. By January 1825 he was living on the Brazos River close to San Felipe. William B. Travis recorded in his diary that Pryor died at San Felipe on September 9, 1833. Travis attended his funeral on September 10. Pryor left his estate to his five daughters and disinherited his son. Source

Note: This is a cenotaph. During the Texas Revolution, the town of San Felipe was largely destroyed by Mexican troops chasing after the Texan army. Nothing was spared, not even the town graveyard. The majority of those buried here prior to 1836 are no longer marked, so although William Pryor is known to be buried here, the exact location has been lost.


San Felipe de Austin Cemetery
San Felipe

COORDINATES

29° 47.894, -096° 06.043