Robert Barr (1802-1839)

    Robert Barr, soldier and first postmaster general of the Republic of Texas, was born in Ohio in 1802 and arrived in Texas before December 5, 1833. At the battle of San Jacinto he served as a private in Capt. William H. Patton's Fourth Company of Col. Sidney Sherman's Second Regiment, Texas Volunteers. On December 22, 1836, Sam Houston appointed Barr postmaster general. Mirabeau B. Lamar reappointed him, but Barr died in Houston on October 11, 1839, soon after the Lamar administration was inaugurated, and was buried with Masonic and Odd Fellows honors. Source

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° 45.450, -095° 22.768

Nimrod Lindsay Norton (1830-1903)

    Nimrod L. Norton, government official, was born near Carlisle, Nicholas County, Kentucky, on April 18, 1830, the son of Hiram and Nancy (Spencer) Norton. He was educated at Fredonia Military Academy in New York and Kentucky Military Institute. On October 27, 1853, he was married to Mary C. Hall in Nicholas County; they had eight children. The family moved to Missouri, where he farmed. At the beginning of the Civil War Norton organized one of the first companies north of the Missouri River for the defense against federal troops. In May 1864 he was chosen as one of the Missouri representatives in the Confederate States Congress. After the war he returned to Missouri. In 1867 he and his family moved to DeWitt County, Texas, then to Salado, in Bell County, where in 1873 Norton was a charter member of the Grange, an agrarian order that powerfully influenced the Constitutional Convention of 1875. 

     A section of the Constitution of 1876 provided for the designation, survey, and sale of 3,050,000 acres of public land in the High Plains to pay for the construction of a new Capitol. Governor Oran Milo Roberts selected Norton as commissioner to supervise the survey of that land for the state in July 1879. With surveyors and a ranger escort, Norton made the necessary land surveys, which opened the Llano Estacado to settlement. In his diary (from August to December 1879) and in his letters to Governor Roberts, Norton described the country, the daily camp life, and the flora and fauna that the survey party encountered. In 1880 he was appointed a member of the three-man Capitol building commission, which considered eleven designs submitted for the Capitol, made a survey of various quarries in the Austin area, and studied qualities of various building materials. On February 1, 1882, Norton and another Capitol building commissioner, Joseph Lee, shoveled the first spade of dirt for the beginning of construction. Norton with his two business partners, W. H. Westfall and G. W. Lacy, ended the limestone-granite controversy by donating all the red granite needed for construction from Granite Mountain in Burnet County. 

    Although Norton had purchased land in the Montopolis area in 1872 and journeyed to Austin to supervise the annual Travis County fairs, he continued to live in Salado. He and his family were living in Austin later, however, and in 1893 he built a large home north of the site of the present Travis County Courthouse. He died on September 28, 1903, in Austin and was buried there. Source

Section 3

Oakwood Cemetery 

Austin

COORDINATES 

30° 16.605, -097° 43.587 

Isaac Herbert Kempner (1873-1967)

    I. H. Kempner, millionaire investor and one of the originators of the commission form of city government, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the oldest son of eleven children of Elizabeth (Seinsheimer) and Harris Kempner. His father had emigrated from Poland, worked as a day laborer in New York, and eventually gone into the cotton warehouse business in Galveston. Kempner attended Washington and Lee University in Virginia until his father's death in 1894 forced him to drop out at age twenty-one and take over the family enterprises. He and his brother Daniel expanded the Kempner cotton business and branched out into real estate speculation. Kempner was elected a director of the Galveston Cotton Exchange and served continuously as either director, president, or vice president of that organization for nearly fifty years. He served as Galveston finance commissioner from 1901 to 1915 and as mayor from 1917 to 1919. 

    In 1906 he and W. T. Eldridge acquired a 12,000-acre sugar mill, plantation, and refinery in Sugar Land. They operated under various names from that time, continually expanding their control over the sugar-refining industry, until they held a virtual monopoly by the 1930s. After Eldridge's death in 1932 the Kempners consolidated this venture under family ownership and the name Imperial Sugar Company. Kempner and his youngest brother, Stanley, also took over the Texas Prudential Insurance Company. The brothers were active in banking and held a controlling interest in United States National Bank in Galveston, where Lee Kempner was CEO. In 1902 Kempner married Henrietta Blum; they had five children. Kempner died on August 1, 1967, in Galveston and was buried in the Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery there. Source


Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery
Galveston

COORDINATES

29° 17.566, -094° 48.841

Hamilton James "Nick" Nichols (1924-2013)

    Nichols attended Mirabeau B. Lamar High School in Houston and excelled at collegiate football at Rice University. He was so impressive that he was elected a member of the 1944 College Football All-America Team. His studies yielded to his service with the United States Navy during World War II, where he was stationed in the South Pacific Theater. He returned to resume his athletics and was a contributor to the 1946 Owls squad which won the Orange Bowl. Nichols was selected by the Chicago Cardinals during the 1946 NFL Draft and appeared in 43 regular season games. During his years with the Cardinals, he served as a blocker for quarterback Paul Christman and experienced a world championship with the 1947 team which captured the NFL Title. The following season, he was a member of the Cardinals' squad which earned their second appearance in the NFL Championship Game. After concluding his football career with the Green Bay Packers in 1951, he went onto become a successful claims attorney. He died in Houston on July 6, 2013 at the age of 89.

Section 31
Forest Park Lawndale
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 42.669, -095° 18.374