Jerald Ray "Jake" Brown (1948-1981)

    Jake Brown was born March 22, 1948 in Sumrall, Mississippi. He attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and from 1967 to 1969 played on their Jaguars baseball team. He arrived in the major leagues relatively late at the age of twenty-seven, hired by the San Francisco Giants on May 17, 1975 as an outfielder. He only played until September 28th, his major league batting average reaching .279. Leaving the sport, he lived in Houston, Texas until he died on December 18, 1981 of leukemia.

Section 6
Paradise North Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES29° 53.297, -095° 27.583

Clement Clinton Dyer (1799-1864)

    C. C. Dyer, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, was born at Dyersburg, Tennessee, on January 29, 1799. He moved to Texas in 1822 and, on June 5, 1824, married Sarah Stafford, daughter of William Stafford. They had twelve children. On August 10, 1824, Dyer received title to a league of land in what is now Colorado County; on August 24 of that year he received title to 1½ labors of land in what is now Waller County. In 1825 Indians frightened Mrs. Dyer away from their home, and in April 1826 Dyer made affidavits concerning Indian hostilities. In 1833 he became the manager of the Stafford plantation. Soon afterward he was appointed to oversee the records of the Department of the Brazos. Sometime before March 28, 1835, he sold a half league to his father-in-law. 

    On November 7, 1835, as a delegate to the Consultation from Harrisburg Municipality he was one of the signers of the declaration that cited the causes for taking up arms against the Centralist forces of Antonio López de Santa Anna. After the Texas Revolution, Dyer was justice of the peace in Harrisburg (later Harris) County. He moved to Fort Bend County in 1837 and from 1838 to 1841 was justice of the peace in the lower precinct of that county. He was also actively involved in the Methodist church organized in 1839 in Richmond. In 1843 he was elected county chief justice, a post he held until August 1856. On January 15, 1845, he was appointed to a committee that was to draft resolutions expressing the sentiments of Fort Bend County citizens regarding the annexation of Texas to the United States. The census of 1860 listed him as a wealthy planter with an estate worth $40,000. He died near Richmond in 1864. Source


Dyer Cemetery
Richmond

COORDINATES

29° 34.654, -095° 45.423

Ashley R. Stephens (1808-1836)

    Born in Wayne County, North Carolina in 1808, Stephens stated in his original land application that he came to Texas from Tennessee in February, 1831. He received title to a league of land in Austin's Second Colony, November 22, 1832, situated in what are now Washington and Lee Counties. A farmer by profession, he enlisted at the home of Asa Mitchell's by Captain Joseph P. Lynch at the onset of the Texas Revolution. He served as Second Corporal of Captain William W. Hill's Company and was listed among those few who had been wounded during the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.  Despite being shot through the calves of both legs, his wounds were generally regarded as slight, yet he died nine days later, possibly from infection.

Note: This is a cenotaph. In 1881, a decision was made to place permanent memorials at the graves of those men who had been killed in the Battle of San Jacinto and buried on the battlefield. It was discovered, however, that all of the original wooden grave markers, except for Benjamin Brigham's, had rotted away and no one could remember exactly where the others rested. As a compromise, since the soldiers had been buried closely together, it was decided to place a cenotaph over Brigham's grave as a memorial to all of them.


San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site
La Porte

COORDINATES

29° 45.232, -095° 05.363

John Lapham Bullis (1841-1911)

    John L. Bullis, military officer and commander of the famed Black Seminole scouts, son of Dr. Abram R. and Lydia P. (Lapham) Bullis, was born at Macedon, New York, on April 17, 1841. As the eldest of seven children he had significant leadership in the family. He received a standard education at academies in Macedon and nearby Lima. Despite the devout Quaker sympathies of his parents and the revivalistic fervor of the surrounding area, he rarely attended services, but he apparently still remained on good terms with the family. Bullis enlisted as a corporal in the 126th New York Volunteer Infantry on August 8, 1862, and subsequently participated in several of the most important actions of the Civil War. At the battle of Harper's Ferry in September 1862 he was wounded and captured. He rejoined his regiment after exchange, was again wounded and captured at the battle of Gettysburg, and spent the following ten months confined to the notorious Libby Prison in Virginia. Having again been exchanged for Confederate prisoners in the spring of 1864, he joined the 118th United States Infantry, Colored, and received the rank of captain. He participated in a number of major combats around Richmond, Virginia, during the remaining months of the war. Bullis reenlisted in the regular army as a second lieutenant on September 3, 1867, and returned to Texas, where his Civil War regiment had been stationed for Reconstruction duty following the war's end.

    Garrison assignments in coastal Texas provided little chance for military action or promotion, and so in November 1869 he was transferred by request to the new Twenty-fourth Infantry, composed of white officers and black enlisted men. Although the initial years of service along the lower Rio Grande border proved fairly routine, Bullis participated in a number of operations against small Indian raiding parties and cattle rustlers. More important, while stationed at Fort Clark in 1873, he received command of a special troop of Black Seminole scouts that had been mustered three years earlier. Because of their intimate knowledge of the terrain in Coahuila, Mexico, the scouts were assigned to Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie's expedition in 1873 against renegade Kickapoo camps at Remolino. Bullis and his twenty scouts distinguished themselves in battle and played an important role in Mackenzie's withdrawal to Texas. They served again with Mackenzie during the Red River War of 1874, which was directed against Comanches, Kiowas, and Southern Cheyennes in the Texas Panhandle. Sixteen years later Bullis received brevet citations for his "gallant service" at Remolino, for similar actions on the Pecos River and near Saragosa, Mexico, during 1875 and 1876 respectively, and for a fight in 1881 with Lipan Apaches at the Burro Mountains in Coahuila. Upon Bullis's transfer in 1882 from command of the Black Seminole scouts to new duties in Indian Territory, the people of Kinney County, Texas, presented him with two ceremonial swords, one silver and one gold, in appreciation of his efforts to protect the border. The swords were later donated by his daughters to the Witte Museum in San Antonio. The Texas legislature likewise passed a special resolution in his honor.

    After service at Camp Supply in Indian Territory from 1882 to 1888, Bullis joined his old regiment in Arizona and served as agent for the Apaches at San Carlos Reservation. In 1893 he was transferred to Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, to act as agent for the Pueblos and Jicarilla Apaches. Four years later he returned to Texas with the rank of major and was appointed paymaster at Fort Sam Houston. During the Spanish-American War and Philippine Insurrection he saw service in Cuba and the Philippines. In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt promoted him to the rank of brigadier general, and on the following day Bullis retired from service. Drawing upon knowledge from his scouting experiences across West Texas, Bullis purchased numerous tracts of land as investments. In 1885 he also entered into a lucrative partnership with fellow officer William R. Shafter and rancher John W. Spencer to open the Shafter silver mines in Presidio County. The investments made Bullis a wealthy man and helped promote the settlement of West Texas. His marriage in 1872 to Alice Rodríguez of San Antonio ended with her death in 1887. Four years later he married Josephine Withers, also of San Antonio; they had three daughters. Bullis died in San Antonio on May 26, 1911. He received a final, posthumous, honor when, on the eve of American entry into World War I, the new military training base near San Antonio was named Camp Bullis. Source 

Section A
San Antonio National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.292, -098° 27.997

Joseph "Papoose" Fritz (1924-1983)

    Blues saxophonist Papoose Fritz was born in Houston on November 13, 1924. He allegedly earned his nickname "Papoose" because he thought he might have some Native American in him. His whereabouts and early life are somewhat of a mystery, although it is known he was on the road and in studios following big Texas blues names like Junior Parker, Huey Smith and Albert Collins, learning the performance side of the music business. Splitting his time between playing the saxophone onstage and in the studio as well as singing in front of his own band, his reputation grew among blues fans and fellow musicians. Sometime in the 40s he was drafted into the Navy to fight in World War II, and he left the service as a Steward 3rd Class. Back on the road in Texas, he recorded more than twenty tracks under his own name for labels Modern, Sittin' In With, Peacock or Jet Stream from 1950 to the late 1960's.

Section I
Houston National Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 55.826, -095° 26.153