Charles Stewart (1836-1895)

    Charles Stewart, legislator and congressman, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 30, 1836, the son of Charles and Martha (Moore) Stewart. In 1845 the family moved to Galveston, where Stewart began the study of law in 1852 with James W. Henderson of Houston and later pursued his studies with the Galveston firm of which William Pitt Ballinger was a member. Stewart was admitted to the bar in 1854, before his eighteenth birthday, and began the practice of law in Marlin. In 1856 and again in 1858 he was elected prosecuting attorney for the Thirteenth Judicial District. In Marlin he also practiced law in partnership with Thomas P. Aycock from 1857 to 1866. In 1860 Stewart married Rachel Barry of Marlin. That year he reported owning $15,000 in real property and $4,425 in personal property, including four slaves. In 1861 he was a delegate to the Secession Convention, where he and Alfred Marmaduke Hobby were the two youngest delegates.

    Stewart enlisted in the Confederate Army and served throughout the Civil War, first in the Tenth Regiment of Texas Infantry and later in George Wythe Baylor's cavalry. In 1866 Stewart moved to Houston, where he practiced law with D.U. Barziza (1866?-74), J.B. Likens (1874-78), and G.H. Breaker (1878-?). Stewart gained recognition as both a civil and a criminal attorney. An important part of his civil practice involved land litigation and suits against railroads. He served as Houston city attorney from 1874 to 1876. In 1878 he was elected to the Texas Senate, where he was an advocate of tax-supported public education. After one term in the Senate (1879-72), Stewart was elected as a Democrat to the United States Congress, where he served five terms (1883-93). In Washington, Stewart was a member of the Committee on Rivers and Harbors and worked for increased appropriations for harbor improvements on the Texas coast. He also advocated securing a railroad link between the United States and Argentina in order to increase United States exports to Central and South America. Stewart belonged to various Masonic bodies and in 1883 served as grand master of Masons in Texas. In 1892 he declined to run for office again. He returned to Houston, where he practiced law with his son, John S. Stewart. After several years of failing health, Stewart died of phthisis and diabetes in Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio on September 21, 1895, and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery, Houston. His son, who was city attorney at the time of Stewart's death, was his only surviving child. Source

Section C-3
Glenwood Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES
29° 45.918, -095° 23.193

Benjamin Johnson (1815-1872)

    Benjamin Johnson, soldier, early settler, and son of Moses Johnson and Mary Ann Roberts was born on June 8, 1815, near Edgerly (in present-day Calcasieu Parish), Louisiana. He moved to Texas in 1832 and settled at Jefferson Municipality (present-day Bridge City in Orange County) on Cow Bayou. Johnson volunteered to fight in the Texas Revolution and enlisted in the Texas Army on November 12, 1835, under Capt. Willis H. Landrum’s Company. He participated in the Grass Fight and the siege of Bexar later that year. Johnson was given an honorable discharge on January 1, 1836, at the Alamo. After learning of the fall of the Alamo, he re-enlisted in Capt. James Gillaspie’s Company, in the Second Regiment of Texas Volunteers under Col. Sidney Sherman’s command. On April 21, Sherman formed part of the regiment of the left wing and fought in the battle of San Jacinto. On June 30, Johnson served a third enlistment as second sergeant in Capt. John G. W. Pierson’s Company at Washington. He received an honorable discharge on September 30, 1836. After service, Johnson received a donation of 320 acres of land for having served in the army. He returned to Jefferson, where on January 24, 1838, he received a 1,440-acre headright from the Jefferson County Board of Land Commissioners.

    On April 24, 1838, Johnson married Rachel Garner, daughter of Bradley Garner, Sr., and Sarah Rachel Harmon. Rachel was from a family of military service. Her father fought in the Battle of New Orleans, and her brothers David, Isaac, and Jacob Garner fought at the Grass Fight and the Siege of Bexar. Her brother-in-law Claiborne West was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Soon after marriage Johnson and his new wife settled in Sabine Pass on a farm of his sister-in-law Sarah Garner McGaffey. Records show that Benjamin and Rachel Johnson were one of the earliest settlers in Sabine Pass along with John McGaffey, Thomas Courts, and Jacob Garner. Johnson then appeared before the land commissioners and received an additional headright of 3,000 acres, granted to married men. He and Rachel became the parents of at least eight sons and two daughters. On July 7, 1838, Johnson was granted an additional 640 acres of donation land for having fought at the battle of San Jacinto. That same year, he was certified as one of fifty-seven jurors to serve in the Jefferson County courts. He was elected a county commissioner on December 2, 1852. He and his family were charter members of the second Baptist Church of Jefferson County. Rachel Johnson died in 1856. On July 4, 1861, Johnson married Matilda Myers, whom he had employed as his housekeeper. Later that year in August, Benjamin Johnson joined his three sons, Bradley, John, and Uriah Johnson, and served under Ben McCulloch in the Confederate Army. In addition to his military and public service, Johnson was a farmer, stockman, and patriarch. Benjamin Johnson died at the age of fifty-seven at Sabine Pass on October 13, 1872, and was buried at the Johnson family plot at the Sabine Pass Cemetery in Jefferson County. A Texas Historical Marker was erected in his honor in 1972. Source 


Sabine Pass Cemetery
Sabine Pass

COORDINATES

29° 43.108, -093° 54.319

Samuel Bronson Cooper (1850-1918)

    Samuel Bronson Cooper, politician, son of Rev. A. H. and Elizabeth Cooper, was born in Caldwell County, Kentucky, on May 30, 1850. The family moved to Texas in 1850, and the elder Bronson, a Methodist minister, died in 1853. Samuel was raised by an uncle and worked on a farm as a boy. He was admitted to the bar in 1872. He married Phoebe Young on October 15, 1873. He was elected county attorney of Tyler County in 1876 and again in 1878. He also helped in the early educational efforts of John Henry Kirby. Cooper served two terms in the state Senate, from 1880 to 1884, and was president pro tem during his second term. He wrote a bill granting each Confederate veteran 1,280 acres of state land. In 1885 President Grover Cleveland named him collector of internal revenue at Galveston, a position he held until 1888. 

    Cooper ran unsuccessfully for district judge in 1889 but was elected in the Second Texas District to the first of six consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives in 1892. He was defeated by Moses L. Broocks in 1904 but came back to beat Broocks in 1906 for a position in the Sixtieth Congress, only to lose to Martin Dies in the 1908 race. While a member of the Congress, Cooper served on the House Ways and Means Committee. He helped secure $600,000 in federal appropriations to link Beaumont with the Port Arthur ship channel. With Cooper's support, a nine-foot-deep channel was dug in 1908; later improvements tied Beaumont to the Sabine-Neches Waterway and made the city a deepwater port. Cooper was chairman of the Texas delegation to the Democratic convention in Kansas City (1904). In 1910 President William Howard Taft appointed him to the Board of General Appraisers, a customs court that sat at New York. Cooper was affiliated with the Masonic lodge, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He died in New York on August 21, 1918, after a short illness. His funeral and burial were in Beaumont. He was survived by four of his five children, his wife having died in 1911. One of his daughters, William (Willie) Chapman Cooper, married William P. Hobby, and another married S. W. Sholars, congressman from Tyler County. Source 


Magnolia Cemetery
Beaumont

COORDINATES

30° 06.146, -094° 06.107

Shadrack Edmond "Shad" Graham (1896-1969)

    Shad Graham, filmmaker, was born in New York City on April 24, 1896, the son of Charles Edmond and Edith (Craske) Graham. His father and uncle (Robert E. Graham) were professional actors, and his mother was a well-known ballerina. Shad Graham began his association with the film industry as a child actor in The Great Train Robbery (1903), but his main interest through the years was in the technical phase of the new art form. He spent fifty years with major motion-picture companies in New York and Hollywood and later with his own company, Shad E. Graham Productions. His Our Home Town series, documentaries of small towns in many parts of the United States, especially in Texas, is of historical significance for the period following World War II. Graham moved after the war to Houston, where he continued making documentary films while serving as Texas representative for Twentieth Century Fox Movietone News. His Texas City Disaster 1947 won awards for that studio and focused international attention on disaster needs. Graham was a charter member of the Film Editors of New York City and Hollywood and a gold-card member of the Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation. He was first married to Helen May in New York City on January 11, 1920; they had two children, and they were divorced in 1927. His second marriage was to Ruth Esther McLain of Houston on July 17, 1947, in New York City; they lived in Missouri City, Texas. Graham died on January 28, 1969, in Houston and was buried there. His documentary films were donated to the University of Texas at Austin, where the Shad E. Graham Memorial Student Film Fund and Memorial Film Library were established in 1969. Source

Abbey Mausoleum
Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 43.340, -095° 18.226