Hayden S. Arnold (1805-1839)

    Hayden S. Arnold, army officer in the Texas Revolution and legislator in the Republic of Texas, was born in Tennessee in 1805 and moved to Texas late in December 1835. At Nacogdoches on January 14, 1836, he took the oath of allegiance to the Mexican government and enrolled for six months' service in the Volunteer Auxiliary Corps. On March 6 he was elected captain of his company, which became the First Company of Col. Sidney Sherman's Second Regiment, Texas Volunteers. Arnold led the Nacogdoches troops at the battle of San Jacinto, where his new London Yager rifle was shot from his hands and broken through at the breech. After the company disbanded on June 6, 1836, he was elected to represent Nacogdoches in the House of Representatives of the First Congress of the Republic of Texas. He served from October 3, 1836, to June 13, 1837. In 1836 Sam Houston appointed him to serve as secretary of a commission to treat with the Indians. He later served as district clerk pro tem of the Nacogdoches District, until at least December 20, 1838. Arnold died on July 3, 1839, at his home in Nacogdoches and was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery there. His widow, Selina, was appointed administrator of his estate. In 1936 the state of Texas erected a monument over his grave. On November 17, 1851, Adolphus Sterne introduced a bill for the relief of Arnold's heirs before the Senate of the State of Texas. Source


Oak Grove Cemetery
Nacogdoches

COORDINATES

31° 36.179, -094° 38.972

William Patman (1927-2008)

    William Neff Patman was born March 26, 1927 in Texarkana, Texas. He attended public schools there and in Washington, D.C., where his father was a Congressman on the House Banking Committee. He subsequently attended the Kemper Military School in Boonville, Missouri, graduating in 1944. He served in the United States Marine Corps as a private first class from 1945 to 1946. He was a diplomatic courier for the United States Foreign Service from 1949 to 1950, then subsequently served in the United States Air Force Reserve as a captain from 1953 to 1966. After Patman graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1953, he was admitted to the Texas bar and served as a legal examiner for the Texas Railroad Commission until 1955. In 1955, Patman commenced the private practice of law as well as acting as the city attorney for Ganado, Texas from 1955 to 1960. In 1960, Patman successfully sought the now District 18 seat in the Texas State Senate. He took office the following year and served until 1981, also working as a delegate to state Democratic Party conventions during his senatorial tenure. In 1980, he was elected to the District 14 seat in the United States House of Representatives, when the short-term incumbent Joseph P. Wyatt did not seek reelection. Patman was re-elected in 1982, when U.S. Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen led the entire Democratic ticket to its last ever full sweep of Texas statewide offices. In 1984, however, Patman was unseated by Republican Mac Sweeney of Wharton, when Ronald W. Reagan swept Texas in his presidential reelection bid. After his defeat, he did not seek further office and retired to his ranch in Ganado, where he spent his last years. Patman died December 9, 2008 of stomach cancer at the age of eighty-one at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston

Monument Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.930-097° 43.601

Robert Hampton Kuykendall (1788-1831)

    Robert Hardin (or Hampton) Kuykendall, an early member of the Old Three Hundred, was born in 1788 near Princeton, Kentucky, to Adam and Margaret (Hardin) Kuykendall. After moves through Sumner County, Tennessee, and Henderson County, Kentucky, the family settled in Arkansas near the Cadron Settlement on the Arkansas River around February 15, 1810. In the fall of 1821, having explored west of the Sabine River for some time, Robert joined his brothers Abner, Joseph, and Peter at Nacogdoches. He and Joseph moved with Daniel Gilleland and their families to the east bank of the Colorado River, near the La Bahía crossing, where they established the river's first settlement. In December 1822 the Baron de Bastrop arrived at the settlement to organize the Austin colony. The settlers elected Robert Kuykendall captain of the militia for the Mina (Colorado) District and alcalde of the Colorado District. Kuykendall's house was the election site when James Cummins was elected alcalde of the Colorado District. Kuykendall and his men killed a group of horse thieves and placed their heads on tall poles along the La Bahía Road as a warning to others, a warning that evidently succeeded in deterring lawlessness in the colony. After many Indian depredations in the summer of 1822, Kuykendall headed a party of settlers in an attack on the Karankawas at the mouth of Skull Creek, where the Indians were defeated with considerable loss.

    In 1824 Kuykendall was involved in further encounters with the Karankawas. On July 15, 1824, Stephen F. Austin granted Kuykendall two leagues of land, one on the east side and one on the west side of the Colorado River. Kuykendall established his home on the east league near the site of present Glen Flora and named it Pleasant Farm Plantation. In an Indian fight sometime after the spring of 1826, he received a serious head injury, which gradually led to paralysis, blindness, and eventual death. Between March 20 and 27, 1830, Dr. Robert Peebles performed a successful trepan on Kuykendall, an event that induced Judge Robert M. Williamson, editor of the Texas Gazette at San Felipe, to commend the doctors of the colony. William B. Travis later turned money over to E. Roddy for Dr. Peebles from the Kuykendall estate for medical expenses. In 1830 Stephen F. Austin requested that commissioner general Juan Antonio Padilla convey an extra league of land each to two men of particular merit in the early days of the colony, Josiah H. Bell as alcalde and Robert H. Kuykendall as commander of the militia. Kuykendall married Sarah Ann Gilleland at Red Hill, Arkansas, in 1814. They had six children. Kuykendall died in the latter part of 1830 and is presumed to have been buried in the Old Matagorda Cemetery. Subsequent hurricanes washed away most of the grave markers, and his headstone has been lost. Source

Note: This is a cenotaph. Over the course of several decades during the mid-to-late 1800s, many of the older grave markers in Matagorda Cemetery were washed away by a series of severe storms. Although Robert Kuykendall is known to be buried in the immediate area, his exact grave location has been lost. 

Section E
Matagorda Cemetery
Matagorda

COORDINATES

28° 42.033, -095° 57.281

Howard Joseph "Howie" Pollet (1921-1974)

    Born June 26, 1921 in New Orleans, "Howie" Pollet signed his first professional contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, and it was as a Cardinal that he achieved his greatest success. In 1941, he led the Class A1 Texas League in both ERA and strikeouts as a member of the Houston Buffaloes which earned him a promotion to the Cardinals that season. He missed the 1944-45 seasons while serving in the United States Army Air Forces in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. He returned to baseball in 1946, and promptly played a major role in the Cardinals' National League pennant and world title wins. In addition to topping the NL in earned-run average, he led the league in wins and innings pitched. When the Cardinals finished in a tie for the pennant with the Brooklyn Dodgers at the close of the regular season, he was chosen by manager Eddie Dyer to start Game 1 of the best-of-three National League playoffs on October 1. Pollet hurled a complete game, 4-2 victory in the opener, and the Cardinals wrapped up the league title by easily winning Game 2. 

    He started two games of the 1946 World Series against the Boston Red Sox, and lost his only decision, posting an ERA of 3.48 in 12 innings pitched. He was traded to the second-division Pittsburgh Pirates on June 15, 1951, and thereafter struggled to post a winning record. During his 14-year career, he won 131 and lost 116 with a career ERA of 3.51. As a Cardinal (1941-43; 1946-51), his record was 97-65; as a member of the Pirates, Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox (1951-56), he won 34 and lost 51. Altogether, he worked in 403 Major League games pitched and 2,107 innings pitched with 934 strikeouts. Pollet returned to the field in 1959 as the Cardinals' pitching coach, through 1964. In his last season there, the Cardinals won their seventh world championship. He then moved back to his adopted city of Houston in 1965 as pitching coach of the Astros for one season. He retired from baseball and resumed his business career in insurance, real estate and energy companies after the 1965 season, and died from adenocarcinoma in Houston at age 53, August 8, 1974.

Section 4
Memorial Oaks Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 46.884, -095° 36.958

Rudolph Kleberg (1847-1924)

    Rudolph Kleberg, politician, newspaperman, and attorney, was born on June 26, 1847, in a log cabin at Cat Spring, Texas, the son of Robert Justus and Rosalie (von Roeder) Kleberg. The family moved the next year to DeWitt County, where he received a private education. He served the Confederacy in 1864-65 in Gen. Thomas Green's Fourth Texas Cavalry. About 1868 he graduated from Concrete College in DeWitt County, after which he taught school at Yorktown and studied law in San Antonio. He was admitted to the bar in 1872 and began practice in Cuero, where, with the help of W. C. Bowen, he established the Cuero Star, a weekly newspaper that he edited for four years. He published outspoken editorials criticizing the violence that marked DeWitt County during Reconstruction, especially the Sutton-Taylor Feud. He served as county attorney for DeWitt County from 1876 to 1880. 

    In 1882 he formed a law partnership with William Henry Crain, and on November 7 of that year he was elected as a Democrat to the Texas Senate, where he served until 1884. As a member of the Committee on Finance he was instrumental in procuring the first general appropriation for the University of Texas and the funds to purchase the Alamo. In 1885 President Grover Cleveland appointed him United States attorney for the Western District of Texas, a position he held until 1889. In April 1896 he was elected to fill the vacancy in the United States Congress left by the death of his law partner, Crain; Kleberg was reelected to the Fifty-fifth, Fifty-sixth, and Fifty-seventh congresses and served until March 3, 1903. At the time of his death in Austin, on December 28, 1924, he was official court reporter of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, a post he had held since February 24, 1905. He was survived by his widow, the former Mathilde Elise Eckhardt, whom he had married in 1872, and five children. Source

Block E 

Oakwood Cemetery Annex 

Austin

COORDINATES 

30° 16.661, -097° 43.443