Samuel May Williams (1795-1858)

    Samuel May Williams, entrepreneur and associate of Stephen F. Austin, was the eldest child of Howell and Dorothy (Wheat) Williams. He was born on October 4, 1795, in Providence, Rhode Island, where his father, a descendant of Robert Williams, the founder of Roxbury, Massachusetts, was a sea captain. Three of Williams's four brothers lived in Texas during the 1840s and 1850s, and two of his three sisters made an extended visit. Henry Howell Williams of Baltimore served as Texas consul from 1836 to 1838 and moved to Galveston in 1842 to assume control of the McKinney and Williams commission house, where he remained off and on until the 1850s. In 1838 Matthew Reed and Nathaniel Felton Williams opened a sugar plantation on Oyster Creek in Fort Bend County purchased from their brother; it became Imperial Sugar Company in the twentieth century.

    Williams was educated in Providence and apprenticed around the age of fifteen to his uncle, Nathaniel F. Williams, a Baltimore commission merchant. He journeyed as supercargo to Buenos Aires, where he remained for a time mastering Spanish and Latin American business practice. He settled in New Orleans in 1819 before departing for Texas in 1822 using an assumed name, E. Eccleston. He resumed his true identity in 1823 when Stephen F. Austin employed him as translator and clerk. For the next thirteen years Williams was Austin's lieutenant; he wrote deeds, kept records, and directed colonial activities during the empresario's absences. In 1826 he was named postmaster of San Felipe and was appointed revenue collector and dispenser of stamped paper by the state of Coahuila and Texas the following year. He became secretary to the ayuntamiento of San Felipe in 1828. For these services he received eleven leagues (49,000 acres) of land which he selected on strategic waterways including Oyster Creek and Buffalo Bayou.

    Williams earned notoriety in 1835 while attending the legislature at Monclova by contracting for two of the 400-league grants offered by the state government as a means to raise funds to oppose President Antonio López de Santa Anna. He and six others were proscribed as revolutionaries, but he escaped arrest by going to the United States. He entered a partnership with Thomas F. McKinney in 1833 and used his family's mercantile contacts in the United States to secure credit for the firm. Their commission house, located at Quintana, dominated the Brazos cotton trade until 1838, when they moved to Galveston. The firm of McKinney and Williams used its credit in the United States to purchase arms and raise funds for the Texas Revolution in 1835-36. Neither the republic nor the state was able to repay the $99,000 debt in full, and the partners realized only a small portion of their investment in addition to the passage of favorable relief legislation. As investors in the Galveston City Company, McKinney and Williams aided in developing the city by helping to construct the Tremont Hotel as well as the commission house and wharf. McKinney withdrew from the partnership in 1842, when Henry Howell Williams assumed his brother's interest in the firm, which became H. H. Williams and Company.

    Sam Williams concentrated on banking after 1841, when the commission house received special permission from the Texas Congress to found a bank to issue and circulate paper money as an aid to commerce. In 1848 he activated his 1835 charter, obtained from Coahuila and Texas and approved by the republic in 1836, to open the Commercial and Agricultural Bank of Galveston, which also printed its own money. Jacksonian anti-banking sentiment inspired his enemies to attack the bank through the state courts on the grounds that it violated constitutional prohibitions against banks. The Texas Supreme Court sustained the bank in 1852, but subsequent suits brought its demise in 1859. Williams, a political supporter of Sam Houston, represented the Brazos district in the Coahuila and Texas legislature in 1835 and Galveston County in the lower house of the Texas Congress in 1839. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Congress in 1846. In 1838 he received a commission to negotiate a $5 million loan in the United States and to purchase seven ships for the Texas Navy. President Houston sent him to Matamoros in 1843 to seek an armistice with Mexico, an unsuccessful ploy. Williams lived quietly with his wife, Sarah Patterson Scott, on a country estate west of the city. His home, a one-story, frame, Greek Revival residence on brick piers, is operated by the Galveston Historical Foundation as a house museum and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Built between 1839 and 1844, it is among the oldest structures on the island. Williams died September 13, 1858, and was buried by the Knights Templars whose chapter he had founded. He was survived by his wife and four of his nine children. One son, William Howell Williams, was Galveston county judge from 1875 to 1880. Source


Trinity Episcopal Cemetery
Galveston

COORDINATES

29° 17.588, -094° 48.697

Edward Leon Durst (1916-1945)

    Edward Durst was born in Leona, Texas on on November 12, 1916 and subsequently moved with his family to Texas City. After his graduation from Central High School in Texas City, he became a student at the University of Texas, where he studied acting and practiced his craft in dramatic activities on the campus. While a student, he worked as a committee clerk in the house of representatives as well as a radio announcer. After leaving the University, Durst joined the Woodstock Summer Theatre in Woodstock, New York. From there, he joined a theatrical group in Arizona, where he acted regularly in several plays. His talent came to the attention of a scout for the Pasadena Playhouse in California, which he soon joined. He was selected to play in the motion picture, Days of Glory as "Petrov", a part which won him some acclaim. On March 10, 1945, he was rushed to the hospital after being found seriously ill in his apartment by fellow actor John Carradine. He died later that night of complications from pneumonia at only 29.

Section A
Galveston Memorial Park
Galveston

COORDINATES

29° 21.211, -095° 00.455

Harry John "Jitterbug" LaSane (1924-1984)

    Harry LaSane was born in Houston on September 30, 1924. At fifteen, he lied about his age and enlisted in the Army for five years, serving nearly his entire enlistment during World War II. It was during this period he met Marcus Lockman, a pro/am boxer who went by the odd nickname "Kid Chicken". Lockman saw something in LaSane and guided him into boxing, with Lockman serving as his manager. Once LaSane finished his enlistment, he and Lockman began training in a small club in Asbury Park, New Jersey. His first professional match (as a featherweight) was on March 27, 1946, taking his opponent Darnell Carter to a six round draw. Two weeks later, he beat Carter by points, again in six rounds. 

    Jitterbug (nicknamed for the way he bobbed and weaved), also briefly known as "The Houston Hurricane", was not a big puncher and depended on speed and defense for his success. The strategy worked, and by the age of 21 LaSane had a record of 26 fights, 24 wins, 1 loss and 1 draw. LaSane sustained his dominance well through 1950, and  by the end of the year his record was a very impressive 57 wins, 16 losses and 3 draws. For some reason, however, after that date he only managed a dismal record of 0 wins, 17 losses and 1 draw - no wins in eighteen bouts. He continued to struggle for the rest of his professional career, and at the time of his retirement in April 1954, his final record was 57 wins, 33 losses and 4 draws.

Section 1
Houston National Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 55.849, -095° 26.153  

William Hugh Young (1838-1901)

    William Hugh Young, Confederate army officer, was born on January 1, 1838, at Booneville, Missouri, the son of Hugh F. Young. In 1840 he moved with his parents to Red River County, Texas, and soon thereafter to Grayson County. Young was educated at Washington College, Tennessee, at McKenzie College, Texas, and at the University of Virginia, where he was matriculating at the outbreak of the Civil War. Leaving the university, Young returned to Texas to recruit a company for Confederate service. He was elected its captain. Assigned to Samuel Bell Maxey's Ninth Texas Infantry, Young and his command fought at the battle of Shiloh, on April 6 and 7, 1862, after which he was promoted to the command of the regiment. Young led the Ninth Texas in the battles of Perryville, Kentucky (October 8, 1862); Murfreesboro, Tennessee (December 31, 1862-January 3, 1863), where he was wounded in the shoulder and had two horses shot from under him; and in the Vicksburg campaign (spring and summer 1863), in which he sustained a second wound, this to the thigh, at the battle of Jackson, Mississippi, on May 14, 1863. There, according to the official report, Young "seized the colors of his regiment in one of its most gallant charges and led it through." More modestly, Young reported of the same engagement, he "ordered the regiment to move forward with a shout, both of which they did, a la Texas." At Chickamauga (September 19 and 20, 1863) he was wounded a third time, in the chest.

    Transferred with his regiment to Gen. Matthew D. Ector's brigade, he participated in the Atlanta campaign (spring and summer 1864) and despite suffering wounds to the neck and jaw at the battle of Kennesaw Mountain on June 27 was promoted to brigadier general to rank from August 15, 1864, when Ector was disabled at the battle of Peachtree Creek. Young's brigade consisted of his own Ninth Texas Infantry plus the Twenty-third Texas Cavalry (dismounted) and the Twenty-ninth and Thirty-ninth North Carolina Infantry regiments. During John Bell Hood's disastrous Tennessee campaign (October-December 1864), during which Young's regiment was attached to the brigade of Gen. Samuel G. French, Young lost his left foot to enemy fire, had his horse shot from beneath him, and was captured at Altoona, Georgia, on October 5. "Most gallantly," reported French, "he bore his part in the action." Held prisoner at Johnson's Island, Ohio, Young was not released until July 24, 1865. Following the war Young moved to San Antonio, where he was a successful attorney and real estate investor. Later he and his father organized a transportation company that hauled freight between San Antonio and Monterrey, Mexico. Young also organized the Nueces River Irrigation Company and acquired considerable ranch and farm property. For a time he was owner of the San Antonio Express. General Young died in San Antonio on November 28, 1901, and is buried in the Confederate Cemetery there. Source


Confederate Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.204, -098° 27.820