Charles Atherton Hartwell (1841-1876)

    Charles Hartwell was born on May 6, 1841 in Natick, Massachusetts to Stedman and Rebecca Dana (Perry) Hartwell. He entered the Civil War as a private in the 7th New York State Militia, but shortly afterward received a commission as a 1st Lieutenant in the 11th U.S. Regular Infantry, where he served as an aide-de-camp to Major General Nathaniel P. Banks. When Congress authorized the enlistment of black soldiers, Hartwell was promoted to Colonel and became the commander of the 77th U.S. Colored Troops. During the War, he fought in several key battles, including Bristoe Station, Rappahannock Station, Yorktown, Hanover Courthouse, Mechanicsville, Gaines Mills, Savage Station and Port Hudson. On December 2, 1865, Hartwell was brevetted a brigadier general for excellence in service. He remained in the army after the war and died in Castroville while on active duty on October 3, 1876.

Section A
San Antonio National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.300, -098° 28.008

Richard Henry "Dickey" Kerr (1893-1963)

    Dickey Kerr was a starting pitcher for the Chicago White Sox from 1919-1921. As a rookie, he won 13 games and both his starts in the 1919 World Series, which would lead to the permanent suspensions of eight of his teammates in the Black Sox Scandal. In later years, Kerr would receive praise for his honest play during the Series. In 1921, he went 19-17 and led the league in giving up only 357 hits in 3082 innings pitched. After the season, he was suspended for violating the reserve clause in his contract. Kerr attempted a comeback in 1925, pitching in 12 games and compiling a record of 0-1 in 362 innings, mostly out of the bullpen. He finished his career with a record of 53 wins against 34 losses for a winning percentage of .609. His career ERA over three-plus seasons was 3.84. After his playing days, Kerr became a baseball coach at Rice University and minor league manager for the Daytona Beach Islanders, where he met and became close friends with future Hall of Famer Stan Musial. Kerr died of cancer in Houston on May 4, 1963, just two months shy of his 70th birthday.

Section 29
Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 42.708, -095° 18.305

Floyd Davis "Pete" Mayes (1938-2008)

    Pete Mayes was born and raised in Double Bayou, Texas. The town was home to a dance hall, which played a significant part in Mayes' life. As a child he learned with a cheap guitar without a full set of strings and practiced for hours each day. Mayes was aged 16 when T-Bone Walker invited him on stage to perform. In the early 1950s, Mayes played with various bands at his local dance hall. After several years he led his own group, opening the show for touring musicians. While in the United States Army, Mayes worked with The Contrasts, which comprised three white and three black musicians. Mayes learned from watching T-Bone Walker and Gatemouth Brown, and he later cited Walker, B.B. King, Kenny Burrell, plus Lowell Fulson as major influences.

    In 1960 he relocated to Houston, and during the following decade he played with Fulson, Big Joe Turner, Percy Mayfield, Bill Doggett, and Junior Parker. Mayes also toured with the jazz musicians, Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. Unable to make a living as a full-time musician, Mayes worked as a ranch hand and then as a painter for the Houston Independent School District. He retired from the latter job with disability pay. Mayes did perform whenever possible. He undertook tours in the 1970s and played frequently in the 1990s, even though his health had started to fail. In 1983, he inherited from an uncle ownership of his local dance hall. In 1986, Double Trouble Records of the Netherlands issued Texas Guitar Master, which included a live "Battle of the Guitars" with Joe "Guitar" Hughes. In 1996, Mayes appeared on the bill of the Long Beach Blues Festival. By the time For Pete's Sake was released (1998), Mayes was still actively managing the Double Bayou dance hall. Following years of ill health, which included heart problems, diabetes and the amputation of both legs, Mayes died in Houston in December 2008, aged 70. He was survived by his wife, son and a brother.

Section R1
Houston National Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 56.012, -095° 27.220

Frederick Benjamin Gipson (1908-1973)

    Frederick (Fred) Benjamin Gipson, author, was born on a farm near Mason, Texas, on February 7, 1908, the son of Beck and Emma Deishler Gipson. He graduated from Mason High School in 1926 and after working at a variety of farming and ranching jobs entered the University of Texas in 1933. There he wrote for the Daily Texan and the Ranger, but he left school before graduating to become a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times in 1937. A year later he worked for the San Angelo Standard-Times, then briefly for the Denver Post. Soon afterward he began to sell stories and articles to pulp Western magazines and to such slick magazines as Liberty and Look. By 1944 Gipson had published a story in the Southwest Review. Many of his short stories appearing in that journal in the 1940s were prototypes for the longer works of fiction that followed. 

    His first full-length book, The Fabulous Empire: Colonel Zack Miller's Story (1946), was moderately successful (25,000 copies sold), but it was his Hound-Dog Man (1949) that established Gipson's reputation when it became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and sold over 250,000 copies in its first year of publication. Many critics and general readers maintain that Hound-Dog Man was Gipson's best work, and it remains popular with a large audience. The Hill Country writer earned increasing attention for the rapid succession of books that followed: The Home Place (1950; later filmed as Return of the Texan); Big Bend: A Homesteader's Story (1952), with J. O. Langford; Cowhand: The Story of a Working Cowboy (1953); The Trail-Driving Rooster (1955); Recollection Creek (1955); Old Yeller (1956); and Savage Sam (1962). Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.921, -097° 43.613

Charles Stanfield Taylor (1808-1865)

    Charles S. Taylor, member of the Texas Revolutionary Committee of Correspondence and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, was born in London, England, in 1808. His parents died while he was young, and he was reared by an uncle. Taylor immigrated to the United States in 1828, and from New York City he moved to Nacogdoches where he established a mercantile business. On April 1, 1830, he took his Mexican citizenship oath in Nacogdoches and stated that he was Catholic and unmarried at the time. Taylor participated in the battle of Nacogdoches and represented Nacogdoches in the Convention of 1832. In 1833 he moved to San Augustine, where he was elected alcalde on January 1, 1834. In summer 1834 he returned to Nacogdoches, and on April 25, 1835, he was appointed land commissioner for San Augustine and issued land titles until the Texas Revolution began. He was one of the four representatives from Nacogdoches at the Convention of 1836 and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Taylor left Texas after he signed the Declaration of Independence and stayed in Louisiana until the revolution was over. Two of his children died during this time. He was appointed chief justice of Nacogdoches County on December 20, 1836.

    In November 1838 he was nominated by President Sam Houston to run the boundary line between Texas and the United States, however Mirabeau B. Lamar succeeded Houston as president, and the nomination was withdrawn. Taylor was licensed to practice law in the republic in 1839. He was appointed district attorney by President Lamar but was not confirmed by the Senate. He was a candidate for Congress in 1845 but was defeated by three votes. He was elected county treasurer of Nacogdoches County in 1850 and 1852. Taylor boarded in the home of Nicholas Adolphus Sterne when he first arrived in Nacogdoches and on May 28, 1831, married Mrs. Sterne's sister, Anna Marie Rouff, daughter of John R. Rouff of Weerenberg, Germany. She was born on March 1, 1814, and died on February 8, 1873. They became parents of thirteen children, some of which died of exposure during the Runaway Scrape. Their sons, Charles Travis, Milam, William Adolphus, and Lawrence S., joined the Confederate forces in 1861. Lawrence married the daughter of Dr. Robert A. Irion. Charles S. Taylor was chief justice of Nacogdoches County from August 1860 until his death on November 1, 1865. He was a member of Milam Lodge No. 2 and an original member of the Grand Lodge of Texas. In 1936 the Texas Centennial Commission erected a joint monument at the graves of Taylor and his wife in Oak Grove Cemetery, Nacogdoches, Texas. Source

Note: His middle name is misspelled on his stone.

Oak Grove Cemetery
Nacogdoches

COORDINATES

31° 36.166, -094° 38.952

Lewis Warrington III (?-1879)

    Lewis Warrington III, Medal of Honor recipient and grandson of War of 1812 naval hero Commodore Lewis Warrington, was born in Washington, D.C. and later entered the United States Army there. He was assigned to the 4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment as a second lieutenant on June 18, 1867, and then made a first lieutenant on July 31, 1869. Warrington spent most of his career on the Texas frontier and served under Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie during the Texas-Indian Wars of the 1870s. On December 8, 1874, he and ten cavalrymen pursued a group of hostile Comanche Indians through the Muchague Valley. Both groups were riding at a full gallop and several riders of Warrington's unit were left behind. Warrington personally captured one Indian, turning him over to a trooper whose horse could not continue, and resumed the pursuit with Privates Frederick Bergendahl and John O'Sullivan. 

    After five miles, their horses exhausted, the Comanches dismounted and decided to shoot it out with the troopers. Climbing out of the valley onto the plain, they opened fire on Warrington and his men as they climbed up after them. Warrington eventually became separated from the others and found himself at the mercy of five Comanche warriors. He was forced to fight them off single-handed and, after exhausting his ammunition, used his rifle as a club in hand-to-hand combat. Bergendahl and O'Sullivan found themselves in a similar situation and killed all but one of their attackers. O'Sullivan pursued the lone survivor but was unable to catch him. All three men received the Medal of Honor four months later, Warrington being the only officer of the Indian Wars to receive the award following the battle rather than years afterwards like other officers. Warrington died on January 5, 1879, and buried in San Antonio National Cemetery.

CITATION

Gallantry in a combat with 5 Indians.

Section A
San Antonio National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.300, -098° 28.009

Hardin Richard Runnels (1820-1873)

    Hardin R. Runnels, governor and legislator, the son of Hardin D. and Martha "Patsy" Burch (Darden) Runnels, was born on August 30, 1820, in Mississippi. His father died in 1839, and in 1842 he moved with his mother, his three brothers, and his uncle Hiram G. Runnels to Texas. The family first settled on the Brazos River, but Runnels soon moved with his mother and brothers to Bowie County, where they established a cotton plantation on the Red River. From 1847 to 1855 he served as state representative in the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth legislatures. He was speaker of the House during his final term. In 1855 he was elected lieutenant governor. During these years he acquired a reputation as a loyal member of the Democratic party and a staunch supporter of states' rights. He was the son of a prominent and wealthy family and also became a wealthy man in his own right. By 1860 his real and personal property was worth an estimated $85,000 and included thirty-nine slaves. In May 1857 the state Democratic party held its first convention at which a gubernatorial candidate was nominated. Leading Democrats, angered by Sam Houston's votes in the United States Senate and his seeming endorsement of the American (Know-Nothing) party in 1856, wished to prevent Houston's election as governor. Because of his support of Southern positions and his party loyalty, Runnels received the nomination on the eighth ballot. Shortly thereafter, Houston announced his candidacy as an independent Democrat, saying that the issues were "Houston and Anti-Houston." Runnels was a poor public speaker and made few appearances, but the party's candidate for lieutenant governor, Francis R. Lubbock, campaigned actively. Houston also campaigned vigorously, but had no party machinery and little support from Texas newspapers. Runnels won by a vote of 38,552 to 23,628 and thus became the only person ever to defeat Sam Houston in an election.

    During his term Runnels consistently supported Southern positions. He frequently asserted that Texas might be forced to secede from the Union, supported the unsuccessful effort to put the Texas legislature on record in favor of reopening the African slave trade, and signed into law a bill allowing free blacks to choose a master and become slaves. He also signed into law the bill that appropriated financial support to establish the University of Texas and the bill establishing the State Geological Survey. The most vexing problem Runnels faced during his term as governor was the problem of protecting frontier settlers against Indian depredations. The year he took office there was a marked upsurge in Indian attacks, generally by the Comanches. Although Runnels supported and signed into law bills that called for the raising of temporary ranger battalions to meet the emergency, he opposed efforts to form permanent battalions on the grounds that the state could not afford them and that the federal government was responsible for protecting the frontier. When angry settlers took matters in their own hands and retaliated against Indians on the Brazos Indian Reservation, they clashed with the army. Runnels's efforts to make peace failed. In 1859 the state Democratic convention renominated Runnels, and Houston again declared himself a candidate. This time however, Houston's key issues were his record of service to the state, particularly at the battle of San Jacinto, and Runnels's record as governor. Houston made particularly effective use of the problems on the frontier and the African slave-trade issue. The Democratic party attempted to blunt the criticism on the slave-trade matter by remaining silent on the controversy in their platform, but they were largely unsuccessful. The combination of Runnels's mediocre record as governor and Houston's personal popularity resulted in a reversal of the 1857 results, and Houston defeated Runnels by a vote of 36,227 to 27,500.

    Runnels subsequently retired to his plantation in Bowie County but remained active in the Democratic party. He was a member of the Secession Convention in 1861, where he was a vigorous supporter of the secession resolution. After the Civil War, although he had not yet received a pardon from the president, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1866. At this convention he was one of about eleven delegates who were often termed the "aggressive secessionists" or the "irreconcilables." Although this group nominated him for convention president, he was not elected, and his extreme reluctance to seek or endorse workable compromises negated any influence he might have had on the convention's deliberations. In the 1850s Runnels built an impressive Greek Revival mansion near Old Boston and furnished it in anticipation of his approaching marriage. For some reason the wedding never took place, and he remained a bachelor for the rest of his life. When the Texas Historical Society was organized in Houston on May 23, 1870, Runnels was elected one of its vice presidents. He was also a member of St. John's Masonic Lodge. He died on December 25, 1873, and was buried in the Runnels family cemetery in Bowie County. In 1929 his remains were exhumed and reinterred in the State Cemetery at Austin, where a monument was installed at his new grave. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.933, -097° 43.639

Jose Francisco Ruiz (1783-1840)

    José Francisco Ruiz, military officer and public official, was born about January 28, 1783, to Juan Manuel Ruiz and María Manuela de la Peña and baptized eight days later in the parish church of San Fernando de Béxar (now San Antonio). It is said that he went to Spain for his final years of schooling. In 1803 he was appointed San Antonio's schoolmaster. The designated site for the school was a house on Military Plaza acquired earlier by Juan Manuel Ruiz and passed on to his son. This same house, suffering from the ravages of time and business encroachment, was removed from its original location in 1943 and carefully reconstructed on the grounds of the Witte Museum, where it is still used for educational purposes. Ruiz was elected regidor on the San Antonio cabildo or city council in 1805. His duties involved assisting the síndico procurador (city attorney) in administering the affairs of a public slaughterhouse. In 1809 he was elected procurador. Beginning a long military career, he joined the Bexar Provincial Militia on January 14, 1811, with the rank of lieutenant. He joined the Republican Army at Bexar and served first under José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara and then José Álvarez de Toledo y Dubois. He took part in the battle of Medina on August 18, 1813, and with the defeat of the revolutionaries and a price on his head, Ruiz was "obliged to emigrate to the United States of the North." His nephew, José Antonio Navarro, who was also in exile, wrote of their "wandering in the State of Louisiana." When a proclamation of general amnesty was issued on October 10, 1813, to the Mexican insurgents, Francisco Ruiz, Juan Martín de Veramendi, and a few others were excepted. The Ruiz family was on the "List of Insurgents for the Month of March 1814". Ruiz remained in exile until 1822, and spent part of this time with the Indians. In 1821, at the order of Augustín de Iturbide, he "occupied himself in making peace with the Indians until he succeeded in getting the hostile tribes of the North, the Comanches and Lipans, to present themselves in peace."

    In a letter to Antonio M. Martínez Ruiz writes that he will leave Natchitoches, Louisiana, on November 1, 1821, in compliance with the commission conferred on him by Gaspar López, commandant general of the Eastern Internal Provinces, and take the Indians to the capitol if possible. In 1822, his long exile ended, Ruiz returned to Texas, where he was appointed to the Mounted Militia. That same year he traveled with a party of Indians to Mexico City, where the Lipans signed a peace treaty ratified in September 1822 by the Mexican government. Ruiz was promoted in 1823 to army captain, unassigned, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. His commission was confirmed on September 23, 1825. On June 22, 1826, he wrote the president of Mexico requesting the command of a post. He was sent to Nacogdoches in December 1826 to help put down the Fredonian Rebellion, and by April 1827 he was in command of a detachment there. In 1828 Ruiz returned to Bexar, where he commanded the Álamo de Parras company and assisted Gen. Manuel de Mier y Terán in his study of the Texas Indians. It was probably during this time that Ruiz wrote his Report on the Indian Tribes of Texas in 1818, preserved in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. During his years in the military Ruiz gained the trust of the Indians as negotiator. The Shawnees referred to him as "A good man no lie and a friend of the Indians." With the passage of the Law of April 6, 1830, General Mier instructed Antonio Elozúa, military commandant in Bexar, to dispatch Ruiz with the Alamo de Parras company to establish a military post on the Brazos at the upper crossing of the Bexar-Nacogdoches road. Its primary purpose was to prevent further American colonization from this direction. Ruiz set out on June 25, 1830, with his company and kept a diary of the trip, in which he recorded their arrival at the Brazos on July 13, 1830. They chose a site on August 2 on the west side of the river, in what is now Burleson County, and gave their post the name Fort Tenoxtitlán. Colonel Ruiz encountered many difficulties as commandant of the fort-isolation, hostile Indians, and desertions and other crimes. The post suffered shortages of food, funds, and military personnel. In a letter to his friend Stephen F. Austin on November 26, 1830, Ruiz stated that he was tired of his command and wanted to get out of military service. He longed to obtain land and build a house so he could bring his family from Bexar and settle down as a rancher.

    On October 16, 1831, he wrote Vice President Anastasio Bustamante asking to be separated from the army because of failing health. He outlined his military career and asked for retirement or a permanent leave. In a letter of November 13 to his friend and superior Elozúa, Ruiz described a debilitating illness that had impaired his hearing and caused his hair to fall out. On August 15, 1832, he received orders to abandon the fort and move his troops back to Bexar. Ruiz received his retirement and military pay from the Mexican government at the end of 1832. On January 17, 1836, James W. Robinson, lieutenant governor of the provisional government of Texas, appointed him one of five commissioners to treat with the Comanche Indians. When the struggle for Texas independence gained momentum in 1835, Ruiz allied himself with its cause. He traveled to Washington-on-the-Brazos in late February 1836 as a delegate to the Convention of 1836. There he and his nephew José Antonio Navarro signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836, the only native Texans among the fifty-nine men who affixed their names to this document. Still away from his home in the service of the republic, Ruiz wrote his son-in-law, Blas María Herrera, on December 27, 1836, from Columbia, Texas. In this letter, still in family possession, he eloquently expressed his affection and longing for his family and his support for the young Republic of Texas. "Under no circumstance," he wrote, "take sides against the Texans...for only God will return the territory of Texas to the Mexican government." Ruiz represented the Bexar District as its senator in the First Congress of the Republic of Texas, from October 3, 1836, to September 25, 1837. He was a Catholic. He was married in San Antonio on March 8, 1804, to Josefa Hernández. They had four children, of whom one was Francisco Antonio Ruiz, alcalde of San Antonio during the battle of the Alamo. Besides the property Ruiz owned in and around San Antonio, in 1833 and 1834 he received eleven leagues of land that is now part of Robertson, Brazos, Milam, Burleson, and Karnes counties. Ruiz died in San Antonio, probably on January 19, 1840, and is buried there. Source

Section 4
San Fernando Cemetery #1
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 24.937, -098° 30.740

Lucien Hopson (1803-1896)

    Lucien Hopson, Republic of Texas Veteran, was born in Ohio on November 25, 1803. Upon coming to Texas in 1836, he fought for independence with Company C of the 1st Regiment of the Texas Volunteers, or the Mina Volunteers, at the Battle of San Jacinto. The Mina Volunteers were organized on February 28, 1836. This Company became Company C of the 1st Regiment of the Texas Volunteers. The Mina Volunteers were quite unique because they were made up entirely of settlers who lived in and around Bastrop County. For his service to Texas, Hopson received one-third of a league of land on May 2, 1839, and an additional 960 acres on August 17, 1840, for having served in the army from February 3 to November 4, 1836. Unable to fight during the Civil War, Hopson, at age 58, still worked for the Confederate cause. On September 25, 1862, he was granted patent number 106 by the Confederate Patent Office for creating a "projectile." The vast majority of the records from the Confederate Patent Office were destroyed at the end of the war, so it is unknown what Hopson's invention actually was. On October 29, 1866, the state legislature, by joint resolution, gave Hopson an additional 640 acres of land, which was issued to him on November 9, 1866. A member of the Texas Veterans Association, Hopson lived in Lampasas County. He died in Austin on February 16, 1896, and was buried in the Texas State Cemetery.

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.910, -097° 43.634

"Blind" Lemon Jefferson (1893-1929)

    Lemon Jefferson, a seminal blues guitarist and songster, was born on a farm in Couchman, near Wortham, Freestone County, Texas, in the mid-1890s. Sources differ as to the exact birth date. Census records indicate that he was born on September 24, 1893, while apparently Jefferson himself wrote the date of October 26, 1894, on his World War I draft registration. He was the son of Alec and Clarissy Banks Jefferson. His parents were sharecroppers. There are numerous contradictory accounts of where Lemon lived, performed, and died, complicated further by the lack of photographic documentation; to date, only two photographs of him have been identified, and even these are misleading. The cause of his blindness isn't known, nor whether he had some sight. Little is known about Jefferson's early life. He must have heard songsters and bluesmen, like Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas and "Texas" Alexander. Both Thomas and Alexander traveled around East Texas and performed a variety of blues and dance tunes. Clearly, Jefferson was an heir to the blues songster tradition, though the specifics of his musical training are vague. Legends of his prowess as a bluesman abound among the musicians who heard him, and sightings of Jefferson in different places around the country are plentiful. By his teens, he began spending time in Dallas.

    About 1912 he started performing in the Deep Ellum and Central Track areas of Dallas, where he met Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, one of the most legendary musical figures to travel and live in Texas. In interviews he gave in the 1940s, Lead Belly gave various dates for his initial meeting with Jefferson, sometimes placing it as early as 1904. But he mentioned 1912 most consistently, and that seems plausible. Jefferson would then have been eighteen or nineteen years old. The two became musical partners in Dallas and the outlying areas of East Texas. Lead Belly learned much about the blues from Blind Lemon, and he had plenty to contribute as a musician and a showman. Though Jefferson was known to perform almost daily at the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue in Dallas, there is no evidence that he ever lived in the city. The 1920 census shows him living in Freestone County with an older half-brother, Nit C. Banks, and his family. Jefferson's occupation is listed as "musician" and his employer as "general public." Sometime after 1920, Jefferson met Roberta Ransom, who was ten years his senior. They married in 1927, the year that Ransom's son by a previous marriage, Theaul Howard, died. Howard's son, also named Theaul, remained in the area and retired in nearby Ferris, Texas.

    In 1925 Jefferson was discovered by a Paramount recording scout and taken to Chicago to make records. Though he was not the first folk (or "country") blues singer-guitarist, or the first to make commercial recordings, Jefferson was the first to attain a national audience. His extremely successful recording career began in 1926 and continued until 1929. He recorded 110 sides (including all alternate takes), of which seven were not issued and six are not yet available in any format. In addition to blues, he recorded two spiritual songs, I Want to be Like Jesus in My Heart and All I Want is That Pure Religion, released under the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates. Overall, Jefferson's recordings display an extraordinary virtuosity. His compositions are rooted in tradition, but are innovative in his guitar solos, his two-octave vocal range, and the complexity of his lyrics, which are at once ironic, humorous, sad, and poignant. Jefferson's approach to creating his blues varied. Some of his songs use essentially the same melodic and guitar parts. Others contain virtually no repetition. Some are highly rhythmic and related to different dances, the names of which he called out at times between or in the middle of stanzas. He made extensive use of single-note runs, often apparently picked with his thumb, and he played in a variety of keys and tunings.

    Jefferson is widely recognized as a profound influence upon the development of the Texas blues tradition and the growth of American popular music. His significance has been acknowledged by blues, jazz, and rock musicians, from Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, and T-Bone Walker to Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Carl Perkins, Jefferson Airplane, and the Beatles. In the 1970s, Jefferson was parodied as "Blind Mellow Jelly" by Redd Foxx in his popular Sanford and Son television series, and by the 1990s there was a popular alternative rock band called Blind Melon. A caricature of Blind Lemon appears on the inside of a Swedish blues magazine, called Jefferson. He appears in the same characteristic pose as his publicity photo, but instead of wearing a suit and tie, he is depicted in a Hawaiian-style shirt. In each issue, the editors put new words in the singer's mouth: "Can I change my shirt now? Is the world ready for me yet?" Alan Govenar and Akin Babatunde have composed a musical, Blind Lemon: Prince of Country Blues, staged at the Majestic Theatre, Dallas (1999), and the Addison WaterTower Theatre (2001), and have also developed a touring musical revue, entitled Blind Lemon Blues. Jefferson died in Chicago on December 22, 1929, and was buried in the Negro Cemetery in Wortham, Texas. His grave was unmarked until 1967, when a Texas Historical Marker was dedicated to him. Musicologist Alan Lomax and Mance Lipscomb were among those in attendance at the dedication ceremony. Jefferson was inducted in the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980. In 1997 the town of Wortham began a blues festival named for the singer, and a new granite headstone was placed at his gravesite. The inscription included lyrics from one of the bluesman's songs: "Lord, it's one kind favor I'll ask of you. See that my grave is kept clean." In 2007 the name of the cemetery was changed to Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery. Among Jefferson's most well-known songs are Matchbox Blues, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, That Black Snake Moan, Mosquito Moan, One Dime Blues, Tin Cup Blues, Hangman's Blues, 'Lectric Chair Blues and Black Horse Blues. All of Blind Lemon Jefferson's recordings have been reissued by Document Records. Source


Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery
Wortham

COORDINATES

31° 47.863, -096° 27.804

Kermit King Beahan (1918-1990)

    Kermit Beahan was a career officer in the United States Air Force and its predecessor United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He was the bombardier on the crew flying the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar on August 9, 1945, that dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan as well as participating in the first atomic mission that bombed Hiroshima three days earlier. Flying as part of the crew of The Great Artiste which was a reference to him, purportedly because he could "hit a pickle barrel with a bomb from 30,000 feet", his aircraft acted as the blast instrumentation support aircraft for the mission. Beahan attended Rice University on a football scholarship during the 1930s. In 1939 he joined the Army Air Forces as an aviation cadet but washed out of pilot training, becoming a bombardier instead. He was assigned to the 97th Bombardment Group and took part in the first B-17 raids in Europe by Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses. He flew 13 missions over Europe, 17 missions over North Africa, five credited combat missions in the Pacific with the 509th Composite Group and was crash-landed four times, twice in Europe and North Africa.

    He returned to the United States as a bombing instructor in Midland, Texas, but in the summer of 1944, he was recruited by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets to be part of the 509th, which was formed to deliver the atomic bomb. The mission to bomb Nagasaki was conducted on Beahan's 27th birthday. Admiral Frederick L. Ashworth, who participated on the mission as weaponeer, credited Beahan with saving the mission from failure by finding an opening in the clouds by which to complete the required visual bombing of the city. An estimated 35,000-40,000 people were killed outright by the bombing of Nagasaki, the majority of whom were munitions workers. Following the Japanese surrender, he returned to the United States as a crewman in the record-breaking 1945 Japan-Washington flight under Lieutenant General Barney M. Giles. He remained in the Air Force until 1964, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. After his retirement, he worked as a technical writer for the engineering and construction firm Brown & Root through 1985. On the 40th anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing, Beahan said he would never apologize for the bombing, that he had been thanked for his role by a group of 25 Japanese, and hoped that he would forever remain the last man to have dropped an atomic bomb on people. Beahan died on March 10, 1989 of heart attack and was buried at the Houston National Cemetery.

Section K
Houston National Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 55.814, -095° 26.945

George Krause Kitchen (1844-1922)

    George K. Kitchen, Medal of Honor recipient, was born in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, on October 5, 1844, son of George Kitchen. Both of his parents were born in England. Kitchen married a woman named Annie, who died in 1915, and later a second wife named Emma. Sgt. George K. Kitchen was in Texas with Company H, Sixth United States Cavalry, on the upper Washita River on September 9, 1874, with Lyman's wagon train, attempting to reach Gen. Nelson A. Miles's forces on the Washita River, when the company was attacked by a large force of Indians. They engaged the enemy from September 9 to 14 under very difficult conditions. Kitchen was awarded the Medal of Honor for "gallantry in action." After leaving the army he lived in San Antonio for seventeen years and worked in the United States Post Office there. He died at Kelly Field No. 2 on November 22, 1922, and is buried in St. Mary's Cemetery. Source

CITATION
Gallantry in action.

Lot 67
St. Mary's Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.016, -098° 27.832

Sammie Lee Tucker (1920-1994)

    Sammie Tucker was a member of The Tucker Sisters, a singing trio that received national acclaim during the late thirties, forties, and early fifties. They began their professional career in 1936 at the Texas State Fair and became one of many successful sister trios during World War II, headlining at major nightclubs from New York to Hollywood, California, and appearing regularly on live CBS radio broadcasts through the 1940s and 1950s. The group also enjoyed popularity as recording artists and performed with the USO during WWII. The trio disbanded in the early 1950s when Ernestine and Betty Jane married and raised families respectively. Sammie continued as a solo act for some time afterward, often performing with MGM's Cavalcade of Stars troupe. She passed away in Chicago on June 18, 1994 and buried in her hometown of Dallas.


Masonic Section
Restland Memorial Park
Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 55.494, -096° 44.644

Edward Burleson (1798-1851)

    Edward Burleson, soldier and statesman, son of Capt. James and Elizabeth (Shipman) Burleson, was born at Buncombe County, North Carolina, on December 15, 1798. He served as a private in the War of 1812 in his father's company, part of Perkin's Regiment, Alabama. He married Sarah Griffin Owen on April 25, 1816, in Madison County, Missouri Territory; they had nine children. On October 20, 1817, Burleson was appointed a captain of militia in Howard County, Missouri; he was commissioned colonel on June 13, 1821, in Saline County, and was colonel of militia from 1823 to 1830 in Hardeman County, Tennessee. He arrived in Texas on May 1, 1830, and applied for land in March 1831; title was issued on April 4, 1831. On August 11, 1832, he was a member of the ayuntamiento at San Felipe de Austin. On December 7, 1832, he was elected lieutenant colonel of the militia of Austin Municipality. In 1833 he was elected a delegate to the Second Convention in Mina. From 1830 to 1842 he defended settlers in numerous engagements with hostile Indians. On May 17, 1835, in Bastrop he was elected to the committee of safety and was therefore unable to attend the Consultation of 1835, although he had been elected a delegate. On October 10, 1835, in Gonzales he was elected lieutenant colonel of the infantry in Gen. Stephen F. Austin's army. On November 24, 1835, Burleson became general of the volunteer army and replaced Austin. 

    On November 26, 1835, he fought in the Grass Fight during the siege of Bexar. His father was active in this battle, which was won by the Texans. On December 1, 1835, Burleson was commissioned commander in chief of the volunteer army by the provisional government. On December 6 he entered Bexar and, with Benjamin R. Milam, wrote a report to the provisional government. On December 14, 1835, he reported on the success at Bexar to the provisional governor, Henry Smith. The volunteer army disbanded on December 20, 1835, and Burleson raised a company and rode to Gonzales in February 1836. By March 10, in Gonzales, he was officially elected colonel of the infantry, First Regiment. On April 21, 1836, at the battle of San Jacinto, he commanded the First Regiment, which was placed opposite Mexican breastworks and was the first to charge them. Burleson accepted the sword and surrender of Gen. Juan N. Almonte. From July 12 to December 1836 he was colonel of the frontier rangers. 

    In 1837 he surveyed and laid out roads to Bastrop, La Grange, and other Central Texas places. On June 12, 1837, he became brigadier general of the militia established by the First Congress of the Republic of Texas. As a representative of the Second Congress from September 26, 1837, to May 1838, Burleson served on the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, the Committee on Military Affairs, and the Committee of Indian Affairs, of which he was chairman. In 1838 he was colonel of the First Regiment of Infantry in the new regular army and on April 4, 1838, defeated Mexican insurrectionists under Vicente Córdova. In the spring of that year Burleson laid out the town of Waterloo, the original settlement of the city of Austin. He was elected to the Senate of the Third Congress but resigned on January 19, 1839, at President Mirabeau B. Lamar's request, to take command of the Frontier Regiment. On May 22, 1839, Burleson intercepted a Córdova agent with proof that Mexico had made allies of Cherokees and other Indians. He defeated the Cherokees under Chief Bowl in July 1839. 

    On October 17, 1839, Burleson was in command of the ceremonies establishing Austin as the capital of the Republic of Texas. He defeated the Cherokees, three miles below the mouth of the San Saba River, on Christmas Day, 1839, killing Chief Bowl's son John and another chief known as the Egg. Burleson sent Chief Bowl's "hat" to Sam Houston, who was enraged. On August 12, 1840, Burleson defeated the Comanches in the battle of Plum Creek. In 1841 he was elected vice president of the republic. In the spring of 1842, when the Mexican army under Rafael Vásquez invaded Texas, Burleson met with volunteers at San Antonio, where they elected him to command. Houston sent Alexander Somervell to take over, and Burleson handed the command to him. Burleson then made his famous speech before the Alamo: "though Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat, the Alamo had none".

    In the fall of 1842 Mexican general Adrián Woll invaded Texas. Burleson raised troops for defense and again yielded the command to General Somervell, sent by Houston. In 1844 Burleson made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency against Anson Jones. In December 1845 he was elected senator from the Fifteenth District to the First Legislature of the state of Texas. He was unanimously elected president pro tem. During the Mexican War Burleson and Governor James P. Henderson went to Monterrey, Nuevo León; Burleson was appointed senior aide-de-camp, held the rank of major, and served as a spy during the siege of Monterrey and at Buena Vista. In March 1851 Burleson, Eli T. Merriman, and William Lindsey surveyed and laid out the town of San Marcos. In 1848 Burleson introduced a resolution to establish Hays County and donated the land for the courthouse. He chaired the Committee on Military Affairs, which awarded a $1,250,000 grant to Texas for Indian depredations. Burleson died of pneumonia on December 26, 1851, in Austin, while serving as senator from the Twenty-first District. He was still president pro tem. He was given a Masonic burial at the site of the future State Cemetery, the land for which was purchased by the state of Texas in his honor in 1854. Burleson was a Methodist. Source

Monument Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.924, -097° 43.639

Asa Hoxie Willie (1829-1899)

    Asa Hoxie Willie, jurist and soldier, was born in Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia, on October 11, 1829, the son of James and Caroline E. (Hoxie) Willie. He attended private schools near Washington and taught at Powelton, Georgia, for a time before he moved to Texas in February 1846 at the age of sixteen. He lived for a while in Independence with his maternal uncle, Asa Hoxey, but in 1847 he began the study of law at Brenham in the office of his older brother, James Willie. He was admitted to the bar in 1849, and from 1852 until 1854 he was district attorney for the Third Judicial District. In 1857 James Willie became attorney general and was commissioned to index the state's criminal codes. Asa Hoxie Willie moved to Austin to assist him and for a year took on the greater part of the duties of the attorney general. In 1858 Asa Willie moved to Marshall where he established a partnership with Alexander Pope. He married Bettie Johnson of Bolivar, Tennessee, on October 20, 1859, in Marshall. The couple had ten children, five of whom lived to maturity. 

    With the outbreak of the Civil War Willie joined the Confederate army and was commissioned a major in the Seventh Texas Infantry on the staff of Col. John Gregg. He was captured with the rest of his command at Fort Donelson in February 1862 and was confined for nine months at Camp Douglas, Illinois. The regiment was exchanged in time to take part in the battle of Chickamauga, Tennessee, in September 1863 and the remainder of the battles of the Army of Tennessee. After the war Willie returned to Brenham, where he was elected associate justice of the Texas Supreme Court but was removed from office the following year by the military government of Gen. Charles Griffin as an "impediment to Reconstruction." In 1866 Willie moved to Galveston, where in 1871 he formed a legal partnership with Charles Cleveland. In 1873 he was elected to the House of Representatives of the Forty-third United States Congress, serving until 1875. Willie chose not to run for reelection and returned to Galveston, where he was elected city attorney in 1875 and 1876. In 1882 he was elected chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court by the largest majority of any candidate in state history and served until his retirement on March 3, 1888. Willie died of heart failure in Galveston on March 16, 1899. Source 

Trinity Episcopal Church Cemetery
Galveston

COORDINATES

29° 17.597, -094° 48.697

John Wheeler Bunton (1807-1879)

    John Wheeler Bunton, patriot and statesman, son of Joseph Robert and Phoebe (Desha) Bunton, was born in Sumner County, Tennessee, on February 22, 1807. He was educated at Princeton College, Kentucky, and studied law in Gallatin, Tennessee. He arrived in Texas in 1833 and settled first in Austin's colony in San Felipe; soon thereafter he moved to Mina (Bastrop), where, on May 17, 1835, he was elected secretary of the local committee of safety. Such committees, newly organized for protection against the Indians, became the first step toward Texas independence. Bunton represented Mina at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, and was a member of the committee to draft the constitution of the new republic. 

    Bunton was first sergeant of Robert M. Coleman's company of Mina Volunteers. For the siege of Bexar on December 5–10, 1835, he was transferred to Capt. John York's company. After being honorably discharged, he rejoined the army, on March 28, 1836. At the battle of San Jacinto he served on the staff of Gen. Sam Houston in Capt. Jesse Billingsley's company of Mina Volunteers. Afterward, Bunton returned to his home, and from October 3 to December 21, 1836, he represented Bastrop County in the House of Representatives of the First Congress of the Republic of Texas. 

    In the spring of 1836 Bunton returned to Gallatin, Tennessee, and married his sweetheart, Mary Howell. In April the Buntons, accompanied by 140 friends and slaves, left for Texas. At New Orleans they boarded the Julius Caesar carrying a cargo valued at $30,000. Near the Texas coast on April 12 the vessel was captured by Mexicans and taken to Matamoros, where all of the passengers were imprisoned for three months. After release, the Buntons and other passengers returned to Tennessee. Bunton soon headed another group that traveled by boat and entered Texas at Indianola on Matagorda Bay. While residing in Austin County, he was elected to the House of Representatives of the Third Congress. He is credited for the bill that established the Texas Rangers, the bill providing postal service, and the bill outlining the judiciary system. In 1840 he settled on a farm on Cedar Creek in Bastrop County, where he resided for seventeen years. In 1857 he moved to Mountain City, where he engaged in the cattle business. Bunton originated the famous Turkey Foot brand, which was registered in Hays County. 

    He joined the First Christian Church at Lockhart and was baptized in Walnut Creek in Caldwell County. He was a very tall man, and family members said it was necessary to dam the creek to get sufficient water to immerse him. He was a member of the Texas Veterans Association and a charter member of the Philosophical Society of Texas. The Buntons had five sons and a daughter. On September 16, 1862, Mary Bunton died. Bunton was married again on July 26, 1865, in Bastrop County to Hermine C. Duval. He died at his home on August 24, 1879, and was buried in the Robinson Cemetery beside his first wife. In recognition of his patriotic services in behalf of Texas, on Texas Independence Day, March 2, 1932, the remains of John Wheeler and Mary Howell Bunton were moved and reinterred in the State Cemetery in Austin under the auspices of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Source

Republic Hill

Texas State Cemetery

Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.925, -097° 43.617

Edmund Jackson Davis (1827-1883)

    Edmund J. Davis, Union Army officer and Reconstruction governor of Texas, was born at St. Augustine, Florida, on October 2, 1827, the son of William Godwin and Mary Ann (Channer) Davis. His grandfather Godwin Davis, an Englishman, had settled in Virginia and had fought and died in the Revolutionary War. His father, who had lived in South Carolina, was a land developer and attorney at St. Augustine. The young Davis received his education in Florida and moved with his family to Galveston, Texas, in January 1848. There he worked as a clerk in the post office and studied law. In mid-1849 he moved to Corpus Christi, where he worked in a store and read law. He was admitted to the bar in the fall of 1849. Between 1849 and 1853 he was an inspector and deputy collector of customs at Laredo. In 1853 he became district attorney of the Twelfth Judicial District at Brownsville. About 1856 Governor Elisha M. Pease named him judge of the same district, and Davis continued to serve as a state judge until 1861. As judge he accompanied the ranger unit of Capt. William G. Tobin, who was involved in the Cortina affair at Brownsville in 1859. On April 6, 1858, Davis married Elizabeth Anne Britton, daughter of Forbes Britton, a state senator and friend of Sam Houston. The couple had two sons, Britton and Waters. Britton was born in 1860, attended West Point, and became an officer in the United States Army. Waters, born in 1862, attended the University of Michigan and became an attorney and merchant in El Paso. Davis was a Whig until the mid-1850s.

    In 1855 he joined the Democratic party in a fusion against the American (Know-Nothing) party, and he remained a Democrat until after the Civil War. In later politics he supported Sam Houston and opposed secession in 1861, when he ran unsuccessfully to become a delegate to the Secession Convention. After secession Davis refused to take the oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, and the state vacated his judgeship on April 24. As a result of his opposition to the Confederacy, he fled the state in May 1862. With John L. Haynes and William Alexander, he went to New Orleans, then to Washington, where the men met with President Abraham Lincoln, who recommended providing arms to troops that they wanted to raise. On October 26, 1862, Davis received a colonel's commission and authorization to recruit the cavalry regiment that became the First Texas Cavalry (U.S.). Davis and the First Texas saw extensive service during the remainder of the war. They were at Galveston on January 3, 1863, and barely escaped capture when Confederates took that city back from Union hands. On March 15, 1863, Confederate citizens and off-duty soldiers seized Davis in Matamoros, where he was attempting to take his family out of Texas and recruit men for his unit. This event precipitated diplomatic trouble between the Confederacy and Mexico that lasted until Gen. Hamilton P. Bee released Davis to appease Mexican governor Albino López. From November to December 1863 Davis was in Texas as a part of Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks's unsuccessful Rio Grande campaign. His unit marched to Rio Grande City and seized cotton and slaves in an effort to disrupt the border trade. On November 4, 1864, Davis was promoted to brigadier general. For the rest of the war he commanded Gen. Joseph J. Reynolds's cavalry in the Division of Western Mississippi. On June 2, 1865, he was among those who represented Gen. Edward R. S. Canby at Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith's surrender of Confederate forces in Texas.

    Davis participated in state politics as a Unionist and Republican after the war. He served in the Constitutional Convention of 1866 and ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate from his old district in the 1866 general election. He represented the border district and was president of the Constitutional Convention of 1868-69. In this period he consistently supported political programs that would have restricted the political rights of secessionists, expanded rights for blacks, and divided the state. He also favored the ab initio theory, which held that all laws passed since secession were null and void. In the election of 1869 Davis ran for governor against Andrew J. Hamilton, another Republican, and won in a closely disputed race. His administration was a controversial one. Its program called for law and order backed by a State Police and restored militia, public schools, internal improvements, bureaus of immigration and geology, and protection of the frontier. All of these measures encountered strong attacks from both Democratic and Republican opponents and added to the controversy surrounding Reconstruction in Texas. Davis ran for reelection in December 1873 and was defeated by Richard Coke by a vote of two to one. Davis believed that the Republican national administration was partly responsible for his defeat, and relations between the governor and Washington were strained until he was removed from office by Democrats the following January in what is known as the Coke-Davis controversy. From 1875 until his death Davis, contemporarily described as a "tall, gaunt, cold-eyed, rather commanding figure," headed the Republican party in Texas as chairman of the state executive committee. In 1880 he ran again for governor but was badly defeated by Oran M. Roberts. In 1882 he ran for Congress in the Tenth District against John Hancock, again unsuccessfully. He was nominated as collector of customs at Galveston in 1880 but refused the job because of his opposition to the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes. Supporters recommended him for a cabinet position under President Chester A. Arthur, but he received no appointment. Davis died in Austin on February 7, 1883, and is buried there. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.926, -097° 43.637

Betty Jane Tucker (1928-2004)

    Betty Jane made her singing debut at the age of seven as a member of The Tucker Sisters, a singing trio that received national acclaim during the late thirties, forties, and early fifties. They began their professional career in 1936 at the Texas State Fair and became one of many successful sister trios during World War II, headlining at major nightclubs from New York to Hollywood, California, and appearing regularly on live CBS radio broadcasts through the 1940s and 1950s. Betty actually declined a contract with MGM in the 1940s in order to stay with the group. The trio also enjoyed popularity as recording artists and performed with the USO during WWII. They disbanded in the early 1950s when Ernestine and Betty Jane married and raised families respectively. Betty married and had six children, then divorced and moved to Concord, New Hampshire, where she worked with an insurance company through 1994. She returned to Dallas in 1999, and passed away in her sleep on June 4, 2004.

Masonic Garden
Restland Memorial Park
Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 55.496, -096° 44.644

Cecil Hamilton Bolton (1908-1964)

    WWII Medal of Honor recipient Cecil Bolton was born on October 7, 1908 in Crawfordville, Florida. He joined the Army from Huntsville, Alabama in July 1942, and by November 2, 1944 was serving as a first lieutenant in Company E, 413th Infantry Regiment, 104th Infantry Division. On that day, near the Mark river in North Brabant, the Netherlands, he was seriously wounded in the legs by a German artillery shell. Despite these wounds, he took two men and led them in a successful assault against three German positions which were firing on his company. Wounded a second time, he ordered his two companions to leave him behind and head for the safety of the American lines. He then crawled the rest of the way back to his company. For these actions, he was awarded the Medal of Honor ten months later, on September 1, 1945. Bolton reached the rank of colonel before leaving the Army. He died at age 56 and was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, San Antonio.

CITATION

As leader of the weapons platoon of Company E, 413th Infantry, on the night of 2 November 1944, he fought gallantly in a pitched battle which followed the crossing of the Mark River in Holland. When 2 machine guns pinned down his company, he tried to eliminate, with mortar fire, their grazing fire which was inflicting serious casualties and preventing the company's advance from an area rocked by artillery shelling. In the moonlight it was impossible for him to locate accurately the enemy's camouflaged positions; but he continued to direct fire until wounded severely in the legs and rendered unconscious by a German shell. When he recovered consciousness he instructed his unit and then crawled to the forward rifle platoon positions. Taking a two-man bazooka team on his voluntary mission, he advanced chest deep in chilling water along a canal toward 1 enemy machine gun. While the bazooka team covered him, he approached alone to within 15 yards of the hostile emplacement in a house. He charged the remaining distance and killed the 2 gunners with hand grenades. Returning to his men he led them through intense fire over open ground to assault the second German machine gun. An enemy sniper who tried to block the way was dispatched, and the trio pressed on. When discovered by the machine gun crew and subjected to direct fire, 1st Lt. Bolton killed 1 of the 3 gunners with carbine fire, and his 2 comrades shot the others. Continuing to disregard his wounds, he led the bazooka team toward an 88-mm. artillery piece which was having telling effect on the American ranks, and approached once more through icy canal water until he could dimly make out the gun's silhouette. Under his fire direction, the two soldiers knocked out the enemy weapon with rockets. On the way back to his own lines he was again wounded. To prevent his men being longer subjected to deadly fire, he refused aid and ordered them back to safety, painfully crawling after them until he reached his lines, where he collapsed. 1st Lt. Bolton's heroic assaults in the face of vicious fire, his inspiring leadership, and continued aggressiveness even through suffering from serious wounds, contributed in large measure to overcoming strong enemy resistance and made it possible for his battalion to reach its objective.

Section PC
Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 28.697, -098° 25.960

Benjamin Franklin Bryant (1800-1857)

    Benjamin Franklin Bryant, early settler and participant in the battle of San Jacinto, was born in Georgia on March 15, 1800. He moved to Texas in 1834 and, with his family, settled on Palo Gaucho Bayou in Sabine County. In March 1836 he recruited and was elected captain of a company of volunteers that joined the main Texas army at Bernardo on March 29, 1836. After participating in the battle of San Jacinto, Bryant built a fort called Bryant Station on Little River, where he spent his life protecting the frontier from the Indians. In 1845 he built a home near the fort; in it he and his second wife, Roxana (Price), lived the remainder of their lives. Bryant died on March 4, 1857. His body was reinterred in the State Cemetery at Austin in 1931. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.931, -097° 43.632