William Bacon Wright (1830-1895)

    William Bacon Wright, Confederate legislator, was born in Columbus, Georgia, on July 4, 1830, the son of John Wright and a relative of George Walton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. According to his obituary in the San Antonio Daily Express he graduated from Princeton at the age of seventeen, but the university has no record of his attendance. He is also said to have established a law practice in Georgia in 1849. After residing briefly in Eufaula, Alabama, he moved to Texas in 1854 and established a law practice in the Lamar County community of Paris, where he soon became one of the region's foremost attorneys. In 1857 he helped to found a male academy in Paris. Wright was elected as an alternate Democratic statewide elector for the 1860 presidential election. In December of that year he was appointed chairman of a committee to draw up a plan of secession for the state. 

    In October 1861 he was elected to represent the Sixth Congressional District in the first regular session of the Confederate House of Representatives, where he served on the Patents, Claims, Enrolled Bills, and Indian Affairs committees. Although an opponent of taxation, in general Wright supported the policies of the Jefferson Davis administration. His most significant contributions to Confederate legislation were the exemption from conscription of all militiamen serving in frontier defense and the exemption from impressment of all slaves employed in the cultivation of grain. He was defeated in the congressional race of 1863 by Simpson H. Morgan and served for the remainder of the war as a major in the quartermaster corps on the staff of Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith. After the war Wright practiced law for a time in Clarksville before returning to Paris in 1873. He is said to have defended the accused in ninety-three murder trials without losing a single case. He also remained active in politics, serving as a member of the Judiciary Committee of the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1875. Wright married a Miss Greer of Georgia in 1849, and they had four children. After her death he married Pink Gates of Mississippi in 1868; they had six children. In 1885 Wright moved to San Antonio, where he engaged in banking until his death on August 10, 1895. Source

Section B
Dignowity Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.416, -098° 28.047

Thomas Wade "Tom" Landry (1924-2000)

    Tom Landry, longtime coach of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was born in Mission, Texas, on September 11, 1924, the third child and second son of Ray and Ruth Landry. Ray Landry, an automobile mechanic, had moved with his family to Texas from Illinois upon the recommendations of doctors who believed the warmer climate would help his rheumatism. Landry became a star quarterback on the Mission High School football team, leading the Eagles to a 6-4 record and the district championship as a junior, then to a 12-0 record and the regional championship, beating Hondo 33-0, as a senior in 1941. Landry was named to the Texas High School All-Star Game and offered an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin. After one semester of college, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. As a copilot and gunner of B-17 bombers with the Eighth Air Force, Landry flew more than thirty missions over Germany. He was discharged as a first lieutenant in November 1945 and returned to UT in 1947. Though he had been recruited as a quarterback, Landry switched to defensive halfback and running back because the Longhorns already had a star passer in Bobby Layne. UT finished that season with a 10-1 record and beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, and Landry earned All-Southwest Conference recognition. In 1948 Landry was elected co-captain of the Longhorns, who finished with a 6-3-1 record and upset favored Georgia in the Orange Bowl. In that game, Landry filled in on offense for the injured regular fullback and led both teams with 117 yards rushing.

    Landry married Alicia Wiggs on January 28, 1949. They had three children. After graduating with a degree in business in May 1949, Landry joined the New York Yankees of the professional All-America Football Conference (AAFC). When the AAFC dissolved a year later, he joined the New York Giants of the NFL, for whom he quickly became a star defensive back renowned for his intelligence and analytical skills. In his first season with the Giants, the cerebral Landry was credited with helping devise the 4-3 defensive scheme, which quickly became the standard alignment in the NFL. Landry was named an All-Pro defensive halfback in 1954, and was selected to play in the Pro Bowl in 1955. In 1956 he retired as a player and became a full-time assistant coach with the Giants, in charge of the defense as a young assistant named Vince Lombardi was in charge of the offense. Under head coach Jim Lee Howell, the Giants won the NFL title by routing the Chicago Bears 47-7. Landry's rise to prominence as one of the brightest young minds in football - Howell once called him "the greatest football coach in the game today" - coincided with a national boom in the sport's popularity. Bud Adams, the owner of the Houston Oilers of the American Football League, which began play in 1960, wanted Landry to coach his team, but Landry had moved his family to Dallas, where he ran an insurance business in the off-season, in 1957, and elected to stay with the established NFL, which was about to expand. He signed a five-year personal services contract with Dallas oilman Clint Murchison Jr., the owner of the brand-new Dallas Cowboys, in December 1959.

    The Cowboys began play in 1960 with a record of no wins, eleven losses, and one tie, and fared little better in the ensuing seasons, but before the 1964 season Murchison announced that he had signed Landry to a ten-year contract despite the team's 13-38-3 record. Landry, who had planned to retire from football a few years after getting the Cowboys off the ground, now decided to make the sport his life's business. That decision soon began paying dividends. Landry was named NFL Coach of the Year in 1966 after the Cowboys posted their first winning record, and led Dallas to the NFL championship game in 1966 and 1967, losing both times to his old colleague Lombardi's Green Bay Packers. The Cowboys finally made it to the Super Bowl following the 1970 season, only to lose 16-13 to the Baltimore Colts. That defeat, however, marked the beginning of a stretch of successes that established the Cowboys as "America's Team" and turned Landry's stoic expression and ever-present gray fedora into national icons. Landry's teams won 105 games and lost only 39 during the 1970s, appearing in four more Super Bowls and winning two. Despite his aloof and colorless demeanor - in 1971 one of his own players, Duane Thomas, called him "a plastic man...actually, no man at all" - Landry was an innovative, even daring, coach, and his teams were among the most entertaining in football history. Landry devised Dallas's "Flex" defensive scheme, which became one of the most feared in the NFL, and revived the "Shotgun" formation, which stationed the quarterback several yards behind the line of scrimmage, to take advantage of the mobility of his star passer Roger Staubach. He coached the team to an amazing twenty consecutive winning seasons.

    By the mid-1980s, however, Landry seemed to be slipping. He signed a three-year contract extension during the 1984 season, when the Cowboys finished with a 9-7 record and failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 1974. The Cowboys finished 10-6 in 1985 but were shut out by the Los Angeles Rams in the playoffs, and local newspapers began running polls asking their readers if Landry should be fired. In 1986 the Cowboys finished 7-9, their first losing season in 22 years, and Landry received a death threat during a December loss to the Rams. He briefly left the field and returned wearing a bulletproof vest, though no actual attempt was made on his life. Landry signed another three-year contract extension before the 1987 season, but began hearing criticism from team president Tex Schramm and owner H. R. "Bum" Bright, who had bought the team from Murchison in 1984, during the Cowboys' 7-8 campaign. The Cowboys staggered to a 3-13 record in 1988, and when Arkansas oilman Jerral (Jerry) Jones bought the team early in 1989 his first move was to fire the coach. Landry's overall record in 29 seasons with the Cowboys was 270-178-6. Landry was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990 and to the Cowboys' Ring of Honor in 1993. He remained active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which he had joined in 1962 and served as national chairman in 1973-1976, and the Billy Graham Crusades. Landry also enjoyed flying his Cessna 210, and in June 1998 he was named to the air safety foundation of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. He was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia in May 1999 and died on February 12, 2000. Landry was survived by his wife, Alicia, and two children. A street and high school stadium in Mission, a fitness center in Dallas, and an elementary school in Irving all bear his name. Source

Monument Garden
Sparkman Hillcrest Memorial Park
Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 52.053, -096° 46.705

James Smith (1792-1855)

    James Smith, soldier, planter, and politician, was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, on September 10, 1792, the son of David and Bersheba (Harrington) Smith. He volunteered in the War of 1812 and fought in the Creek Indian wars and as a lieutenant under Andrew Jackson at the battle of New Orleans. After the war he returned to South Carolina, where in 1816 he married Hannah Parker. The couple became the parents of eleven children. In 1819 the Smiths moved to Lincoln County, Tennessee, where Smith led a vigilance committee against the Indians. He and Sam Houston were both colonels in the Tennessee militia in 1835. Smith came to Texas in March 1835, settled in Nacogdoches, and established an extensive plantation. On April 9, 1835, Gen. Sam Houston introduced him, by letter, to business associates in New York as Colonel Smith. He wrote from New York to Sam Houston on November 28, 1835, that he was shipping 100 first-rate rifles to Natchitoches, Louisiana, and planning to bring well-equipped troops to Texas from Tennessee to fight against Mexico. Smith's wife and children arrived in Nacogdoches on January 1, 1836, along with his sister and brother-in-law, Andrew Hamilton. Smith arrived with his troops and entered the service of the revolutionary army as captain of cavalry of the Nacogdoches Mounted Volunteers on April 11.

    After the victory at San Jacinto, he went immediately to army headquarters there and, on May 4, 1836, was appointed inspector general with the rank of colonel by Gen. Thomas J. Rusk. He served with Rusk from headquarters at Victoria until September 5, 1836. On September 8, 1836, he was appointed by Sam Houston to raise companies to build forts and protect settlers west of Nacogdoches. During 1837-38, when relationships with Indians were particularly troublesome, the Smith plantation at Nacogdoches became a refuge for the harried settlers of the surrounding counties. Smith commanded the second battalion of Rusk's regiments at the battle of the Neches, in which Chief Bowl was slain, in July 1839. On March 7, 1840, he was elected a brigadier general and took command of the Third Brigade on the northwest frontier with Mexico. He remained there until August 19, 1844, when he was ordered by President Sam Houston to command the troops detached to suppress the Regulator-Moderator War in Shelby County. Smith represented Rusk County in the Texas House of Representatives from February 16, 1846, until December 13, 1847. Smith County, organized in April 1846, was named in his honor. The city of Henderson, named for his friend James Pinckney Henderson, was built on land given to Smith for his services to the Republic of Texas. He died on December 25, 1855, and was buried with military honors in a brick vault in Smith Park at Henderson. In an address of 1873 Guy M. Bryan attributed the Lone Star emblem to Smith: "A half century since, overcoats were ornamented with large brass buttons. It happened that the buttons on the coat of General Smith had the impress of a five pointed star. For want of a seal, one of these buttons was cut off and used." Source


James Smith Memorial Park
Henderson

COORDINATES

32° 08.494, -094° 47.964

Archibald S. Lewis (?-1839)

    Nothing is known of Lewis' life prior to his enlistment in the Texian Army on March 31, 1836. Assigned to Captain Benjamin F. Bryant's Company as a 2nd lieutenant for a period of thirty days, Lewis and his company fought at the Battle of San Jacinto only twenty-one days later. On May 26, 1836, he received his donation certificate for 640 acres of land for having participated in the battle. He re-enlisted in the army July 27, 1836 and served until January 6, 1838, for which he was granted another 1280 acres. It is assumed that Lewis made his home in Houston, as he died there on December 3, 1839.

Note: This is a cenotaph. Founders Memorial Park, originally founded in 1836 as Houston's first city cemetery, was rapidly filled due to a yellow fever epidemic and closed to further burials around 1840. The cemetery became neglected over a period of time, often vandalized and was heavily damaged by the 1900 hurricane. In 1936, despite a massive clean up effort, a century of neglect had taken its toll. The vast majority of grave markers were either destroyed or missing and poor record keeping prevented locating individual graves. Several cenotaphs were placed in random areas throughout the park in honor of the more high-profile citizens buried there, but a great number of graves go unmarked to this day. 

Founders Memorial Park
Houston

COORDINATES

30° 15.912, -097° 43.632

Nathaniel C. Lewis (1806-1872)

    Nathaniel C. Lewis, merchant and legislator, was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on June 11, 1806, the son of Nathaniel and Sarah (Hatch) Lewis. He went to sea at age fourteen in a whaling vessel. Accounts of his early life and journey to Texas are confused and contradictory. According to family legend he was shipwrecked on the coast of South America and taken to New Orleans and thence to Port Lavaca. Another story has him settling in Cincinnati, then proceeding to Texas on a boatload of tobacco that was seized by Mexican authorities. According to this account he was befriended by Castillo de la Garza, who took him to San Antonio in 1830. He entered the mercantile trade, first at Indianola and shortly thereafter in San Antonio. By 1832 he is said to have been involved in coastal trade. As a founder of the firm of Lewis and Groesbeck on Main Plaza in San Antonio, he became one of the leading merchants in the Southwest before the Civil War. He also established San Antonio's first gristmill, was an early real estate promoter and developer, and was the first large-scale cattleman in the region. He owned herds from the Medina River to the coast. 

    When Santa Anna's forces entered San Antonio on February 23, 1836, Lewis fled to Gonzales, although he is reputed to have supplied the Alamo garrison from his store and was perhaps the last man to have left the mission before the battle of the Alamo on March 6. He is said to have served as a scout for Houston's army. After the battle of San Jacinto he returned to San Antonio to reestablish his mercantile business. In 1839 he was elected to the House of Representatives of the Fourth Congress of the Republic of Texas from Bexar County. After 1840 he served several terms as alderman in San Antonio and once served as mayor pro tem. During the 1850s he was engaged in the freighting business between San Antonio and El Paso. Lewis was married twice, first to Letitia Groesbeck, then to Mary Fanny Liffering, with whom he had two children. He died in San Antonio on October 21, 1872. His brother, Henry M. Lewis, was a San Antonio attorney and editor of the West Texan. Source


City Cemetery #5
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.282, -098° 27.951