Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (1910-1934)

    Bonnie Parker, outlaw partner of Clyde Barrow, was born at Rowena, Texas, on October 1, 1910, to Henry and Emma Parker. She had an older brother, Hubert (Buster), and a younger sister, Billie. Her father, a bricklayer, died in 1914, and Emma Parker moved the family to "Cement City" in West Dallas to live closer to relatives. In the public schools Bonnie was an honor student. She enjoyed writing poetry and reading romance novels. At four-feet-ten and eighty-five pounds, she hardly looked like a future legendary criminal. In 1926 she married her longtime sweetheart, Roy Thornton. For the next several years, they suffered a tumultuous marriage; however, she refused to divorce him. Bonnie worked at Marco's Cafe in Dallas until the cafe closed in November 1929. About this time Thornton was sent to prison for a five-year sentence. Bonnie had "Roy and Bonnie" tattooed above her right knee to commemorate her marriage to Thornton. She met Barrow in January 1930. Their romance was interrupted when Barrow was jailed a month later. During this time she wrote to him pleading with him to stay out of trouble upon his release. In early March she smuggled into his cell a pistol, which he used to escape. He was recaptured in Middletown, Ohio, after a robbery and sent to Eastham Prison Farm in Crockett on April 21, 1930. He was released in February 1932, more bent on destruction than before; and Bonnie was more determined than ever to prove her loyalty to him, even to the extent of assuming his manner of living. 

    Upon his release Parker and Barrow began robbing grocery stores, filling stations, and small banks. In March 1932 Bonnie was captured in a failed robbery attempt and jailed in Kaufman, Texas. Clyde murdered merchant J. W. Butcher of Hillsboro on April 27, 1932. On June 17, 1932, the grand jury met in Kaufman and no-billed Bonnie, thus securing her release. Within a few weeks she connected with Clyde. Once again, they were on the run. The couple killed two officers in Atoka, Oklahoma, where they had attended a dance and were apprehended in the parking lot. For a while they swept through the Midwest and Southwest challenging the law in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Missouri. They gunned down a grocery-store owner in Sherman, Texas, a citizen in Temple, and another law officer in Dallas. Law enforcement agencies from several states initiated a manhunt but to no avail. The couple temporarily settled down in a small stone bungalow in Joplin, Missouri, with Barrow's brother and sister-in-law. Not surprisingly, they were rowdy residents, and the neighbors began complaining to the police. Suspicious that this could be the Barrow gang, the officers promptly responded. Upon their arrival they were met by the four inhabitants and a barrage of bullets. After a bloody shoot-out, Bonnie and Clyde escaped. They left behind two more dead lawmen and six rolls of film, from which many of the famous photographs of the couple came. 

    Bonnie and Clyde traveled constantly, throughout Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Iowa, Illinois, and Arkansas. On June 10, 1933, Bonnie was burned after their car rolled over an embankment near Wellington, Texas, and was treated at a nearby farmhouse. Officials sent to investigate were kidnapped and later freed in Oklahoma. Near Alma, Arkansas, the two killed the town marshal. Later, their gang holed up in Platte City, Missouri. In yet another bloody face-off with the law, Clyde's brother was killed, and his sister-in-law was taken into custody. In January 1934 Parker and Barrow helped their buddy Raymond Hamilton escape from Eastham Farm, and a guard was killed. At this time the head of the Texas prison system and the governor hired former Texas Ranger captain Francis (Frank) Hamer to track down the couple. By the middle of 1934 Hamer and his associates had begun to follow Bonnie and Clyde. One of the couple's most blatant murders occurred on Easter Sunday, 1934, on the outskirts of Grapevine, Texas. According to a witness, a Ford halted alongside a public highway. The occupants of the vehicle, laughing and talking among themselves, tossed whiskey bottles out of the windows. When the two highway patrolmen stopped their motorcycles to check on the "stalled" car, the people in the car leveled guns at the officers and opened fire. Bonnie reportedly walked over to one of the officers and rolled him over with one foot, raised her sawed-off shotgun, fired two more shots, point-blank, at the officer's head and exclaimed, "look-a-there, his head bounced just like a rubber ball." 

    Less than a week later, on April 6, 1934, Parker and Barrow committed their last murder by killing a constable in Commerce, Oklahoma. Afterward they were in continuous flight, with law officers in pursuit. They drove into a trap near their hide-out at Black Lake, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934, at 9:15 A.M. and were gunned down in a barrage of 167 bullets. Bonnie Parker was found riddled with bullets, holding a machine gun, a sandwich, and a pack of cigarettes; Clyde Barrow, barely recognizable, was clutching a revolver. The car was taken to Arcadia, Louisiana, and the bodies were later delivered to Dallas. Thousands viewed the mangled bodies and the car of the legendary lovers. Finally, amid public clamor and hysteria, the bodies were buried in their respective families' burial plots. Source

Block 4

Crown Hill Memorial Park

Dallas

COORDINATES

32° 86.889, -096° 86.493

Placido Olivarri (1815-1894)

    Placido Olivarri, a famed scout for the Texas Revolutionary Army, son of Simon Olivarri and Guadalupe Garza de Torres, was born in San Antonio, Texas, in February 1815. The Olivarri family initially arrived in San Antonio when José Olivarri, from the Basque region of Spain, established himself in the city as one of the first settlers. Placido Olivarri is most famous for his service as a scout and guide for the Texas Revolutionary Army under Sam Houston. His proficiency as a scout was so great that Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos of the Mexican Army offered a substantial bounty for Olivarri’s capture, dead or alive. During the Texas Revolution, Mexican sympathizers in San Antonio tried to apprehend Olivarri, but he was able to evade capture by concealing himself on Bowen’s Island on the San Antonio River. Following the Texas Revolution, Olivarri became a landowner and wagon train manager in San Antonio. Texas General Land Office records show that he received a certificate for one-third of a league of land in February 1838. Olivarri was married twice. His first wife, Juana Padillo y Olivarri, was born in 1816 in Bexar County and died around December 1862. She left her estate to her natural son born of a previous marriage. After her death, Placido Olivarri married Micaela Jimenes (or Ximenes), who was born in June 1844 and lived until 1917. Together, they had fourteen children. Late in his life, Olivarri was a member of the Sociedad Mutualista Mexicana. He was listed in San Antonio city directories in the 1880s and into the early 1890s as a “ranchman.” The San Antonio Daily Express on May 2, 1892, listed a Placido Olivarri (possibly Olivarri himself or his son) as chairman of his voting precinct. Olivarri lived in San Antonio throughout his life, and died on September 8, 1894. He was buried in the San Fernando Cemetery No. 1. The Texas Centennial Commission erected a Centennial marker at his grave in 1936.

Block 3
San Fernando Cemetery No. 1
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 41.548, -098° 51.215

James Wales Jones (1797-1847)

    James W. Jones was born in Columbia County, Georgia, on January 13, 1797, the son of Thomas and Sarah Jones. He and his brother, Randal Jones, were among the first of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists. By January 1822 they were in what is now Washington County. In July 1822 the brothers found Jane Long on the San Jacinto River and took her to San Antonio. On August 10, 1824, James Jones received title to a league and a labor of land in what are now Fort Bend and Wharton counties; he settled in Fort Bend County near Henry Jones. James Jones's wife, Hetty (Styles), was a sister of Mrs. Henry Jones. In 1826 James Jones was aged between twenty-five and forty. Ammon Underwood visited the James Jones plantation in January 1835. Jones served in the Texas Army under Capt. Wyly Martin from March 7 to June 7, 1836. In 1840 Jones was on a committee to check fraudulent land claims in Fort Bend County. He was living at Richmond in December 1845; he died at Prairie Lea on September 29, 1847. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.940, -097° 43.642