John Montgomery (1796-1863)

    John Montgomery, San Jacinto veteran, was born in 1796, Baker's Creek, Blount, Tennessee, the son of William and Mary Polly (James) Montgomery and brother of fellow San Jacinto soldier Andrew Jackson Montgomery. He first arrived in Texas in 1831, after traveling through Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas and settled in what is now Montgomery County. He entered the Texas army on March 1, 1836, as a soldier in Captain James Gillaspie's Company, fought at San Jacinto on April 21 and left the service on May 13, 1836. On October 12, 1838, while living in Walker County, he married Elizabeth Julia Robinson and the couple had three children before she died in 1845, possibly from complications after having their last child. He remarried in 1848 to Sarah Allen in Collin County, and the two had five children. John continued his habit of moving often throughout his life, living in Walker County in 1850 and Trinity County in 1861, until finally settling in Grimes County, where he died in 1863. He was buried next to his brother Andrew in Stoneham Cemetery.


Stoneham Cemetery
Stoneham

COORDINATES

30° 21.468, -095° 55.373

Thomas Jones Hardeman (1788-1854)

    Thomas Hardeman, soldier, pioneer Texas settler, judge, and politician, child of Thomas and Mary (Perkins) Hardeman, was born at Hardeman's Stockade near Nashville, Tennessee, on January 31, 1788. His father represented back-country North Carolina at the convention that ratified the United States Constitution and with his close friend Andrew Jackson was a delegate at the Tennessee State Constitutional Convention. Hardeman moved with his family to Williamson County, Tennessee, in 1803. In 1814 he married Mary Ophelia Polk, the aunt of James K. Polk. Later that year, as a captain, Hardeman fought under General Jackson in the closing campaign of the War of 1812 at New Orleans. He was captured by the British and wounded in the head by a sabre for refusing to divulge military secrets to the enemy. In 1818 applying his legal training, he helped to settle and organize Hardeman County, Tennessee. His wife died there in 1835. In the same year, accompanied by his brothers Blackstone and Bailey Hardeman, he moved to Texas, where he and his four sons became involved in the move for Texas independence. Hardeman, a devout Episcopalian and an active Mason, served in the Congress of the Republic of Texas from Matagorda County in 1837-39 and spent two terms in the state legislature from Bastrop and Travis counties, from 1847 to 1851. In the 1840s he served both as associate and chief justice of Bastrop County. At his suggestion the capital of Texas was named Austin. Hardeman's second wife was a widow, Eliza DeWitt Hamilton, daughter of empresario Green DeWitt. Hardeman had five children by his first wife and three by the second. The four sons of his first marriage, Thomas Monroe Hardeman, William Polk Hardeman, Owen Bailey Hardeman, and Leonidas Polk Hardeman, were all venturesome types. They participated in scores of military campaigns of the Texas Revolution, the Mexican War, Indian wars, and the Civil War. Hardeman died on January 15, 1854, and was buried in Bastrop County. In 1937 his remains were removed to the State Cemetery in Austin. Hardeman County, Texas, was named partly in his honor. Source

Monument Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.919, -097° 43.640

Samuel Tubbs Angier (1792-1867)

    Samuel Tubbs Angier, physician and Old Three Hundred pioneer, was born in Pembroke, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, on August 26, 1792, the son of Samuel and Mary Tubbs. On February 29, 1812, he changed his name to Samuel Tubbs Angier, taking as his surname the maiden name of his paternal grandmother, Katurah (Angier) Tubbs. He received his A.B. degree in 1818 and his M.D. degree in 1823 from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Angier had married and had a daughter before his second marriage on January 18, 1821, in Easton, Massachusetts, to Rowena Hayward. They also had a daughter. Angier was a partner of Thomas W. Bradley and George B. Hall as one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists. The three men received title to a sitio of land on the west bank of Chocolate Bayou three leagues above its mouth on August 16, 1824; the land is now in Brazoria County. Additionally, Angier was granted a labor of land on the east bank of the Brazos four miles above its mouth on August 24, 1824. In a quiet ceremony at the home of James Briton (Brit) Bailey on April 30, 1829, he married Old Three Hundred colonist Mrs. Permelia Pickett, in a ceremony conducted by Alexander Hodge, comisario of the precinct of Victoria. Consequent to his marriage, Angier requested, and on December 10, 1830, received, two-thirds of a league of land "on the right margin of Chocolate Bayou within the littoral Belt, above and adjacent to the league conceded to the petitioner together with Bradley and Hall." 

    Angier was one of the four established physicians of Brazoria Municipality who early in the 1830s were appointed by the ayuntamiento as a standing committee to examine the qualifications of persons wishing to practice surgery and medicine in the municipality. David G. Burnet, one of the delegates from Liberty, stopped at the Chocolate Bayou home of Dr. Angier after becoming ill on his way to the Consultation. On February 1, 1836, Angier served as an election judge for Brazoria Municipality when delegates were chosen for the Constitutional Convention of 1836, to convene at Washington-on-the-Brazos. On September 5, 1837, Permelia Angier died. In April of 1838 Angier, who gave his place of residence as Liverpool, was one of several signatories from across Texas of a memorial to the Congress of the Republic of Texas requesting the establishment of a system of public education. Angier married Mary Ann Augusta Kendall, the daughter of Horace and Mary (Cogswell) Kendall, in Monroe County, Alabama, on June 28, 1842. He was a Methodist and she a Presbyterian. Angier's return to Texas from New Orleans aboard the Neptune was reported on March 20, 1844, in the Houston Telegraph and Texas Register. The Columbia Planter of September 12, 1845, carried an advertisement for the Columbia Female Seminary, which was to open on the twenty-ninth, with Mrs. Angier as headmistress. Samuel and Mary Angier had a son in 1846. Mary died near West Columbia in 1854, and Angier married Mrs. Mary O'Brien Millard on May 25, 1857, in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Galveston. Dr. Angier died in West Columbia on April 17, 1867. He is buried in the Columbia Cemetery in West Columbia. Angier was one of the twenty Old Three Hundred settlers known to have been Freemasons. He was a charter member of St. John's Lodge Number 49 (later to become St. John's Lodge Number 5), organized in Columbia in 1848, and was selected grand master of the lodge on June 1, 1848. He served as lodge treasurer in 1849 and 1850 and was junior steward in 1858 and junior warden in 1861. Source


Columbia Cemetery
West Columbia

COORDINATES

29° 08.437, -095° 38.887

José Antonio Menchaca (1800-1879)

    José Menchaca, Tejano army officer, was born in San Antonio in January 1800, the son of Juan Mariano and María Luz (Guerra) Menchaca. He married Teresa Ramón in 1826, and they had four children. Menchaca was not in San Antonio during the siege of Bexar, but returned shortly after Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos was forced to leave. In February 1836 he left for Gonzales, where he joined Juan N. Seguín's company of Texas Mexicans and fought in the battle of San Jacinto. After the revolution he returned to San Antonio, served several terms as alderman, and became mayor pro tem in July 1838. In July 1842 Menchaca was appointed to command a frontier company. His troops patrolled the area between the San Antonio River and the Rio Grande. When Adrián Woll led a Mexican army into Texas in September 1842, Menchaca participated in the defense of San Antonio and was wounded in the leg. In February 1844 Sam Houston appointed him an Indian escort. Menchaca helped organize a club of Texas Mexicans in support of Horace Greeley, the presidential candidate of the Liberal Republicans and Democrats in 1872. Along with eighteen other Bexar residents of Mexican descent, Menchaca wrote a letter in 1875 to the comptroller of public accounts claiming discrimination by the Texas government against Hispanic veterans of the revolution. Menchaca was a member of the Holland Lodge, the oldest chapter of the Masonic order in San Antonio. He died on November 1, 1879, and was buried in San Fernando Cemetery No. 1 in San Antonio. In 1936 the Centennial Commission erected a marker at his grave. It has been asserted by residents of the town of Manchaca in Travis County that their village was named for the nearby Manchaca Springs, which were named for Jose Antonio Menchaca. Source

Section 8
San Fernando Cemetery #1
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 24.930, -098° 30.691

Randal Jones (1786-1873)

    Randal Jones, early Texas soldier and public official, was born in Columbus, Georgia, on August 19, 1786. He moved to Wilkinson County, Mississippi, in 1810, became a captain in the United States volunteers in 1812, and took part in the "Canoe Fight" with Creek Indians on the Alabama River in 1813. In 1814 or 1815 he moved to Texas, opened a store at Nacogdoches as an Indian trader, and had some dealings with Jean Laffite. In 1820 he joined the Long expedition and conducted Jane Wilkinson Long from Louisiana to Texas to join her husband. Driven from Texas by the failure of the expedition, Jones and his brother, James W. Jones, returned to Texas in January 1821; they built a house for Mrs. Long on San Jacinto Bay in 1822 and later escorted her to San Antonio. In June 1824 Randal Jones wrote to Stephen F. Austin proposing legislation to require registration of marks and brands and prevention of prairie fires and to forbid the killing of deer and mustangs. 

    As one of Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, Jones received title to a league and a labor of land now in Wharton and Fort Bend counties on July 15, 1824; he settled on Jones Creek two miles above the site of present Richmond. He was captain of the Texas militia organized to quell trouble with the Karankawa Indians and was in command at the battle of Jones Creek in September 1824. He married Polly Andrews on October 12, 1824; they had nine children. In December 1830 Jones was elected regidor of Austin Municipality. On October 11, 1835, he was at army headquarters at Gonzales and was appointed by Austin to appraise horses and equipment for the army. He represented Fort Bend County at the Consultation in November 1835, was a member of the General Council, and served on the first petit jury impaneled in Fort Bend County in February 1838. Jones became blind and moved to Houston shortly before his death, which occurred in June 1873. He was buried on his land in Fort Bend County and reinterred in the State Cemetery in 1934. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.940, -097° 43.642

Stephen Heard Darden (1816-1902)

    Stephen Heard Darden, public official and soldier, son of Washington Lee and Ann (Sharkey) Darden, was born in Fayette County, Mississippi, on November 19, 1816. He traveled to Texas in 1836 as a volunteer under Capt. David M. Fulton for service in the Texas Revolution. Darden served as clerk in the office of the comptroller in September 1836. He returned to Madison County, Mississippi, in the early 1840s but was back in Texas in 1841 and purchased land on the Guadalupe River in Gonzales County. He represented the county for two terms in the state House of Representatives and once in the state Senate. In 1861, as a state senator, he initially opposed secession but finally voted with the majority; at the coming of the Civil War he was elected first lieutenant of Company A of the Fourth Texas Infantry in Hood's Texas Brigade. He served under colonels Robert T. P. Allen, John Bell Hood, and John F. Marshall. He was elected captain of his company on May 20, 1862, but after the battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg) that September he resigned due to ill health. Darden was the appointed colonel in command of the Fifth Infantry regiment of state troops on the Texas Gulf Coast in 1863 and, upon the death of John A. Wilcox, was elected to fill the unexpired term in the Second Confederate Congress, where he took his seat on November 21, 1864.

    As a Confederate congressman Darden served on the Naval Affairs Committee. As a firm states'-rights advocate he opposed the growth of the central government of the Confederate States of America and thus generally voted against the Jefferson Davis administration. While he supported higher taxation, a larger army, and a powerful commander-in-chief, he fought against taxation in kind, centralized control over transportation and production, and the confiscation of slaves for public works. Darden was financially ruined by the war and apparently returned to his Gonzales County farm. When Reconstruction ended he was appointed comptroller of public accounts and served from 1873 to 1879. He recommended that the school money be invested in state bonds and thus raised the bonds to par. Although he retired from office in January 1881 because of his age, he accepted the chief clerkship in his old department. He was appointed superintendent of public buildings and grounds on February 9, 1884, and chief clerk of the comptroller's department in January 1887. He assisted in organizing the state Democratic party in 1871 and was secretary of the Texas Veterans Association from 1886 until his death. Darden may have been married four times; the last time to Catherine Mays in March 1862. He died at Wharton on May 16, 1902, and was buried in the State Cemetery, Austin. Source 

Note: The birth date on his stone is incorrect.

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.920, -097° 43.651

Julissa D'anne Gomez (1972-1991)

    Julissa D'anne Gomez was born in San Antonio, Texas, the younger of two daughters born to a pair of former migrant farm workers from Laredo. Her parents, Otilia and Ramiro, worked their way up from their farm working days to become a teacher and a welder, respectively, and struggled to keep their family together while giving 10-year-old budding gymnast Julissa a chance to train with renowned gymnastics coach Béla Károlyi in Houston. At the 1986 U.S. Championships, she placed fourth in the all-around in the junior division and won a place on the U.S. National Team. By 1987 she was representing the United States in international meets. Especially strong on the uneven bars and balance beam, Gomez was considered a legitimate contender for the 1988 U.S. Olympic team.

    In mid-1987, Gomez, wanting to move further up the rankings and reportedly frustrated with Károlyi's sometimes abusive training methods, decided to leave the Károlyis. After briefly training at US Acrosports in Webster, Texas, Gomez's search for a new coach led her to select Al Fong, who was the trainer of another up-and-coming gymnast eager to make the 1988 Olympic team, Christy Henrich. Though her parents had vowed to keep the family together no matter where Julissa's career took her, they decided that Ramiro would move with Julissa to Blue Springs, Missouri, where Fong's gymnastics club, Great American Gymnastics Express, was located, while Otilla would remain behind until Julissa's older sister Kristy finished school for the year. In May 1988, several months before the Olympics, she traveled with her coach to Tokyo, Japan, to compete in the World Sports Fair. During the all-around competition, Gomez qualified for the vault finals. However, observers had noticed her struggle with the apparatus over the months leading up to the competition, including her former coach Béla Károlyi, past and present teammates, and even her present coach Al Fong. Gomez's technique on the extremely difficult Yurchenko vault had been described as shaky at best, and Gomez was unable to perform the vault with any consistency during practices, sometimes missing her feet on the springboard. However, Julissa's coaches insisted that she needed to continue training and competing the Yurchenko vault in order to achieve high scores.

    During warmups for the final, held on May 5, 1988, Gomez continued to practice the Yurchenko. As she raced toward the vault on one of her practice runs, her foot slipped off the springboard and her head hit the vaulting horse at high speed. The resulting impact instantly paralyzed her from the neck down. A subsequent accident at a Japanese hospital, in which she became disconnected from her ventilator, resulted in severe brain damage and left her in a catatonic state. Her family cared for her for three years before she succumbed to an infection and died in August 1991 in Houston, just three months shy of her nineteenth birthday. The tragedy stands as one of the most serious accidents ever to occur in artistic gymnastics, and helped prompt changes in the sport. In 1989, the International Gymnastics Federation decided to increase vaulting safety by allowing U-shaped springboard mats, traditionally utilized in practice to give all gymnasts a greater margin of error in preflight, to be used during competitions. The mat is now mandatory: as of the 2006 Code of Points, performing a Yurchenko-style vault without the safety mat results in an automatic score of zero. In 2001, the traditional horse was completely phased out and replaced by a larger, more stable vaulting table to provide gymnasts with additional safety.

Block 1
Woodlawn Garden of Memories
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 47.283, -095° 28.755

Wyly Martin (1776-1842)

    Wyly (Wiley) Martin, soldier, judge, and legislator, was born in Georgia in 1776. As a young man he worked as a clerk, as a teacher, and at a variety of other occupations. During the War of 1812 he was commissioned a third lieutenant in the Ninth United States Infantry on August 9, 1813. He served as a scout for Gen. William Henry Harrison and fought under Gen. Andrew Jackson at the battle of Horseshoe Bend, Alabama. He was promoted to first lieutenant in the Thirty-ninth Infantry on July 29, 1813, and to captain of the Third Rifle Regiment on March 17, 1814. He was honorably discharged on June 15, 1815, and reinstated on December 2. On June 1, 1821, he transferred to the Sixth Infantry. He resigned his commission on July 21, 1823, reputedly because he killed a man in a duel.

    In 1825 he immigrated to Texas, where he was appointed alcalde of Stephen F. Austin's colony. In 1835 he was acting jefe político of the Department of the Brazos. He was a delegate from San Felipe de Austin to the conventions of 1832, 1833, and 1835. As a member of the so-called "Peace party," Martin disavowed the actions of William B. Travis and others of the "War party" at Anahuac and was opposed to Texas independence from Mexico; but with the coming of the Texas Revolution he signed the declaration of war against Antonio López de Santa Anna's Centralist regime, on November 7, 1835. At Bexar in December he drew a pen-and-ink sketch of Travis, the only known portrait of the man done from life. Martin raised a company that joined Sam Houston's army at Columbus. He was promoted to major and detached to guard the crossings of the lower Brazos River, then flanked out of his position at Fort Bend when the Mexican army crossed at the site of present Richmond. Although both Houston and secretary of war Thomas J. Rusk approved his action in falling back before superior numbers of the enemy, Martin was irate because he had been given an inadequate command - forty-six men - to observe the four fords and ferries he was responsible for holding. When he was ordered on April 13 to rejoin the main army at the Donaho plantation, he marched his force back to Houston's headquarters and relinquished his command. Subsequently, he was an outspoken opponent of Houston and his political policies.

    Martin saw little service for the remainder of the war, and on May 15 Rusk regretfully accepted his resignation. After independence Martin made his home in Fort Bend County, where he was appointed chief justice of the county on December 29, 1837, and was elected to the post on September 6, 1841. He was admitted to the bar in 1838. He was elected to represent Austin, Colorado, and Fort Bend counties in Congress. At age sixty-five, he was the oldest senator in the Sixth Congress of the Republic of Texas. He died at the home of Randal Jones in the Fort Bend settlement on April 26, 1842, in the interval between sessions. Martin County is named for him. Source


Dyer Cemetery
Richmond

COORDINATES

29° 34.659, -095° 45.420

Henry Tierwester (?-1859)

    Born Heinrich Thurwachter in France, he became Henry Tierwester after an immigrations clerk misspelled his name and he decided to keep it. He came to Texas from Ohio in 1828 and applied for land in Austin's Second Colony, which he received in October, 1832. His grant was located in present-day Harris County, and he settled in a small town nearby named Frost Town. On March 1, 1836, he enlisted in the Texas Army as a private in Captain William S. Fisher's Company of Velasco Blues until June 7. During the battle of San Jacinto, he was shot through a powder horn that he had slung around his neck. Fortunately, the bullet had been spent before it penetrated fully and he was unharmed. He married Anne White on April 12, 1838, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1842; he later married Phillipine Pugh, and remained so until his death in 1859. His grave in Houston's City Cemetery was once marked and fenced, but is now lost.

Note: Unmarked. 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. Henry Tierwester's is one of them.

Founders Memorial Park
Houston

COORDINATES

N/A

Andrew J. Briscoe (1810-1849)

    Andrew Briscoe, merchant, patriot, judge, and railroad promoter, was born on November 25, 1810, on the plantation of his father, Parmenas Briscoe, in Claiborne County, Mississippi. He made several trips on horseback between Mississippi and Texas before settling in Texas, where he registered in 1833 as a citizen of Coahuila and Texas. With a shipment of goods he opened a store in Anahuac in 1835. Briscoe opposed the irregular collection of customs dues by Mexican authorities at Anahuac and presented resolutions of protest at a mass meeting there and later at Harrisburg. When he attempted to trade to DeWitt Clinton Harris goods with unpaid duties, both he and Harris were arrested by Mexican officials. They were released when William B. Travis and his volunteers came to drive Antonio Tenorio out of office. In July Briscoe wrote to the editor of the Brazoria Texas Republican justifying the action taken. In August he received a congratulatory letter from Travis.

    Briscoe was captain of the Liberty Volunteers at the battle of Concepción and followed Benjamin R. Milam in the siege of Bexar. He was elected a delegate from his municipality with Lorenzo de Zavala and attended the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos, but evidently because of the urgency of reentering military service he did not remain until its close. At the battle of San Jacinto he was captain of Company A, Infantry Regulars. In 1836 Briscoe was appointed chief justice of Harrisburg by Sam Houston. When his term ended in 1839, he began dealing in cattle and trying to promote a railroad. In 1839 he planned a road from Harrisburg to the Brazos River. In 1840, when the project was abandoned, about two miles had been graded and laid with ties. That year, in a paper entitled "California Railroad," he gave a complete plan for building a railroad from Harrisburg to San Diego via Richmond, Prairieville, Austin, and El Paso. In 1841 he secured a charter from the Republic of Texas for the Harrisburg Railroad and Trading Company, of which he was president. In the spring of 1849 Briscoe moved his family to New Orleans, where he engaged in banking and brokerage until his death. Source

Republic Hill
Texas State Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 15.917, -097° 43.645

Lester B. Williams (1920-1990)

    Lester Williams, blues guitarist and vocalist, was born in Groveton, Texas, on June 24, 1920. He was little-known outside of the Houston blues scene. He had moved with his family to Houston when he was a boy. Williams grew up singing in church choirs and in school; he later also sang in college. In Houston, he became familiar with the recordings of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson. After serving in the military in World War II, he came home to Houston and formed his own band. At this time he heard T-Bone Walker, who became a major influence on Williams’s style. Williams sang with Ike Smalley’s band at the famous Eldorado Ballroom in Houston, but he left the Smalley band and applied to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and was accepted. He returned to Houston, bought a guitar, and spent about six months polishing his blues playing. He began performing at Don Robey’s Bronze Peacock Club. He made tapes of his song, Winter Time Blues, which he wrote after his wife and daughter had gone to Los Angeles for the summer. At this time, Williams was attending Texas Southern University.

    Winter Time Blues was eventually released in 1949 on the Houston-based Macy’s label and became a regional hit. Other Macy’s recordings include Answer to Wintertime Blue, Dowling Street Ho, Texas Town, Mary Lou, Hey Jack, and The Folks Around The Corner. Williams joined the Specialty label, which resulted in his biggest hit in 1952 - I Can’t Lose with the Stuff I Use. The song was later covered by B.B. King. Steve Poncio, who had produced Williams's debut single Winter Time Blues, also produced I Can't Lose with the Stuff I Use. The record achieved national popularity, and Lester Williams joined a February 1953 Carnegie Hall bill, which included Billy Eckstine, Dinah Washington, and Nat King Cole. His other recordings with Specialty included Trying to Forget, Lost Gal, and If You Knew How Much I Love You. Williams’s later recordings were not successful; however by 1954 he was regularly performing on Houston radio station KLVL. He was also touring and playing on blues circuits throughout the South. In 1954 he recorded some sessions for Robey’s Duke label, including Let’s Do It and Crazy ‘Bout You Baby. Williams’s recordings have been released on various reissue CDs. The Godfather of Blues (Collectables 1993) includes his Macey’s sides - Dowling Street Hop, Winter Time Blues, Answer to Wintertime Blues, Texas Town, Hey Jack, Folks Around the Corner, and Mary Lou. Other CD releases include I Can't Lose with the Stuff I Use (Ace, 1993), Texas Troubadour (Ace, 1995), and Goree Carter: The Complete Recordings Volume 2 - 1950-1954/The Remaining Lester Williams 1949-1956 (Blue Moon, 2004). Williams continued playing the Houston club circuit for many years, and in 1986 he toured in Europe. He died on November 13, 1990, in Houston. Source 

Section J
Houston National Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 55.742, -095° 26.976

William Durham (1815-1838)

    William Davis Durham, soldier, was born at Bardswell, Norfolk, England, on July 4, 1815, the eldest of seven children of William and Ester (Bloomfield) Durham; he was a brother of George J. Durham. The family immigrated to the United States in 1833 or 1835 and settled in New York. William enlisted in the New Orleans Greys on October 22, 1835, and landed at Velasco, Texas, three days later. As a member of that unit he participated in the siege of Bexar. When the Texas army split, Durham marched to the east and fought at the battle of San Jacinto. His name is engraved (incorrectly, as William Daniel Durham) on the face of the San Jacinto Monument. He died, a victim of a yellow fever epidemic, in Houston on August 27, 1838, and was buried in Old Founders Memorial Park. In 1936 the state placed a monument over his grave. Source

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. His marker has an incorrect middle name.


Founders Memorial Park
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 45.430, -095° 22.750

 

Louis Joseph "The Battler" Rymkus (1919-1998)

    Lou Rymkus was born on November 6, 1919 in Royalton, Illinois and grew up in Chicago. He was a star lineman in high school and won a football scholarship to attend the University of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, he played on a 1941 team that went undefeated under head coach Frank Leahy. Rymkus was drafted by the NFL's Washington Redskins in 1943 and played one season for the team before joining the U.S. Marines during World War II. Following two years in the service, he signed with the Browns, with whom he spent the remainder of his playing career. In 1960, Rymkus was hired by the new Houston Oilers team to be their first head coach and led them to win the AFL's first championship, The championship provided Rymkus with an extra degree of satisfaction because it came over a Chargers team coached by his arch-nemesis, Sid Gillman.  No one is exactly sure how the feud began, but it stemmed from the days when Rymkus was an assistant coach on Gillman’s Los Angeles Rams team. The two nearly came to blows one day in 1959, and despised each other since.  Despite the 1960 championship, the team’s slow start in 1961 and Rymkus’ outspoken criticism of the Oilers’ owner, Bud Adams, resulted in his dismissal as head coach early in the 1961 season. Following this, he held numerous football jobs, from coaching a high school team in Louisiana to working as an assistant with the Detroit Lions. Rymkus was a finalist for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1988 but was not elected. He died of a stroke in 1998.


San Felipe de Austin Cemetery
San Felipe

COORDINATES

29° 47.892, -096° 06.070