Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long (1798-1880)

    Jane Long was called the "Mother of Texas", even during her lifetime, because of the birth of her child on Bolivar Peninsula on December 21, 1821. She was not, however, as she claimed, the first English-speaking woman to bear a child in Texas. Censuses between 1807 and 1826 reveal a number of children born in Texas to Anglo-American mothers prior to 1821. Jane was born on July 23, 1798, in Charles County, Maryland, the tenth child of Capt. William Mackall and Anne Herbert (Dent) Wilkinson. Her father died in 1799, and about 1811 her mother moved the family to Washington, Mississippi Territory. After the death of her mother around 1813, Jane lived with her older sister, Barbara, the wife of Alexander Calvit, at Propinquity Plantation near Natchez, where she met James Long when he was returning from the battle of New Orleans. The couple married on May 14, 1815, and for the next four years lived in the vicinity while James practiced medicine at Port Gibson, experimented with a plantation, and became a merchant in Natchez. When Long left for Nacogdoches in June 1819, Jane and their daughter, Ann Herbert, born on November 26, 1816, remained with another sister, Anne Chesley, a widow, because of advanced pregnancy. Twelve days after the birth of Rebecca on June 16, Jane hastened to join her husband. She left with her two children and Kian, a black slave. 

    While with the Calvits, now living near Alexandria, Louisiana, Jane became ill. She continued on while still recovering, and it was August before she reached Nacogdoches. Within two months she had to flee with the other American families towards the Sabine when Spanish troops from San Antonio approached the frontier outpost. James Long was returning to the stone fort from a visit to Galveston Island and managed to meet Jane near the Sabine. Jane returned to the Calvits' where she found that little Rebecca had died. About March 1820 James Long took Jane to Bolivar Peninsula on Galveston Bay, and she claimed to have dined with Jean Laffite on Galveston Island. The Longs returned to Alexandria for their daughter on their way to New Orleans to seek support for Long's cause. Jane missed sailing to Bolivar when at the last minute she returned to Rodney, Mississippi, for her daughter Ann, whom she had left with Anne Chesley. Jane and Ann waited in Alexandria until Warren D. C. Hall came to guide her overland to Bolivar. Jane Long was not the only woman at Fort Las Casas on the peninsula. Several families remained in the little community surrounding the military post when Long left for La Bahía on September 19, 1821. Instead of returning within a month as promised, Long was captured at San Antonio and taken to Mexico City where he was accidentally killed on April 8, 1822. Pregnant again, Jane stubbornly waited for her husband even when the guard and the other families left Bolivar. She was all alone except for Kian and Ann when she gave birth to her third daughter, Mary James, on December 21, 1821.

    Lonely and near starvation, Jane welcomed incoming immigrants heading for the San Jacinto River early in 1822. She abandoned her vigil and joined the Smith family at their camp on Cedar Bayou. By mid-summer she moved farther up the San Jacinto River, where she finally received word that James Long had been killed. She traveled to San Antonio in September to seek a pension from Governor José Félix Trespalacios, her husband's former associate. She arrived on October 17, 1822, and remained ten months without success in her quest, after which she returned, disappointed, to Alexandria in September 1823. Jane Long returned to Texas with the Calvits after the death of her youngest child on June 25, 1824. She received title to a league of land in Fort Bend County and a labor in Waller County from empresario Stephen F. Austin on August 24, 1824. She did not live there, preferring San Felipe until April 1830, when she took Ann to school in Mississippi. They lived with Anne W. Chesney Miller until January 1831, when Ann James married Edward Winston, a native of Virginia. The newlyweds and Jane made a leisurely pilgrimage back to Texas, where they arrived in May. Jane bought W. T. Austin's boarding house at Brazoria in 1832, which she operated for five years.

    In 1837 the widow, age thirty-nine, moved to her league, a portion of which she had sold to Robert E. Handy who developed the town of Richmond, the county seat of Fort Bend County. Jane opened another boarding house and also developed a plantation two miles south of town. She bought and sold land, raised cattle, and grew cotton with the help of slaves (twelve in 1840). Her plantation was valued at over $10,000 in 1850. By 1861 she held nineteen slaves valued at $13,300 and about 2,000 acres. When the war ended, she continued to work the land with tenants and briefly experimented with sheep. In 1870 she lived by herself next door to Ann who had married James S. Sullivan; Ann died in June, leaving the care of Jane to the grandchildren. By 1877 Jane was unable to manage her diminished estate valued at only $2,000. She died on December 30, 1880, at the home of her grandson, James E. Winston, and was buried in the Morton Cemetery in Richmond. Folklore and family tradition hold that Jane was courted by Texas's leading men, including Ben Milam, Sam Houston, and Mirabeau B. Lamar, but that she refused them all. Her history depends primarily on her own story told to Lamar about 1837, when he was gathering material for a history of Texas. In 1936 a centennial marker was erected in her honor in Fort Bend County. Source

Masonic West Section
Morton Cemetery
Richmond

COORDINATES

29° 35.132, -095° 45.801

Thomas Young Buford (1814-1839)

    Little is known of Thomas Buford's life prior to the Texas Revolution. His military record states that was born in South Carolina on August 5, 1814 and came to Texas in April, 1835, living near Nacogdoches. He enlisted in the Texas army on March 27, 1836 for six months and, as a member of Captain William H. Smith's Company J, Cavalry, fought at San Jacinto. He was afterward promoted to first lieutenant and put on detached duty as an army recruit until his discharge in September. Buford died on his farm near Nacogdoches on August 23, 1839, survived by his widow Mary and two infant daughters, and was buried in Oak Grove in Nacogdoches.

Oak Grove Cemetery
Nacogdoches

COORDINATES

31° 36.188, -094° 38.944

Harold Franklin "Hal" Epps (1914-2004)

    Hal Epps was born in Athens, Georgia, on March 26, 1914. A lover of sports as a youth, he played both football and baseball and entered the University of Georgia on a football scholarship in 1934. One year later, however, he was convinced by a scout for the St Louis Cardinals to switch over to baseball, where he would remain for the next eighteen years. Signed to the Cardinals training camp, he honed his skills in numerous farm systems where he maintained a batting average of over .300. Despite this promising ability, it would be years before he made his major league debut on September 9, 1938 against the Chicago Cubs. Although he only made ten appearances as an outfielder during the season, his batting talents placed him at the forefront of pinch hitters, again averaging .300. He was sent back to the minors at the close of the season and didn't play with the Cardinals again until 1940. 

    After eleven games he again returned to the minors and played for the minor league Houston Buffs. In 1943 he signed with the Toledo Mud Hens, the local affiliate for the St Louis Browns. Still hitting a respectable .300 to .301, he began shining in his role as outfielder as well, earning his nickname "The Reindeer" for the way he sprinted and dove to make catches. His improvement earned him a spot on the Browns where he would stay until June when he was picked up by the Philadelphia Athletics. Almost immediately after, he was called up by the Army to serve in the South Pacific during World War II. He left the service in 1947 and joined back up with the Houston Buffs in the Texas League, where he helped his team win the Dixie Series. Realizing that the call back to the majors would never come again, yet loving the game, he played for the Buffs until 1952 before he leaving to work for Armco Steel as a security guard for the next twenty-five years. Harold Epps would remain a local legend, however, receiving fan mail daily until his death on August 25, 2004 at the age of ninety.

Section N3
Houston National Cemetery
Houston

COORDINATES

29° 56.044, -095° 26.962

Simon Suhler (?-1895)

    Simon Suhler, recipient of the Medal of Honor, enlisted in the 32nd Indiana Regiment (known unofficially as the First Indiana German Regiment) at the outset of the Civil War. The 32nd spoke German and were headed by former Prussian officer August Willich. After his capture and wounding at Shiloh and being furloughed back, he deserted from this unit and served under the name of Simon Neustadle, honorably, the remainder of the Civil War in the 11th Heavy Artillery. He also later served in the 4th New York Heavy Artillery. After the war he joined the 8th Cavalry Regiment under the assumed name Charles Gardner, where he earned the Medal of Honor fighting the Apaches in Arizona. He was awarded the Medal of Honor at the rank of private. After 12 years in the 8th Cavalry he retired at the rank of sergeant. He was recommended to be promoted to lieutenant but this never took place. Suhler died in 1895 and was buried at San Antonio National Cemetery, San Antonio, Texas. A corrected monument was placed at his grave site on Veterans Day in 1988.

 

CITATION

Bravery in scouts and actions against Indians.

Section I
San Antonio National Cemetery
San Antonio

COORDINATES

29° 25.277, -098° 28.065

George J. Brown (?-1844)

    As is often the case with early Texas settlers, little is known of George Brown's history. His enlistment records state that he came to Texas before May 2, 1835 and served in the Texian army as a musician from February 13 to August 13, 1836. He was with Captain Richard Roman's Company at San Jacinto as Drummer and Drum Major. Brown died at Houston on November 21, 1844 and was buried in the City Cemetery.

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. George Brown's is one of them.


Founders Memorial Park
Houston

COORDINATES

N/A