William Shaler Stilwell (1809-1837)

    A native of New York, William Stilwell came to Texas through Velasco on January 28, 1836, likely for the purpose of enlisting in the Texas army. A few days after landing, on February 1, he enlisted with Turner's Company but was transferred shortly afterward to Captain Isaac N. Moreland's Company. He was at the Battle of San Jacinto and apparently impressed his superiors enough that he was appointed an officer some time after. Stilwell was stationed on Galveston Island when he was promoted to Captain of Artillery and ended his military career with that rank when his enlistment ended in February, 1837. He died a few months afterward in Houston on September 12, 1837, possibly from one of the yellow fever epidemics sweeping through the area at the time.

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

29° 45.429, -095° 22.740

William Pettus Hobby (1878-1964)

    William Hobby, editor, publisher, and governor of Texas, was born in Moscow, Texas, on March 26, 1878, the son of Eudora Adeline (Pettus) and Edwin E. Hobby. One of six children, Hobby moved in 1893 with his family from Livingston to Houston, where he entered Houston High School. In 1895 he began working for the Houston Post as a circulation clerk. Hobby became a business writer for the Post in August 1901. He began to take an active interest in politics, was a founder of the Young Men's Democratic Club of Houston and in 1904 was secretary of the party's state executive committee. He became city editor, then managing editor of the Post, and participated in the covering of some of the most spectacular stories of the time. In 1907 he left the Post to become manager and part owner of the Beaumont Enterprise, which he soon acquired. Hobby was elected lieutenant governor in 1914 and was reelected in 1916. He was married in 1915 to Willie Cooper, daughter of former United States Representative Samuel Bronson Cooper. She died in 1929. When Governor James Edward Ferguson was removed from office in 1917, Hobby became the twenty-sixth governor of Texas and the youngest man, at thirty-nine, to hold the office. Hobby served during an eventful period.

    During World War I he set up an effective military draft system for Texas, a state in which half of the country's military camps and most of its airfields were located. In 1918 Hobby defeated Ferguson by the largest majority ever received in a Democratic primary. Hobby's administration saw the passage of measures for drought relief, runoff requirements in party primaries, and state aid for schools and highways. He appointed the first Highway Commission in 1917. Laws included measures for oil conservation, the establishment of the oil and gas division of the Railroad Commission and of the Board of Control, and provision for free school textbooks. After completing his term, he returned to the Beaumont Enterprise and purchased the Beaumont Journal. He retained control of both papers for more than a decade. In 1924 he became president of the Houston Post-Dispatch. When J. E. Josey acquired the newspaper in 1931 from Ross S. Sterling, Hobby continued in the presidency and maintained executive control. In 1939 he acquired the paper, again called the Post. In February 1931 Hobby married Oveta Culp of Killeen and Houston, a former parliamentarian of the Texas House, who became a Post staff member, served in World War II as commander of the Women's Army Corps, and served in the Dwight David Eisenhower administration as the first secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The Hobbys had a son and a daughter. Under Hobby, the Post grew in circulation and prestige. The Houston Post Company also included the radio station, KPRC, and the television station, KPRC-TV. In August 1955 Hobby became chairman of the board of the company, with Mrs. Hobby as president and editor. Hobby died in Houston on June 7, 1964. A state historical marker at his birthplace was dedicated at Moscow in 1964, and both Hobby Airport and Hobby Elementary School in Houston were named for him. Source

Section H3

Glenwood Cemetery

Houston

COORDINATES

29° 45.056, -095° 23.166

James Monroe Hill (1818-1904)

    James M. Hill, soldier at the battle of San Jacinto, was born in Putnam County, Georgia, on March 13, 1818, the son of Elizabeth (Barksdale) and Asa Hill. The family lived for a time in Hillsborough and Columbus, Georgia, before immigrating to Texas. Asa Hill visited Texas in 1834, and the following year the Hills were one of seventeen families to charter a schooner to take them to Stephen F. Austin's colony. Young Hill, with his parents and eight brothers and sisters, landed at Matagorda on May 31, 1835, and soon established a farm in Washington County. After the fall of the Alamo, Hill and his father set out with seven other men, including William Bennett Scates, to join Sam Houston's army. They met Capt. William W. Hill's detachment at Columbus, and young Hill joined this group while his father went on to army headquarters. Asa Hill was later detached from the army to warn settlers of Houston's planned withdrawal to the Brazos River. At San Jacinto James M. Hill served in Company H of Col. Edward Burleson's First Regiment, Texas Volunteers. This company was led by Robert Stevenson in the absence of its commander, Captain Hill, who had contracted measles at Donahoe, on the Brazos. James Monroe Hill was one of the few men present at the first interview between Houston and Antonio López de Santa Anna and is portrayed in William Henry Huddle's painting The Surrender of Santa Anna, now hanging in the state Capitol. 

    Hill is said to have joined a volunteer company in response to Adrián Woll's invasion of Texas in 1842. Later that year his father and two brothers, Jeffrey Barksdale Hill and John C. C. Hill, participated in the Somervell expedition. Before John Hill left for the Rio Grande, his brother James gave him a new rifle, telling him "never to surrender it to a Mexican." After the battle of Mier, at which Jeffrey was wounded and all three of the Hills were captured, young John smashed his brother's gift against the pavement rather than give it up. Their father later drew one of the white beans at Saltillo in the Black Bean Episode. On September 14, 1843, Hill married Jane Hallowell Kerr in Washington County. Jane was born in Tennessee in 1824, had immigrated to Texas with her family in 1831, and had taken part in the Runaway Scrape in 1836. The couple spent the next forty-one years in Fayette County. According to his wife's brief memoir, Hill was a soldier in the Confederate Army. The family moved in 1884 to Austin, where Hill opened a store on Congress Avenue. In April 1894 at a Texas Veterans Association meeting in Waco he was appointed chairman of a committee to locate the battlefield of San Jacinto. He and the other members of the committee, Francis R. Lubbock and William P. Hardeman, visited the ground on July 4 of that year and recommended that the state acquire the site as a memorial. In 1897 Governor Charles A. Culberson appointed Hill one of three commissioners to purchase the battleground. His colleagues on the committee were Sterling Brown Hendricks and Waller T. Burns. The purchase was made in November of that year. 

    In Austin, on October 19, 1897, Hill completed his recollections, "relating personal experiences and vivid details" of the battle of San Jacinto. He was then eighty years old and one of only ten surviving San Jacinto veterans. Upon the death of Guy M. Bryan on June 4, 1901, Hill, then first vice president (1893-1901), became president of the Texas Veterans Association. He served until his death on February 14, 1904. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Austin. Hill and his wife were the parents of four daughters and four sons, two of whom served in the Confederate Army. One son, James L. Hill, was a member of a Texas cavalry regiment and participated in Earl Van Dorn's famed Holly Springs, Mississippi, raid in 1862. James Monroe Hill was the grandfather of George Alfred Hill, Jr. He was a Methodist and an honorary life member of the Texas State Historical Association. His papers, including a typescript of his reminiscences of San Jacinto, are preserved at the Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Source

Section 4
Oakwood Cemetery
Austin

COORDINATES

30° 16.684, -097° 43.677