Biographies of Oakwood Cemetery Residents
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BAKER, DANIEL (1791-1857) Buried in Section 1, lot 11
Daniel Baker, Presbyterian minister, was born on August 17, 1791, at Midway, Liberty County, Georgia. He joined the Presbyterian Church there on April 19, 1811. He married Elizabeth McRobert on March 28, 1816. Baker was ordained and installed as pastor of the Presbyterian congregations on March 1818; he supplemented his income by teaching school. In 1821 or 1822 he became pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., where John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson were members. In 1839 Baker headed for Texas. When he preached in Huntsville and mentioned the possibility of a college, the citizens subscribed $8,000 to be paid over a five-year period. He became president of Austin College in 1853. By 1857 he had acquired approximately $100,000 for the college. He died in the home of his son in Austin on December 10, 1857. Daniel Baker College in Brownwood was named in his honor. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BAKER, DEWITT CLINTON (1832-1881) Buried in Section 4, lot 103
DeWitt Clinton Baker, businessman, was born in Portland, Maine, on November 23, 1832. He was educated at Gorham Academy and Bowdoin College in Maine and was believed to have been an apprentice in the printing business in Portland. Around 1850 he moved with his family to Austin, where he was in the drug business for twenty-five years. He married Mary Elizabeth Graham on May 28, 1861, and they became the parents of nine children. Baker was appointed to keep official weather records in Texas. He helped establish public schools in Austin and was the inspector of schools from 1872 to 1877; Baker School in the Hyde Park area of Austin was named in his honor. He probably organized the first Bible society and the first public library in Austin. He was the author of a number of poems; one called "Sketches of Travel in Texas" appeared in the Portland Transcript. He published A Brief History of Texas from Its Earliest Settlement (1873) and A Texas Scrap-Book (1875). Because of ill health he retired from the drug business and was employed by the Internal Revenue Department. He died in Austin on April 17, 1881. The Baker home, which was built in 1871, was purchased by a University of Texas sorority in 1968. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BAKER, JOSEPH (1804-1846) Buried in Section 1, old grounds
Joseph Baker, newspaperman and public official was born in Maine in 1804. On December 7, 1831, he arrived at San Felipe de Austin, where he taught school for three years and was secretary of the ayuntamiento in 1835. On October 5, 1835, he was issued title to one-fourth league of land on the west bank of Fish Pond Creek, in what is now Waller County. With Gail Borden, Jr., and Thomas H. Borden, Baker, or Don José, as he was called, established the Telegraph and Texas Register at San Felipe; the first issue appeared on October 10, 1835. Baker severed his connection with the paper on April 5, 1836, to join the Texas army, in which he served from February 29 to June 1. He was a member of Moseley Baker's company at the battle of San Jacinto. In 1836 he was chosen second judge of Austin Municipality. He was appointed translator to the state on October 23, 1836, and was elected first chief justice of Bexar County on December 16, 1836. In 1837-38 he represented Bexar County in the House of the Second Congress. In 1841-42 he published the Houston Houstonian. He was Spanish translator in the General Land Office in 1845. Baker died in Austin on July 11, 1846. In 1936 the state of Texas placed a monument and centennial plaque at his grave. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BAKER, WILLIAM MUMFORD (1825-1883) Buried in Section 1, lot 11
William Mumford Baker, Presbyterian minister and author, was born in Washington, D.C., on June 6, 1825. He was ordained an evangelist by the Presbytery of Little Rock on April 22, 1849. On May 26, 1850, he reorganized the Presbyterian church in Austin with five people. The church met at the old Capitol and at the Baggelley School. A new church building was completed in 1851. When the Presbyterian General Assembly in Philadelphia, of which the Austin church was a member, officially endorsed the Union during the Civil War, the Austin church withdrew its membership and joined the Southern General Assembly of Presbyterian Churches. Baker submitted his resignation in December 1865 to a congregation of seventy-three persons. In 1866 Baker published Inside: A Chronicle of Secession in New York under the alias G. F. Harrington. At the close of the war he and his family moved north. He wrote one biography, The Life and Labours of the Reverend Daniel Baker; and twelve novels, most of them about his Texas experiences. He died on August 20, 1883, and his body was transported back to Austin for burial beside his father. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BARKER, EUGENE CAMPBELL (1874-1956) Buried in Section 3, lot 1011
Eugene C. Barker, historian, was born near Riverside, Walker County, Texas on November 10, 1874. He became a fine blacksmith while working during the day and attending evening school. He entered the University of Texas in September 1895. He served the university history department as tutor, instructor, adjunct professor, associate professor, professor, and professor emeritus for almost six decades. Barker became chairman of the University of Texas Department of History when the title of distinguished professor was inaugurated in 1937. Barker served as managing editor of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and director of the Texas State Historical Association from 1910 until 1937. Barker was instrumental in the origin of the Latin American Collection and the Littlefield collection of source materials on the history of the South. Barker's greatest contribution to the university, however, was in building the history department, which, during his career, came to rank with the best in the state universities of the nation. When the University of Texas named the Barker Texas History Center for him, it was the first time that such an honor had been accorded a living member of the faculty. Barker died on October 22, 1956. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BATTS, ROBERT LYNN (1864-1935) Buried in Section 1, lot 118
Robert Lynn Batts, attorney, judge, and University of Texas regent, was born in Bastrop, Texas, on November 1, 1864. He studied law at the University of Texas and served as editor of the university's first student publication, a magazine called The Texas University; he received his law degree in 1886. Batts married Harriet Fiquet Boak of Austin on Nov 12, 1889. He became assistant Texas attorney general . His most significant victory in this position was the recovery of 920,000 acres of land for the public school fund in Galveston, Harrisburg, and San Antonio Railway Company v. Texas. In March 1917 President Woodrow Wilson appointed him judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Batts resigned from the court in 1919 to become general counsel for the Gulf Petroleum Company. Batts was a member of the board of regents of the University of Texas from 1927 to 1933. He served as chairman during the last three years of his appointment; in this role he was largely responsible for the financing and planning of the university's building program. Batts died in Austin on May 19, 1935. Batts Hall at the University of Texas was dedicated to him in April 1953. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BICKLER, JACOB (1849-1902) Buried in Section 4, lot 839
Jacob Bickler, teacher and school administrator, was born in Sobernheim, now in the Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on November 20, 1849. At the age of fourteen, he went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to live with his father and stepmother. Bickler moved to Austin in 1872 and was associated with his uncle, Philip Bickler, as a teacher in Bickler German-English Academy until April 1, 1873, when he was appointed assistant draftsman and calculator in the General Land Office of Texas. There he met Martha Lungkwitz and they married on January 24, 1874. In 1877 in Austin Bickler founded the Texas German and English Academy, a boys' school. He founded Bickler Academy in 1892. The curricula of his schools included many languages as well as music and liberal arts courses. Bickler was fluent in six languages, and he was known as an outstanding teacher in preparing students for college work. A school in Austin was named for him. He died in Austin on April 30, 1902. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BLANTON, ANNIE WEBB (1870-1945) Buried in Section 1, lot 280
Annie Webb Blanton, teacher, suffragist, and the first woman in Texas elected to statewide office, was born on August 19, 1870 in Houston. She supported herself by teaching while studying at the University of Texas, where she graduated in 1899. In 1917 Texas suffragists found a sympathetic leader in Gov. William P. Hobby. In Hobby's first called legislative session in February 1918, women obtained the right to vote in Texas primaries. The suffragists offered their support to Hobby in his 1918 bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and asked Annie Blanton to run for state superintendent of public instruction. In a bitter campaign, she was accused of being an atheist and of running as a tool for others. Her victory in the general election in November made her the first woman in Texas elected to statewide office. During her tenure as state superintendent, a system of free textbooks was established, teacher certification laws were revised, teachers' salaries were raised, and efforts were made to improve rural education. She served as state superintendent through 1922. She earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University. In 1929 she founded the Delta Kappa Gamma Society, an honorary society for women teachers. She died in Austin on October 2, 1945. Public schools are named for her in several cities, and a women's dormitory at the University of Texas at Austin bears her name. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BRACKENRIDGE, JOHN THOMAS (1828-1906) Buried in Section 1, lot 261
John Thomas Brackenridge, Confederate veteran and bank president, was born in Warwick County, Indiana, on September 3, 1828. He attended Indiana State University and Bloomington Law School before being admitted to the bar in 1851. In 1854 he moved to Texana, Texas, where he was a merchant until 1861. In 1862 he joined the Confederate Army. In 1863, he was promoted to major in the cavalry for coast picket duty. In 1877 he was president of First National Bank of Austin. His first marriage was to E. R. Smith of Boonville, Indiana; his second, to Mary E. Dupuy in Jackson County, Texas. Brackenridge died in San Antonio on March 3, 1906.Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BROWN, FRANK (1833-1913) Buried in Section 1, lot 287
Frank Brown, county official, was born on June 26, 1833, in Nashville, Tennessee. He came to Texas when he was two years old. Mrs. Brown and her five children moved to Austin in 1846. He married Georgiana McLemore in Austin on January 1, 1856. Brown was elected county clerk of Travis County, probably in 1856, and was reelected in 1858 and 1862. He enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private. He was appointed clerk of the district court and city alderman of Austin. Brown was commissioned clerk of the district court in 1866 and later elected to the post. He resigned in 1869.He was clerk of the district court in 1873 and of the county court in 1876 and was reelected for each term through 1892. After Brown's retirement he compiled his annals of Travis County and the city of Austin. His manuscript is a storehouse of information about the history of the Austin area in the second half of the nineteenth century. He died at Austin at the home of his daughter on January 27, 1913. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
BUAAS, JOHN LAWRENCE (1817-1890) Buried in Section 1, Buaas family lot
John Lawrence Buaas was born August 10, 1817 in Bodo, Norway. He married Helene Bastian in 1853 in New Braunfels. The Buaas Hall and Garden was located in the 400 block of old Pecan Street and opened in July 1860, making it the first of Austin's great entertainment centers. The Austin Gazette celebrated the new hall's arrival: John L. Buaas takes pleasure in informing his friends that his New Hall will be opened on the 21st, where he will be fully prepared to accommodate Balls, Parties, Theaters, Public Meetings and Exhibitions of every description. The Hall has been built expressly to meet the wants of the community, is fitted up with elegant seats, and lighted Peters' Patent Gas Lamps, and will be found the largest, best arranged and neatest of any public room in the City. Connected with the above is an elegant seven octave Piano, with the latest improvements, for use of Balls, Parties, etc .There is also a large refreshment Saloon where a fine supper can be served up at short notice. With the end of the Civil War, Buaas completely remodeled the hall and it became Republican Party headquarters. This left Buaas Hall and Garden tainted in the eyes of Democrats, who regained power in Texas in 1874. This paradigm shift spelled Buaas' demise, along with commercial development along old Pecan Street, which drove property values up and made the Buaas property too valuable to remain a beer garden. Buaas was known as the first Norwegian to settle in Austin. He died August 8, 1890. Source
http://www.prismnet.com/~xeke/daysof.htm
BURLESON, ALBERT SIDNEY (1863-1937) Buried in Section 2, lot 774
Albert Sidney Burleson, attorney, congressman, and United States postmaster general, was born in San Marcos, Texas, on June 7, 1863. He was a grandson of Edward Burleson. He joined his uncle Thomas Eskridge Sneed and George F. Poindexter in their law practice in Austin after law school. In 1891 he was appointed attorney of the Twenty-sixth Judicial District. Among the friends he made during this time was Edward M. House, who later kept Burleson's name in consideration for a position in President Woodrow Wilson's cabinet. Burleson married Adele Lubbock Steiner in1889.He represented Texas in United States congresses (1899-1913). Woodrow Wilson appointed him postmaster general in 1913, and Burleson held that post until 1921. He retired from public life in 1921 and returned to Austin to devote his time to agricultural interests. Baylor University awarded him an honorary LL.D. degree in 1930. Burleson died of a heart attack at his home in Austin on November 24, 1937. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
