Biographies of Oakwood Cemetery Residents
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DAY, JAMES MONROE (ca. 1840-1904) Buried in Section 1, lot 192
James Monroe (Doc) Day, cattleman and drover, was born in Barry County, Missouri, around 1840. He was brought to Texas by his family in 1847 and eventually settled in Mountain City, Hays County. Before the Civil War he engaged in stock raising with his father and brother. In 1857, with William and Willis McCutcheon of Bastrop County, he pioneered in blazing a cattle trail to Sedalia, Missouri, and Quincy, Illinois. After the Civil War he owned a ranch in Denton County and drove cattle to Iowa and Kansas. He was a brother-in-law of Jesse L. Driskill and was associated for a time with the Driskill businesses in Austin. Day was ranching in New Mexico when he died at Roswell in 1904. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
DE CORDOVA, PHINEAS (1819-1903) Buried in Beth Israel I
Phineas De Cordova, newspaperman and land agent, whose life in Texas embraced a period of nearly sixty years and in a modest way was identified with the history and development of the State, died at the home of his son at Austin, May 8, 1903. Mr. De Cordova was born in Philadelphia, Pa., March 28, 1819; came to Texas in 1847, and spent a year in Galveston with his brother, Jacob, resided for a short time in Houston, and then established himself at Austin. He was editor of a newspaper published at Austin in early days. In later years he contributed various articles to the leading newspapers of the State. He was associated with his son, Sam De Cordova, in the real estate business until failing health compelled him to retire from active pursuits a few years since. He was a man liberally educated, widely read, with a mind stored with recollections of the heroes and statesmen of early days with whom he was associated and important events that he witnessed or in which he participated, with a heart devoted to Texas—chivalrous, patriotic and noble. Source
http://www.historictexas.net/bios/2d/decordova-phineas.html
DEGRESS, JACOB CARL MARIA (1842-1894) Buried in Section 1, lot 359
Jacob Carl DeGress, first Texas state superintendent of schools, was born on April 23, 1842, in Cologne, Prussia. After arriving in the United States, he served as a cavalry commander in the Union Army during the Civil War. He fought at Vicksburg and in Louisiana and was wounded twice. DeGress entered Texas in June 1865. He assumed the duties of assistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau of the eastern division of the state. He married Bettie Buckner Young. on New Year's Day, 1867. He was assigned to the all-black cavalry located in West Texas, and on April 14, 1868, he reported to Fort Duncan at Eagle Pass. He commanded cavalry troops at the frontier post until December 1870. After the passage of the 1871 public school law, Republican governor Edmund J. Davis appointed DeGress the state's first superintendent of public instruction. In this position DeGress attempted to institute a public school system with education for black children and compulsory attendance supported by a school tax. DeGress protested the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. DeGress was generally despised as a carpetbagger. He was elected alderman from Austin's eighth ward in 1877 and became mayor that year. That summer DeGress's wife and two daughters died. On August 2, 1882, he married W. M. Johnston. Republican presidents James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison appointed him postmaster of Austin. On March 19, 1894, DeGress died of complications from his war injuries. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
DELANEY, WILLIAM SHELBY (1825-1900) Buried in Section 2, lot 461
William Shelby Delaney was born in Union County, Kentucky, on September 18, 1825. He graduated from Cumberland College in July 1847. While teaching, he studied law in his spare time. He was admitted to the bar in Caldwell County, Kentucky, where he married Gabriella R. Shropshire on July 14, 1850; after her death he married Mrs. Caroline Shropshire, on July 21, 1863. He was colonel of a Colorado County regiment in the Confederate Army before he became district attorney of the Columbus district in 1862. In 1873 he was appointed to the bench of the Colorado County Court. He represented District Twenty-five in the House of the Fourteenth Legislature, 1874-75. Delaney owned large tracts of land in Wharton, Colorado, and other counties and ranked as one of the leading stock raisers in the region. He served as vestryman and licensed lay reader in St. John's Episcopal Church at Columbus. Delaney died at Austin on December 16, 1900. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
DICKINSON, SUSANNA WILKERSON (ca. 1814-1883) Buried in Sec 1, lot 363
Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson, survivor of the Alamo, was born about 1814 in Tennessee. On May 24, 1829, she married Almaron Dickinson in Hardeman County, Tennessee. The Dickinsons arrived at Gonzales, Texas, on February 20, 1831. On May 5 Dickinson received a league of land from Green DeWitt, on the San Marcos River in what became Caldwell County. He received ten more lots in and around Gonzales in 1833 and 1834. Susanna's only child, Angelina Elizabeth Dickinson, was born on December 14, 1834. Susanna said goodbye to her husband on October 13 as the volunteers left for San Antonio. She remained in Gonzales through November. She joined Dickinson in San Antonio, probably in December 1835. On February 23, 1836, the family moved into the Alamo. After the battle of the Alamo on March 6, Mexican soldiers took her and Angelina, along with the other women and children away from the fort. Santa Anna sent Susanna and her daughter to Sam Houston with a letter of warning dated March 7. By 1839 Almaron Dickinson's heirs had received rights to 2,560 acres for his military service; they sold the land when Angelina reached twenty-one. Susanna married five times, the fifth marriage was to Joseph William Hannig, a native of Germany living in Lockhart in 1857. They soon moved to Austin. Susanna became ill in February 1883 and died on October 7 of that year. Hannig buried her in Oakwood Cemetery, and even though he married again, he was buried next to Susanna after his death in 1890. Her granddaughter and several other members of the family are also in this lot. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
DIETERICH, FRANCIS (1815-1860) Buried in Sec 1, lot 12
Francis Dieterich was born on February 02, 1815 in Cassel, Germany. In 1834, he emigrated to Texas and settled in Refugio. It was there that he petitioned for and received several leagues of land. In February 1836, he joined the militia that later became a regiment commanded by William Ward under Col. James Fannin, Jr. He participated in the defense of the mission of Refugio, where he was taken prisoner on March 14, but his life was spared. He was again taken prisoner at Goliad, but escaped the Massacre of March 27th. Dieterich moved to Austin in 1839 and went into business as a meat dealer. When the government of the republic was moved to Washington-on-the-Brazos in 1842, he moved there to supply goods. Returning to Austin in 1845, he opened a store with George Hancock. Dieterich served as alderman to the city in 1846. He was married three times. In 1834 or 1835, he married to Bessie Reed, next he married Martha Ann Brown on March 12, 1845. And finally, he married Sarah Elizabeth Browning on June 17, 1847. Dietrich died in Austin on May 31, 1860. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
DRISKILL, JESSE LINCOLN (1824-1890) Buried in Sec 1, lot 324
Jesse Lincoln Driskill, cattleman and builder of the Driskill Hotel in Austin, was born on November 4, 1824, in White County, Tennessee. Six Driscoll brothers came to America from Ireland in 1775 and settled in Virginia. At the age of twenty-three Jesse Driskill moved to Missouri, where he married Nancy Elizabeth Jane Day on September 5, 1847. The couple lived in Missouri four years and then moved to Bastrop, Texas. Driskill went into the merchandising business, moving first to San Antonio. In 1857 he entered the cattle business, and for three years during the Civil War he furnished beef to the Confederate army and the Texas Rangers. Driskill was paid for his efforts in Confederate dollars and by the end of the war, with no cattle and no money, had gone broke. Driskill could be found driving cattle to northern markets with his brother-in-law, William H. Day. Driskill was said to have been an adventurous drover and fearless ranchman. Business fell off sharply after 1871. In that year Driskill moved his wife, four daughters, and two sons to Austin, the westernmost metropolis in the state at that time. He also continued on in the cattle trade, establishing ranches in South Texas, Kansas, and the Dakota territories. In 1885 he purchased the site for his future hotel, an entire city block for $7,500. The Driskill Hotel opened on December 20, 1886. For many years it served as a social and political center in Texas society. The Driskill family lost their fortune in 1888, when a late spring freeze on the northern plains killed 3,000 cattle. Payments on the hotel could not be met, and Driskill was forced to sell. He died on May 3, 1890. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
DURHAM, GEORGE JOHN (1820-1868) Buried in Sec 1, lot 14
George John Durham, state official and writer, was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England, on May 12, 1820. He immigrated to the United States in 1835 and moved to Texas from New Jersey in 1837. He moved to Austin with the government in 1839. Durham was in Austin when surveyors laid out the site for the new capital in 1839. He served as an officer in the Travis Guards in 1840, and in 1842 he resisted the moving of government documents from Austin during the Archive War. Durham was the auctioneer in Austin in December 1850, when the government sold town lots to raise money for the construction of a building for the land office. He married Cassandra Lincecum, on December 23, 1852.Durham was elected mayor of Austin in 1852. In 1854, while in that office, he shot and killed a man who had repeatedly threatened his life; he was acquitted. In 1861 he was a delegate to the Secession Convention. In 1865, after the break-up of the Confederacy, he successfully resisted armed men who tried to remove funds from the comptroller's office. Durham ran for state treasurer on the ticket with James Webb Throckmorton in 1866 but was defeated. He was also an ornithologist, an authority on Texas grapes, an excellent marksman, and a writer. Durham was a correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1867 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Natural Science in Philadelphia. He died of typhoid in Austin on April 10, 1868. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
DUVAL, JOHN CRITTENDEN (1816-1897) Buried Sec 1, lot 311
John Duval to become known as “Texas John,” was born in Bardstown, Kentucky on March 14, 1816. When his father was appointed to a federal judgeship in what was then the Florida Territory, John moved with the family to Tallahassee. In 1835, his brother Captain Burr H. Duval formed a small company to go fight with the Texans against Mexico. John left college and joined the group. The brothers were with James W. Fannin's army when they surrendered to Jose de Urrea’s Mexican army. In the Goliad Massacre on Palm Sunday of 1836, Burr Duval was killed, but John escaped. By 1840, he was a land surveyor. He became a Texas Ranger in 1845. While not favoring secession, he joined the Confederate Army and was a Captain by the end of the Civil War. He has been called the first Texas man of letters because of his early writings. “Early Times in Texas” was published in serial form in 1867. In it, he recounted the story of his escape from the Goliad Massacre and other adventures. His most important book was “The Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace, the Texas Ranger and Hunter” . He died in Fort Worth on January 15, 1897 and was brought to Austin for burial. Taken from tour information.
