Biographies of Oakwood Cemetery Residents
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NEILL, ANDREW (1813-1883) Buried in Section 1, lot 66
Andrew Neill (1813-1883) was born at Lough Fergus Farm, County Ayr, Scotland in 1813. He immigrated to Willsburg, West Virginia, where he studied law. Later in Mississippi, he was a probate judge. In 1836, he moved to Texas as captain of a company of volunteers. Neill and his group arrived after the battle of San Jacinto. He served in the army on special duty until 1837. He practiced law for a short time in Gonzales and then moved to Seguin in 1838. He participated in the Indian campaigns and took part in the expedition to repulse Rafael Vasquez from San Antonio in 1842. While in San Antonio in the fall of 1842, Andrew was captured by an invading Mexican army under General Adrian Woll. He and 52 others were taken as prisoners to Mexico. He managed to escape, traveled to Veracruz, sailed for New Orleans, and was back in Texas by January of 1843. During the Civil War, he moved to Galveston for service in the Confederate Army. Neill married Agnes Nancy Brown in 1844. In 1854, he served as grand master of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Texas. He was a candidate for lieutenant governor in 1855, but was defeated in the party primary. After her death in 1867, he married Virginia Wright ‘Jennie’ Chapman in 1868. He moved to Austin in 1875 and lived in the Neill-Cochran house, west of the UT campus. He died from a congestive chill here on March 26, 1883. The funeral service took place at the family residence at the corner San Jacinto and Orange streets. He was 71 years, 2 months and 18 days old. Governor Ireland attended his funeral. SAC Tour
NORTON, NIMROD LINDSAY (1830-1903) Buried in Section #3, lot 527
Nimrod Lindsay Norton, government official, was born near Carlisle, Kentucky, on April 18, 1830. In 1880 he was appointed a member of the three-man Capitol building commission, which considered eleven designs submitted for the Capitol. On February 1, 1882, Norton and another Capitol building commissioner shoveled the first spade of dirt for the beginning of construction. Norton with his two business partners, W. H. Westfall and G. W. Lacy, ended the limestone-granite controversy by donating all the red granite needed for construction from Granite Mountain in Burnet County. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
