Biographies of Oakwood Cemetery Residents
Browse by surname: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
PAGE, CHARLES HENRY (1876-1957) Buried in Oakwood Annex, Sec E, lot 300
Charles Henry Page, architect, was born in 1876 to parents who had migrated from England where his father was a mason and contractor. They moved to Austin, Texas in 1886 where Page and his father worked on the construction of the Capitol. Page was trained in architecture by a local builder-architect. He was later in independent practice but was soon joined by his brother. His first major commission was for the first Austin National Bank, and in 1903, he received the commission for the Texas Building at the St. Louis World's Fair. During his more than sixty years of practice, Page's firm designed hundreds of schools and courthouses among which is the art deco Travis County Courthouse. One example of his work is the chapel building at Oakwood Cemetery. He died in 1957.
PALM, SWANTE {JAENSSON, SWEN} (1815–1899) Buried in Sec 1, lot 72
Swen Jaensson, known as Swante Palm, noted book collector and promoter of Swedish immigration to Central Texas, was born at Bästhult, Barkeryd Parish, in the province of Småland, Sweden, on January 31, 1815. Jaensson followed his nephew to Texas in 1844 and soon thereafter took the name Swante Palm. In 1850 Swenson moved his store to Austin which became the state capital that year. In 1853 Palm went to Panama as diplomatic secretary to Thomas William Ward, United States consul there. He returned to Austin in 1854 and lived there the rest of his life. In 1854 he married Agnes Christina Alm. Proslavery but antisecessionist, he cautiously maintained neutrality during the Civil War. From 1858 to 1860 he participated as a meteorologist in the first Texas Geological and Agricultural Survey. In 1868 he helped organize the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Gethsemane Church in Austin. In 1866 the Swedish government named Palm vice consul for Norway and Sweden. As vice consul and as agent of the American Emigrant Company in the 1870s, he encouraged Swedish immigration to Central Texas and helped immigrants once they had arrived. In 1883 on one of Palm's two trips to Sweden, King Oscar II awarded him the Order of Wasa in appreciation of his service. Palm helped organize the Austin Archaeological Society. Palm is best known for his library of about 12,000 volumes, collected over a lifetime from all over the United States and Europe. He donated most of his books to the University of Texas in 1897. He died in Austin on June 22, 1899. Source
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles
PEASE, ELISHA MARSHALL (1812-1883) Buried in Sec 3, lot 102
Elisha Marshall Pease, governor of Texas, was born in 1812 in Connecticut. By early1835, he had made his way to Texas where he settled in Mina. Almost immediately Pease became embroiled in the developing Texas Revolution. Though at first he hoped for conciliation with Mexico, Pease soon changed his position and fought in the Battle of Gonzales. As part of the Provisional Government, he attended the convention that met at Washington-on-the-Brazos in 1836 and wrote part of the Constitution of the Republic of Texas. In 1836, he served as acting secretary of the treasury but declined President Sam Houston's offer of the postmaster generalship. After annexation, Pease represented Brazoria County in the first three legislatures. In 1853 he won the governorship and was reelected in 1855. His important achievements included his effort to persuade the legislature to establish a system of public education and a state university. He worked to encourage railroad construction in Texas and to put the state penitentiary on a self-supporting basis. In addition, he supervised the building campaign that led to the completion of the Governor's Mansion, the General Land Office building, the State Orphan's Home, and a new Capitol. Perhaps his most significant accomplishment was the settlement of the public debt of the state, by which he made available funds for the establishment of a hospital for the mentally ill and schools for the deaf and blind. In 1866, he lost a bid to become governor again in the first election of the Reconstruction era. Pease was appointed governor in 1867 after Governor James Throckmorton had been removed from office. He resigned the office two years later over conflict within Republican ranks as well as the Confederate majority in the state. In 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Pease to the collectorship of customs at Galveston. In the closing years of his life, Pease practiced law in Austin. He died in 1883 after an attack of apoplexy. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
PEASE, JULIA MARIA (1853-1918) Buried in Sec 3, lot 102
Julia Maria Pease, Austin clubwoman and art patron, the second daughter of Governor E. M. Pease, was born in 1853 in Brazoria, Texas. When her father was elected governor, the family moved to Austin and three years later were able to occupy the newly-completed Governor's Mansion. In 1859, Gov. Pease purchased an estate, Woodlawn, northwest of Austin and it was here that Julia lived most of her life. She entered Vassar in 1870. Julia's older sister died in 1882 and Julia and her mother reared her three children. For several years she lived in New York City where her sister's children were in school. When Governor Pease died in 1883, Julia became manager of his considerable estate. In Austin, Julia Pease was one of the first life members of the Texas State Historical Association, a sponsor of the Boy Scouts, as well as other literary, historical, cultural, and philanthropic organizations. Her interest in preserving the trees of Austin was well known. During the 1890s, she carried on an extensive correspondence with sculptor, Elisabet Ney. During the 1890s, she and her mother were patrons of Ney's. Four years after Ney's death, Julia met with other women to discuss the preservation of Ney's studio, "Formosa" and the collection of Ney's works. The Texas Fine Arts Association was the formal organization that resulted from that meeting and the group held a formal exhibition of the artist's works. Julia Pease died in 1918.Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
PEELER, ANDERSON JAMES (1838-1886) Buried in Sec 1, lot 577
James Anderson Peeler, lawyer and assistant attorney general of Texas, was born in 1838. He received his education in Florida and was admitted to the state bar before he was twenty-one. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he served under Gen. Braxton Bragg and later under Gen. Robert E. Lee. He was wounded and taken prisoner at the battle of Gettysburg and imprisoned. In 1873, he moved to Texas from Florida and established a prosperous legal practice in Austin. Two years later he was appointed an assistant attorney general by Gov. Richard Coke. In that capacity he conducted an investigation of the management of the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville and wrote the law authorizing the state to resume its control. He also drafted the state's forgery law in 1876. As a strong advocate of the Constitutional Convention of 1875, Peeler proselytized for his cause in a series of letters to the Galveston News under the pseudonym Publius. He returned to private practice until his death in 1886. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
PENICK, DANIEL ALLEN (1867-1964) Buried Sec 3, lot 887
Daniel Allen Penick, tennis coach and classical scholar, was born in 1867. The family moved from North Carolina to Texas in 1882 and in 1887 Penick entered the University of Texas, where he edited Texas University, a student magazine. He lettered in baseball and was a member of the track team. After teaching English and Latin, he entered Johns Hopkins University for graduate study in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit; he received a Ph.D. from that institution in 1898. He returned to the University of Texas in 1899 as an instructor and became a full professor in 1917. He served on the faculty continuously for fifty-six years until his retirement in 1955. Penick was best known in the state and nation as a brilliantly successful tennis coach. He was an unofficial tennis coach for the university team until 1940, at which time he was put on modified status as professor of classics and tennis coach. Penick served as president of the Southwest Conference for twelve years, 1923-1934, and was president of the Texas Tennis Association for more than fifty years. He was voted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1962. He became a pioneer in the campus ministry movement in 1899 and later served as an elder of University Presbyterian Church in Austin. He died on November 8, 1964. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
PENNYBACKER, ANNA J HARDWICKE (1861-1938) Buried in section 4, lot 467
Anna Pennybacker, clubwoman, woman suffrage advocate, author, and lecturer, was born on May 7, 1861, in Petersburg, Virginia. She graduated from the first class of Sam Houston Normal School in Huntsville. In 1884 she married native Texan Percy V. Pennybacker; they had three children who reached adulthood. Mrs. Pennybacker wrote and published A New History of Texas in 1888, and the textbook was a staple of Texas classrooms for forty years. In 1901 she presided over the Austin American History Club. She went on to serve as president of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs. She was a trustee of the Leslie Woman's Suffrage Committee as early as 1917. Mrs. Pennybacker was an associate member of the Democratic National Committee and through her work with the Democrats met Eleanor Roosevelt. Their fourteen-year friendship was based on mutual interests in the advancement of women, world peace, and the Democratic Party. In 1934 she was on the Texas Centennial Commission. In 1937 she became the first woman in the history of Houston to give the commencement speech to the city's combined high schools. At the time of her death in Austin, on February 4, 1938, Mrs. Pennybacker was highly regarded nationwide for her social conscience and reforms. Source
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online
PHILIPON, SIGMUND (1851-1904) Buried in Beth Israel I
Sigmund Philipon took his own life. A well know citizen of Austin shot and killed himself at his home on 307 West Eighth Street. Mr. Philipon had been in ill health for several years and brooding over that fact made him despondent, which was believed to have caused him to take his life. He suffered terribly, especially during the night and would become very restless. In the early hours of the morning of August 27, 1904, he left his bedroom and went down to an empty room in the basement. It was from here that a pistol shot rang out, awaking the other members of the household. Mrs. Philipon and their son, Benard, together went to investigate. They found Sigmund seated in a chair, dead, with a 38-caliber pistol lying in his lap. A bullet hole was found directly over the right temple, close to the eye. Mr. Philipon was 53 years of age and had been a resident of Austin for more than 30 years. Three years previous he had suffered a slight stroke of paralysis and had not fully recovered. This coupled with other aliments had caused him to become despondent. He left a wife and five children. SAC Tour
PINCKNEY, PAULINE (1889-1982) Buried Sec 1, lot 66
Pauline Pinckney, art historian, was born in Austin around 1889. She enrolled in the University of Texas in 1909. She began her career as an instructor of art at Texas Woman's College in Fort Worth and remained there until 1929 when she moved to Southern Methodist University. Other career positions included directing research for the Index of American Design in Washington D.C., and serving as a consultant on folk art for the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. In the course of her career, Pinckney increasingly turned her interests to research and writing art history. She published several articles in magazines and newspapers. In 1940, her first book, American Figureheads and Their Carvers, was published and is reputed to give the first survey of the art of decorative ship carving. Her best-known work, Painting in Texas: The Nineteenth Century, was published in 1967 for the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art. It was a compilation of biographical sketches of more than fifty Texas artists and was the first one of its type. The book won an award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Pinckney spent most of her later life in Austin where she died in 1982. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online
PORTER, ATHOL ESTES (1863-1897) Buried in Section 2, lot 809
Athol Estes was born in Tennessee on April 19, 1868 (according to her tombstone). In 1880 she lived with her mother and step-father peter G. Roach on San Jacinto Street. She married William Sidney Porter (O. Henry) on July 5, 1887 in the home of Rev. Smoot. . The couple had two children. In 1888 a son was born to the young couple, but he died a few hours after his birth. On September 30, 1889, a daughter, Margaret Worth Porter, was born. Athol was ill and her continued bad health caused Porter to return to Austin from his exile in Honduras. Athol died from tuberculosis on July 25, 1897. She was buried with other family members including her mother and step-father. Daughter Margaret is buried next to her father in North Carolina. SAC
PRESSLER, CHARLES WILLIAM (1823-1907) Section 1, Pressler lot
Charles William Pressler, Surveyor, Cartographer and chief draftsman of the TX General Land Office was born March 23, 1823 in Kindelbrueck, Saxony, Germany, but had resided in Eisleben prior to coming to America. He was among the pioneer citizens who came to Texas with the Fisher and Miller Colony, landing at Galveston, Feb. 1, 1856. He first settled in Fayette County, TX. He became connected with the General Land Office in 1846. Pressler's Garden, located at 1327 W. 6th, near the Treaty Oak, was built in connection with the Pressler Brewery. The Garden spread from 6th St. down to the river, with the Bandstand in the center. There was a boating house by the river, a rifle club, an alligator Pit, and the pavilion. You could play croquet, or just sit and swing. Pressler's brewery succumbed to competition with national beers like Budweiser, and the Garden fell prey to subdivision as the city grew westward. It closed as WWI began. Charles W. Pressler died at the age of 83, after a short illness following a stroke. For forty years he was connected with the General Land Office of Texas.
PRESSLER, KARL WILHELM (1823-1907) Buried in Sec 1, Pressler lot
Karl Wilhelm Pressler surveyor and cartographer, was born in 1823 in Prussia. In 1841, he entered surveyor's school . Dissatisfied with political and religious conditions, he left Prussia in 1845 as a member of the Adelsverein, the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas. He landed in Galveston the next year. His name became anglicized to Charles William. He moved to Austin where he was head of surveying expeditions. He returned to Germany and married before moving back to Austin in 1850. In 1851, he issued a map that was published in Germany and appeared in a descriptive book for the use of immigrants. He was one of the incorporators of the German Free School Association of Austin. He computed the area of Texas counties for DeCordova's book and in 1858, published his own map of Texas. He worked for the engineering department of the Confederacy before receiving his captaincy in 1864. During the summer of 1867, he was city engineer for Galveston and the same year, his revised the 1858 map of Texas. While employed by the U.S. Commissary service in 1870, he compiled a map showing a new route from Austin to Fort Yuma, Arizona. In 1879, he issued a map of Texas in three sizes. He is also credited with the preparation of thirty-eight Texas county maps. He retired from the General Land Office where he was chief draftsman from 1865 until 1899. He died in 1907 in Austin. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
PRIMER, SYLVESTER (1842-1912) Buried in Sec 1, lot 260
Sylvester Primer, Civil War soldier and scholar of Germanic languages, was born in 1842 in Wisconsin. During the Civil War, he participated in twenty-three battles and was wounded at Antietam. Primer earned a B.A. degree from Harvard in 1874 and then attended universities in Germany where he received a Ph.D. degree. He became professor of Germanic languages at the University of Texas in 1890-91. He was a Methodist and a democrat. He had memberships in the Modern Language Association of America and the Texas Academy of Science, and was an organizer of the Austin chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. He died in 1912. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
