Biographies of Oakwood Cemetery Residents
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RABB, JOHN (1798-1861) Buried Sec 1, lot 154
John Rabb, early settler, was born in Pennsylvania in 1798 and moved with his family to Arkansas. He married Mary Crownover in 1821. He came to Texas in 1822 as one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists and lived for a time near San Felipe de Austin. He was given title to a sitio of land now part of Fort Bend and Austin counties in 1824. He finally settled on Rabb's Prairie in what is now Fayette County, where he and his father received a bonus of land for building a grist and saw mill. He went on an Indian campaign in 1835, and in 1840 was again in military service. Rabb gave land to the Methodist missionary society and to Rutersville College, the first college in Texas and precursor of Southwestern University. He also contributed the lumber for building the first Methodist church in San Antonio. Rabb later moved to the Hill Country and in 1860, he helped to settle Barton Springs. He died there in 1861. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
RABB, MARY CROWNOVER (1805-1882) Buried Sec 1, lot 154
Mary Crownover Rabb, early Texas pioneer and supporter of Methodism, was born in 1805. Her father took his family to the Arkansas Territory in 1820 and in 1821 she met and married John Rabb. In 1823 the young family began a new life in Stephen F. Austin's colony in Texas. They settled first on the Colorado River near the future site of LaGrange. They moved eastward to the Brazos River where John claimed a league of land . The family moved several times to better their conditions and to flee Karankawa and Tonkawa Indians. In 1823, they returned to Rabbs Prairie above LaGrange and began operating a mill but in 1836, they were forced to flee the Mexican army as it moved to quell the Texas Revolution. After the revolution, the Rabbs and their neighbors rebuilt their homes and farms. John and Mary accumulated a substantial amount of land in Fayette County. Their final move was to Barton Springs and they lived there in a log cabin until John's death in 1861. They built a sizeable herd of cattle marked with their Bow and Arrow brand. After John's death, Mary hired workmen to build a two story house of limestone near the old cabin. She continued to raise stock and to support the Methodist Church until her death in 1882. She is buried beside her husband. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
RABORN JR., GEORGE WASHINGTON (1923-1974) Buried Sec 3, lot 946 1/2
George Washington Rabon Jr. - sportswriter and movie critic, was born in Alabama in 1923. He attended the University of Texas, where he was Southwest Conference shot-put champion in 1946, AAU shot-put record holder for six years, and sports editor for the Daily Texan. He received a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1947 and wrote for several Texas newspapers. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950's and in 1959, wrote as a sportswriter and film reviewer. By 1968, he was a free-lance writer. He gained national recognition as a movie critic, reviewing more than 10,000 movies in his life. He had his own detailed rating system. Raborn delighted his friends and audiences with his gift for story-telling. He was the only Texas sportswriter to cover the Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, in 1952, and thereafter attended every Olympics, except Rome in 1960, until his death in 1974. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
RAINEY, FRANK (1836-1914) Buried in Sec 3, lot 865
Frank Rainey, physician, legislator, and government official, was born in 1836. During his boyhood, his family settled at Palestine, Texas, and at the outbreak of the Civil War, he was studying medicine in Houston County. He enlisted as a private in a Palestine company of the Confederate Army. Later, he served as assistant surgeon and surgeon for Gen. Thomas Green. At the end of the war, Rainey entered Tulane University where he graduated in medicine in 1869. He returned to Crockett, Texas, to enter the drug business and practice medicine. He represented Houston County in the legislature, and in 1874 was appointed by Gov. Richard Coke as
superintendent of the State Institution for the Blind. He served in this position for twenty-one years. For about ten years, Rainey was manager of the Home for Orphans and Widows of Deceased Masons at Fort Worth. He died in Austin in 1914. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
RAMSDELL, Susan Gertrude Griffith (1882-1964) Buried in Section 2, lot 406
Susan Griffith was born on July 13, 1882 in Alvin, Texas, a daughter of Almeron and Jessie Griffith, granddaughter of Angelina Dickinson Griffith and a great granddaughter of Susannah and Almeron Dickson. She married Charles W. Ramsdell. Mrs. Ramsdell died in Austin June 25, 1964. SAC member
RAMSEY, FRANK TAYLOR (1861-1932) Buried in Sec 2, lot 859
Frank Taylor Ramsey, horticulturist, was born in Burnet County, Texas in 1861. His father was a pioneer horticulturist. He attended a local country school there and at age sixteen became his father's partner in his nursery. By horseback and buckboard he scouted all Texas for native flora and introduced many choice wildings to cultivation. In 1894, the Ramseys moved their nursery to Austin. Ramsey was nicknamed "Fruit Tree" from his initials and discovered or originated several domestic fruit varieties. He was a contributing writer on horticulture and wrote his own verses in his nursery catalogs. This led to a booklet of poetry titled 'Tis Sweeter Still. He was a Mason and a member of the Austin Public School Board of Trustees. He died in 1932. Ramsey Park in Austin was named for him. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
RAYMOND, JAMES HERVEY (1817-1897) Buried Sec 1, lot 70
James Hervey Raymond, civil servant and soldier, was born in New York in 1817. He moved to Texas in 1839. He found employment in Robertson's colony as a surveyor. Raymond accompanied George W. Hill, then a member of the legislature, to Austin and upon Hill's recommendation, Raymond was appointed journal clerk of the House of Representatives. In 1841, President Mirabeau B. Lamar appointed him acting treasurer and six months later he was appointed clerk of the House, a position he maintained until annexation in 1845. In l842, Raymond participated in the repulse of both the Rafael Vasquez and Adrian Woll expeditions. In 1844 he was appointed treasurer of the Republic of Texas and the next year he was secretary of the committee that framed the Constitution of 1845. in 1846, he became Treasurer of the State of Texas where he served for twelve years. He entered the banking business in Austin in 1860. Raymond served as a commissioner supervising the construction of what is now Texas A&M University. He died in 1897. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
RECTOR, JOHN B (1837-1898) Buried in Sec 2, lot 787
John B. Rector, lawyer and judge, was born on November 24, 1837. He moved with his family in l847 to Bastrop County, where his father established a plantation. He graduated in 1859 from Yale College, was admitted to the Texas bar in 1860 and began the practice of law in Austin. He joined Terry's Texas Rangers early in the Civil War. After the war, he resumed the practice of law in Bastrop where he was elected district attorney. He held that position until his removal in 1867. Gov. Edmund Davis appointed him judge of the of the Thirty-first Judicial District and he served on the bench until adoption of the Constitution of 1876. He returned to the practice of law in Austin. Rector retired from his law practice but in 1892, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him judge of the Northern Judicial District of Texas. He held that position until his death in Austin on April 9, 1898. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
RED, REBECCA JANE KILGORE STUART (1827-1886) Buried in Sec 4, lot 84
Rebecca Stuart Red, pioneer teacher and school administrator, was born on October 2, 1827, in West Middletown, Pennsylvania. She attended the Steubenville Seminary in Ohio and graduated in 1849 with a teaching degree. After teaching in Kentucky, she moved to Texas in December 1852. The following February they opened Live Oak Female Seminary at Gay Hill. She taught there and served as principal from 1853 until 1875 and is thought to have been the first woman with a college degree to manage a college and teach college-level courses in Texas. She married Dr. George Clark Red on January 10, 1854, at Gay Hill. She bore five children, but one did not survive infancy. Except for a brief period during the Civil War years, she continued to teach at the seminary and serve as principal while rearing her family. In 1875 Dr. Red retired because of ill health and moved his family to Austin. Not wishing to interrupt Rebecca's teaching career, he built her a school in East Austin. The Stuart Female Seminary opened in January 1876. She remained principal until her death. Rebecca Red died on May 24, 1886, after a lingering illness. She was the first woman teacher to be nationally honored by the Texas branch of the Delta Kappa Gamma Society, an honorary organization of women in education. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
RED, WILLIAM STUART (1857-1933) Buried in Sec 4, lot 84
William Stuart Red, Presbyterian minister and historian, was born at Gay Hill, Washington County, Texas, on February 12, 1857. Red studied at Princeton Theological Seminary and then attended Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina in 1884-85. He enrolled in the Austin School of Theology in 1885; he graduated in 1886 and taught Hebrew there until 1888. Red was licensed to preach in 1884 and ordained a minister of the Presbyterian Church (Southern) in 1887. He was chaplain of Texas A&M from 1892 to 1894 and editor of the Texas Presbyterian from 1894 to 1897. He was a trustee of Austin College, which granted him an honorary doctorate in 1907. He mobilized his family to offer the land and buildings of Stuart Seminary, which they inherited from his mother, to the Texas Synod. The donation was accepted in 1899, and in 1902 the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary opened at the former girls' school. Red retired from pastoral duties in 1919 and moved to Austin to write history. The Texas Colonists and Religion explores the role of religion in the era of the Texas Revolution. Red's death in 1933 prevented the completion of his intended three-volume history of Texas Presbyterianism, but his widow and the Rev. Malcolm Purcell, a nephew, completed his work. Red married Rizpah Clark Bowers on January 2, 1896. He died on July 8, 1933. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
ROBBINS, JOHN W (1852-1910) Buried in Sec 4, lot 1072
John W. Robbins, legislator and state official, was born in Alabama on November 12, 1852. He married and they moved to Wilbarger County Texas in 1889. He represented Wilbarger County district in the House of the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth legislatures. He was elected state treasurer in 1898 and held the office for nine years. He organized the Stacy, Robbins, and Covert Insurance Agency in Austin in 1906. He died in Austin on March 15, 1910. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
ROBERTS, ORAN MILO (1815-1898) Buried in Sec 1, lot 302
Oran Milo Roberts, jurist and governor of Texas was born in South Carolina on July 9, 1815. He entered the University of Alabama in 1832. He was admitted to the bar in 1837. He moved to San Augustine, Texas, where he opened a successful law practice. He was appointed a district attorney by President Sam Houston in 1844. He also served as president of the board and lecturer in law for the University of San Augustine. In 1856, he won a position on the Texas Supreme Court. During this time Roberts became a spokesman for states' rights, and when the secessionist crisis appeared in 1860, he was at the center of the pro-Confederate faction. In 1861, he was unanimously elected president of the Secession Convention. Roberts led the passage of the ordinance removing Texas from the Union in 1861. He was chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court in 1864. He held this position until he was removed along with other state incumbents in 1865. During Reconstruction, he was elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1866 and also was elected United States senator. As he had anticipated, the new majority of Radical Republicans in Congress refused to seat the entire Texas delegation along with the delegations of other southern states. He eventually returned to Gilmer, Texas where he opened a law school in 1868. With the return of the Democrats to power in Austin in 1874, Roberts was first appointed, then elected, to the Texas Supreme Court. From 1878 to 1883, he was Governor of Texas on a platform of post-Reconstruction fiscal reform. A major part of this plan involved the sale of public lands to finance the debt and to fund public schools. Though ultimately successful in both reducing the debt and increasing the public school fund, the decreased government appropriations under Roberts halted public school growth for a time. The present Capitol in Austin was contracted during Roberts' terms and the cornerstone for the University of Texas was laid in 1882. In 1883, The University of Texas opened. Roberts was immediately appointed professor of law. He participated in forming the Texas State Historical Association and served as it's first president. He died at his home in Austin on May 19, 1898. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
ROBERTSON, JOSEPH WILLIAM (1809-1870) Buried in Sec 1, lot 322
Joseph William Robertson, physician, public official, and Texas Ranger, was born in 1809 in South Carolina, and was educated in Kentucky. Though married, he moved to Texas alone in 1836 and settled in Bastrop County before returning for his family the following year. He is said to have been the first physician in Bastrop County. In 1838, he served in the Texas Rangers for a short time. In 1839-40 he represented Bastrop County in the House of Representatives. He then moved to Austin where he established a small medical practice and a pharmaceutical business on Congress Avenue. He supplied the Texas Santa Fe expedition with its medical supplies. During the military build-up after the invasions of Rafael Vasquez and Adrian Woll in l842, Robertson volunteered as a surgeon. He was elected the fifth mayor of Austin in l843 and served for one year. In 1848, Robertson purchased the old French Legation building, and that area of Austin has since been known as Robertson Hill. He died on August 15, 1870. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
ROGAN, OCTAVIA FRY (1886-1957) Buried in Sec 3, lot 878
Octavia Fry Rogan, librarian, was born in Brownwood, Texas, on October 18, 1886. Octavia began her formal education at the University of Texas and earned a Bachelor of Library Science degree from the University of Illinois. In 1911, she began work at the Texas State Library in Austin. She was promoted to state librarian in 1925. Her began the library's extension program that funded small traveling libraries to tour rural areas of Texas that lacked access to a public library. She left the State Library to work for the Rosenberg Library in Galveston. She took a job with the Work Projects Administration as a district supervisor). Here, she taught untrained WPA recruits the rudiments of library science, all the while being highly involved as a member and officer in professional organizations. She died in Austin in 1973 at the age of 87. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
ROGERS, JOHN HARRIS (1863-1930) Sec 3, lot 957/1137 1/2
John Harris Rogers, was born October 19, 1863 in Guadalupe County, Texas. He was known as a modest, soft spoken man. Rogers became a Texas Ranger in 1882, rising to the rank of Captain in 1892 and serving until 1911, when he resigned his commission. Captain Rogers was one of several Rangers of that era who were considered religious men. Rogers, a Presbyterian elder, always carried his Bible with him and tithed to his Church. Captain Rogers was wounded twice in his law enforcement career, once in a gunfight with the Conner gang in East Texas and again at Laredo, Texas. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Rogers United States Marshal of the Western District of Texas, a position he held for eight years. In 1927 he served again as a Ranger Captain until his death on November 11, 1930 at Temple, Texas. Source
www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/
