Confederate Veterans in Bryan City Cemetery

The plaque names the prominent. The county narrative behind it adds the ordinary work veterans took up. Roland Chatham began manufacturing cotton gins in Bryan in 1869. Thomas Boyett served as city marshal from 1897 for nearly twenty years. Briscoe Baldwin became county school superintendent after his stage line, and the narrative says he died penniless in 1898, with schools and offices closing for his funeral. It also says the plaque's count of 161 veterans is a minimum, not a full census.

What the plaque says

Confederate Veterans in Bryan City Cemetery THE CIVIL WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH GREATLY AFFECTED BRAZOS COUNTY. WAR HALTED PROGRESS OF THE HOUSTON & TEXAS CENTRAL RAILWAY AND MADE MILLICAN A BOOMTOWN. AFTER THE WAR, THE RAILROAD CREATED A NEW TOWN, BRYAN CITY, AND BROUGHT A NEED FOR MEN AND WOMEN TO BUILD UP THE NEW SETTLEMENT. BRYAN CITY CEMETERY IS THE FINAL RESTING PLACE OF AT LEAST 161 CONFEDERATE VETERANS WHO SETTLED HERE TO HELP THE CITY DEVELOP. MANY OF THEIR STORIES INTERSECT IN LIFE AND IN DEATH. MILTON WALKER SIMS, SR., AIDE-DE-CAMP ON GEN. PAUL O. HEBERT'S STAFF, WAS LATER GIVEN COMMAND OF HIS OWN CAVALRY REGIMENT. COL. SIMS IS THE HIGHEST-RANKING CONFEDERATE OFFICER IN THE CEMETERY. GUY MORRISON BRYAN, JR. OPENED THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF BRYAN (1886) AND CREATED THE BRAZOS RIVER BRIDGE CO. (1896) TO ERECT THE FIRST STEEL BRIDGE OVER THE WATERWAY. MILTON PARKER, WHO FOUGHT AT SHILOH AND VICKSBURG, WAS ACTIVE IN COMMERCE, BANKING AND REAL ESTATE, ACQUIRING VAST LAND HOLDINGS IN THE BRAZOS RIVER BOTTOMS. WILLIAM EDWARD SAUNDERS FOUNDED THE CITY'S COMMERCIAL CLUB AND WAS THE LAST CONFEDERATE VETERAN BURIED HERE. BRISCOE GERARD BALDWIN, JR., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE FOR THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, CAME TO TEXAS TO OPERATE A STAGE LINE FROM SAN ANTONIO TO EL PASO, THEN WAS SUPERINTENDENT OF BRAZOS COUNTY SCHOOLS. HENRY BATES STODDARD WAS PRESIDENT OF TEXAS CATTLE RAISERS ASSOCIATION (1887) AND, AS BRIG. GEN. IN THE TEXAS VOLUNTEER GUARD, PRESIDED OVER CEREMONIES DEDICATING THE NEW CAPITOL BUILDING IN AUSTIN (1888). MANY CONFEDERATE VETERANS WERE EARLY FACULTY AND STAFF OF THE AGRICULTURAL & MECHANICAL COLLEGE OF TEXAS (LATER TEXAS A&M), INCLUDING WILLIAM ADAM BANKS, DR. DAVID P. SMYTHE, WILLIAM BRINGHURST AND BERNARD SBISA. THESE MEN WITH A COMMON BOND IN WAR BANDED TOGETHER FOR THE COMMON GOOD AND PROGRESS OF THEIR CITY AND STATE. 175 YEARS OF TEXAS INDEPENDENCE * 1836-2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 6.1 mi
  The library of the forty-first president on the Texas A&M campus, opened in 1997, where George and Barbara Bush and their daughter Robin are buried in a family plot on the grounds.
• Navasota — 26 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 27 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Calvert — 27 mi
  A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.

More markers nearby

• Bryan City Cemetery — steps away
• Charlie Eric Jenkins — steps away
• Isom Palmer — steps away
• Black Education in Bryan — 0.3 mi