William Polk Harrison, quite the colorful and dashing figure, stands very near the grave of Stephen F. Austin at the Texas state cemetery at 10th and Navasota in East Austin.
That historic marker reads as follows:
"WILLIAM P. HARDEMAN
An Indian fighter, Frontiersman, Explorer. Veteran of Texas Revolution, Cordova Rebellion, and the Mexican War. Entered Confederate Army in 1861 as Capt. 4th Tex. Mounted volunteers. Served 1862, New Mexico campaign to secure gold and access to Pacific. Role in brilliant cavalry charge, Battle of Val Verde, made him Colonel. Led brigade, Red River campaign, to stop invasion of Texas. Promoted Brigadier General 1865. First president, State Confederate Home. Affectionately known as “Old Gotch.” An Aggie, Fighter, and Southern Gentleman.
Erected by the State of Texas 1963"
For more on the Texas Confederate home see the Handbook of Texas online article here: (
visit link)
"TEXAS CONFEDERATE HOME. The Texas Confederate Home began as a project of the John B. Hood Camp of United Confederate Veterans, which obtained a charter from the state on November 28, 1884. The camp's main purpose was to establish a home for disabled and indigent Confederate veterans. The Albert Sidney Johnston Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy cooperated in raising funds for the home. In 1886 the camp purchased sixteen acres of land at 1600 West Sixth Street in Austin from John B. and Mary Armstrong, and the home opened on November 1, 1886. In December of that year the UDC held a "Grand Gift Concert and Lottery," with prizes donated by the public, and raised over $10,800 to support the home. Operating funds continued to come from public contributions until 1891, when the state assumed control and support, and the name officially became Texas Confederate Home.
The John B. Hood Camp deeded the property to the state on March 6, 1891. Management was the responsibility of a board of managers made up of five Confederate veterans appointed by the governor and a superintendent, also a Confederate veteran, who was selected by the board. The complex on twenty-six acres of land on West Sixth Street had several buildings, including the large administration building and living quarters, a brick hospital, and private cottages. On January 1, 1920, the legislature established the Board of Control, abolished the board of managers for the Confederate Home, and transferred the responsibility of appointing a superintendent to the new agency. In 1949 the Fifty-first Legislature transferred control and management of the Confederate Home to the Board for Texas State Hospitals and Special Schools. However, the Board of Control continued to handle purchases for the institution. The Board for Texas State Hospitals and Special Schools administered the home until it was closed. During its first two years of operation under the Hood Camp, 113 veterans were admitted to the home, and from 1887 to 1953 more than 2,000 former Confederates were housed in the facility. In 1929 there were 312 residents, but by 1936 the number had dropped to eighty.
As more of the veterans died, the number of residents continued to decrease; there were thirty-eight in 1938. By that time the average age of the men was ninety-three. In 1943 only six Confederates were still in residence. Thomas Riddle, the last veteran, died in 1954 at the age of 108. By act of the Forty-eighth Legislature, "senile" mental patients from other state institutions were transferred to the Confederate Home. After 1939 disabled veterans of the Spanish American War and World War I, as well as their spouses, were admitted. In 1963 the remaining patients were sent to Kerrville State Hospital, and the Austin facility was transferred to the Austin State Hospital as an annex. The buildings on Sixth Street were razed in 1970 to make room for University of Texas married students' housing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Hans Peter Nielsen Gammel, comp., Laws of Texas, 1822–1897 (10 vols., Austin: Gammel, 1898). C. W. Raines, Year Book for Texas (2 vols., Austin: Gammel-Statesman, 1902, 1903). Texas State Board of Control, Eighth Biennial Report (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1936). Texas State Board of Control, Ninth Annual Report (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1938)."
More on William Polk Hardeman (including some interesting unreconstructed Confederate leanings left off the state historic marker) can be found also in the handbook of Texas online: (
visit link)
"HARDEMAN, WILLIAM POLK (1816–1898). William P. (Gotch) Hardeman, Texas Ranger, soldier, and public servant, was born on November 4, 1816, in Williamson County, Tennessee. His father, Thomas Jones Hardeman, was an officer in the War of 1812 and a prominent Texas political figure. Mary (Polk) Hardeman, his mother, was an aunt of James K. Polk. Hardeman attended the University of Nashville and in the fall of 1835 moved to Matagorda County, Texas, with his father and a large group of Hardeman family members.
Immediately after his arrival in Texas he joined the resistance movement against Mexico. He participated in the battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835. Shortly afterward he assisted his uncle, Bailey Hardeman, and others in bringing a cannon from Dimmitt's Landing to San Antonio for use against Mexican forces under Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos. Hardeman and his brother Thomas Monroe Hardeman accompanied a small relief column to the Alamo, but the garrison had fallen to Mexican forces shortly before their arrival. The Hardemans abandoned their exhausted horses and after a narrow escape on foot suffered severe hunger. Gotch was then sent by his uncle Bailey on an errand to summon militia. An illness resulting from exposure on this assignment probably kept him from action in the decisive battle of San Jacinto. He subsequently served for a number of years in the Texas Rangers. He accompanied Erastus (Deaf) Smith for four months of ranger duty on the frontier in 1837 and fought in Col. John Henry Moore's ranger force against the Comanches at Wallace's Creek on February 22, 1839. Three months later he participated in the Córdova campaign in East Texas, an aftermath of the Córdova Rebellion.
Hardeman fought the Comanches in the battle of Plum Creek on August 11, 1840. In February 1842 he engaged in harassment of invading Mexican forces led by Gen. Rafael Vásquez. Nine months later he joined the Somervell expedition against Mexico. After the annexation of Texas by the United States, Hardeman served as a member of Benjamin McCulloch's Guadalupe valley rangers in Gen. Zachary Taylor's army. He engaged in the exploration of the Linares, China, and Cerralvo-San Juan River routes to the Mexican stronghold of Monterrey and scouted ahead of Taylor's main invading force. Hardeman's last Mexican War engagements were in the scouting expedition to Encarnación and the ensuing battle of Buena Vista. Subsequently he went to his Guadalupe County plantation, where he farmed with as many as thirty-one slaves.
Fifteen years later he returned to military life. After voting for secession in 1861 as a member of the Secession Convention, he raised a force from Guadalupe and Caldwell counties, forming the 800-man Company A of Col. Spruce M. Baird's Fourth Texas Cavalry Regiment, part of Henry H. Sibley's New Mexico Brigade. He fought and was twice wounded at Valverde, where he participated in the successful charge against Alexander McRae's battery of artillery (the Valverde Battery), after which he was promoted to regimental major. In April 1862 Hardeman commanded the successful defense of the Confederate supply depot at Albuquerque against Col. Edward R. S. Canby's much larger force and was credited with saving the artillery. After the defeat of Sibley's column, Hardeman was reassigned to the Gulf theater of war. He participated in Gen. Richard Taylor's Red River campaign, which turned back the numerically superior army of Union general Nathaniel P. Banks, and eventually rose to the command of the Fourth Texas Cavalry. After successful campaigns at Yellow Bayou and Franklin, Hardeman was promoted to brigadier general.
After the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, Hardeman, like his cousin Peter Hardeman and thousands of other Confederates, became an exile. He joined a company of fifteen high-ranking officers, eluded Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, and escaped to Mexico. There he served briefly as a battalion commander in Maximilian's army and became a settlement agent for a Confederate colony near Guadalajara.
In 1866 he returned to Texas, where he served as inspector of railroads, superintendent of public buildings and grounds, and superintendent of the Texas Confederate Home in Austin. He also helped avert bloodshed in the Coke-Davis controversy of 1873–74 and was one of the founders of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University). Hardeman was twice married, first to his uncle Bailey's widow Rebecca, and after her death to Sarah Hamilton. He had two children by the first marriage and five by the second. He died of Bright's disease on April 8, 1898, and was buried at the State Cemetery in Austin.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas (Austin: Daniell, 1880; reprod., Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1978). Nicholas P. Hardeman, Wilderness Calling: The Hardeman Family in the American Westward Movement, 1750–1900 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977)."