The tombstone of Alexander Watkins Terrell, a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army, erected by the state of Texas in the State Cemetery at Austin, is also listed as an official state historic marker.
General Alexander Watkins Terrell is buried on Republic Hill, Section C1, Row J, space 26.
From the Handbook of Texas Online: (
visit link)
"TERRELL, ALEXANDER WATKINS (1827–1912). Alexander Watkins Terrell, jurist, Civil War officer, and statesman, the son of Christopher Joseph and Susan (Kennerly) Terrell, was born in Patrick County, Virginia, probably on November 3, 1827. In 1831 his Quaker parents migrated to Booneville, Cooper County, Missouri, where Terrell grew to maturity. After graduating from the University of Missouri, he returned to Booneville to study law in the office of Judge Peyton R. Hayden. He was admitted to the bar in 1849 and practiced law in St. Joseph, Missouri, until 1852, when he moved to Austin, Texas. There he soon won a reputation as a courtroom protagonist of great astuteness and skill. Terrell was elected judge of the state's Second District in 1857.
Due to his office and his friendship with Governor Sam Houston, an ardent Unionist, he took no part in the secession movement. Upon the expiration of his judicial term in 1863, however, he joined the First Texas Cavalry Regiment, Arizona Brigade, of the Confederate Army, as a major. Within two years he was assigned the rank of brigadier general by Gen. E. Kirby Smith, commander of the Trans-Mississippi Department, but the war ended before his promotion was confirmed.
As commander of what came to be called "Terrell's Texas Cavalry Regiment," he participated with distinction in the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill during the campaign in northern Louisiana against Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks (see RED RIVER CAMPAIGN). When the war ended he fled to Mexico, where he briefly served Emperor Maximilian as a battalion commander.
Terrell returned to Texas in 1866 and resumed the practice of law in Houston, but the following year, disgusted with the turmoil of Reconstruction politics, he temporarily retreated to his plantation in Robertson County. Here, for four years, he experimented with scientific agriculture and studied.
In 1871 he and Judge A. S. Walker formed a partnership in Austin, and five years later he entered the Texas Senate, where he served four terms (1876–84). Later he served four years in the state House of Representatives (1891–92, 1903–05). During his years in the legislature, he authored several acts: a bill requiring jurors to be literate; the enabling legislation for the Railroad Commission; the Terrell Election Law (see ELECTION LAWS), which required candidates for public office to be nominated by direct primaries instead of by state or local conventions; and the measure which pledged the resources of three million acres in the Panhandle to the Chicago-based Capitol Syndicate to construct the Capitol.
Terrell's reputation as an advocate of the small farmer and consumer spread beyond the state. At the invitation of the University of Missouri, he returned to the campus of his alma mater in June 1885 to address a social problem of his choice. In a notable speech, he criticized private corporations that had too much power in politics and threatened independent labor. Two years later he failed to secure legislative nomination for a seat in the United States Senate.
In 1893 President Grover Cleveland appointed Terrell minister plenipotentiary to the Ottoman Empire, a post he held for four years. In 1897 he returned to Austin to reenter private practice and state politics. After Governor Thomas Campbell appointed Terrell a regent of the University of Texas in 1909, Terrell led the campaign to raise funds for a new library building and helped design it.
With his partner Judge Walker, Terrell reported and annotated thirteen volumes of Texas Supreme Court decisions (vols. 38–51); subsequently he alone reported eleven more volumes (52–62). He also published several articles in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and in 1912 served as president of the Texas State Historical Association. His memoir, From Texas to Mexico and the Court of Maximilian in 1865, appeared in 1933. Terrell was married three times. His first wife, Ann Elizabeth Boulding of Howard County, Missouri, bore him five children before her death in 1860.
By his second wife, Sarah D. Mitchell of Robertson County, Texas, who died in 1871, he had three children. He married his third wife, Mrs. Ann Eloise Holliday Anderson Jones, in 1883. Terrell died in Mineral Wells, Texas, on September 8 or 9, 1912, while on the way home from visiting family in Virginia. He was buried in the State Cemetery in Austin. Terrell County is named in his honor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Charles K. Chamberlain, Alexander Watkins Terrell: Citizen, Statesman (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1957). Buckley B. Paddock, History of Texas: Fort Worth and the Texas Northwest Edition (4 vols., Chicago: Lewis, 1922). John W. Spencer, Terrell's Texas Cavalry (Burnet, Texas: Eakin Press, 1982). Alexander Watkins Terrell Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin."
More about the colorful Civil War experience of General Terrell: (
visit link)
"ALEXANDER WATKINS TERRELL
1827 – 1912
Terrell was born on November 3, 1827, in Patrick County, Virginia. In 1832 after the death of his father, the family moved to Boonville, Missouri. Terrell attended the University of Missouri, studied law, and practiced in St. Joseph, Missouri from 1849 to 1852. In that year he moved to Austin, Texas, practicing law there and becoming a judge.
Terrell was a close friend of Gov. Sam Houston and both opposed secession and favored compromise. When Texas voted to leave the Union, Terrell went with them.
The first two years of the war, in between his judicial duties, he served as a volunteer aide and as major of the 1st Texas Cavalry. For most of 1862 he was a captain and volunteer aide-de-camp to Brigadier General Henry McCulloch, who commanded Texas troops stationed in Arkansas. Terrell declined a colonel’s commission in 1861 and was repeatedly recommended for an officer’s commission. Texas Gov. Francis Lubbock praised Terrell’s service in Arkansas "without pay or rank, which was declined by him several times" and stated that Terrell "had one of the finest minds in the state".
On March 31, 1863, Terrell was commissioned lieutenant colonel of a cavalry battalion that became the 34th Texas Cavalry with him chosen as colonel. In July, 1863, he was temporarily assigned to command the Northern Sub-District of Texas. The 34th spent the balance of 1863 in the District of Texas. In March, 1864, the 34th along with most troops in Texas were ordered to Louisiana to oppose the Union advance upon Shreveport. At the battle of Mansfield, April 8, 1864, Terrell’s troops attacked on the Union right.
At the Battles of Pleasant Hill the next day, his dismounted troopers seized a Union position, but could advance no further. He led Arthur Bagby’s veteran Cavalry brigade at the battle of Mansura on May 16. In September, 1864, Terrell commanded a brigade of three Texas Cavalry regiments forming the advance line of Confederate positions in west Louisiana. Brigadier Gen. Bagby returned and assumed command by the end of the year with Terrell returning to the 34th Texas.
In late April of 1865, the brigade was drawn back to Texas where the troops deserted their colors upon hearing of Lee’s surrender in Virginia. On May 14, 1865, Terrell disbanded his remaining troop in view of the cause being lost, but Gen Kirby Smith who was unaware of what had happened named him brigadier general on May 16, 1865. This left Terrell with a title, but no troops.
Terrell fled to Mexico becoming an officer in Maximilian’s army. He returned to Texas and had a varied post bellum career as lawyer, politician, cotton planter, and was elected four times to the state senate, serving from 1876 to 1883. He also served three terms in the state house, was elected reporter to the Texas Supreme Court, and was an ambassador to Turkey in the Cleveland administration. Gen. Terrell ran unsuccessfully for the U. S. Senate in 1887.
His efforts in behalf of the state university, both in the legislature and as regent of the board of trustees, earned him the title "Father of the University of Texas." A historian, Terrell became president of the Texas State Historical Association. He lived in Houston in 1865, Robertson County 1865 to 1871, and then Austin. Gen. Terrell died September 9, 1912, at Mineral Wells, Texas, and is buried in the State Cemetery in Austin."
See also Wikipedia: (
visit link)