Confederate Veterans in Bryan City Cemetery
Bryan, Brazos County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Civil War halted the Houston & Texas Central Railway and turned nearby Millican into a boomtown, the railroad afterward created Bryan City—and at least 161 Confederate veterans settled there to help build it. Buried in the Bryan City Cemetery, these men became bankers, ranchers, school superintendents, and early faculty of the Agricultural & Mechanical College of Texas, binding wartime comrades into the civic life of a new town.
Why it matters
The cemetery shows how the defeated Confederacy's veterans reshaped themselves into the merchants, educators, and builders of a rising post-war Texas.
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Related people
- · Milton Walker Sims, Sr.
- · Guy Morrison Bryan, Jr.
- · Briscoe Gerard Baldwin, Jr.
- · Henry Bates Stoddard
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Brazos County Confederate Commissioners Court
Bryan, TX
During the Civil War, the Brazos County Commissioners Court became an engine of the Confederate home front, outfitting local men with horses, clothing, and equipment and levying war taxes while exempting soldiers' estates. It surveyed the needs of soldiers' families and appropriated funds for their care, and it issued its own small-denomination county warrants that circulated as legal tender. The court also procured scarce goods—powder, lead, medicine, shoes, cotton cards—for resale to a blockaded citizenry.
Town Named for William Joel Bryan
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William Joel Bryan came to Texas in 1831 as a grandson of Moses Austin and nephew of Stephen F. Austin, placing him at the center of the family that founded Anglo Texas. He fought in the 1835 Battle of Bexar during the Texas Revolution and, upon Stephen F. Austin's death in 1836, inherited leadership of the influential Austin-Bryan clan. A lifelong planter near Peach Point, he later donated the land for the town of Bryan, which became the seat of Brazos County in 1866.
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