First burials in Farquhar Cemetery

November 09, 2022 - 00:00

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The first known burial in the Farquhar Cemetery is that of Colonel James R. Cooke. In late March of 1843, Cook was shot dead by a close friend in an argument over a horse on the street of Washington on the Brazos. Cooke had come to raw Texas in the early 1830s, fought at San Jacinto as a first lieutenant in Captain Henry Wax Karnes’s cavalry. In August 1842, he received a commission from Sam Houston to recruit volunteers in Washington County for the Somervell Expedition, serving as a colonel in the offensive at Laredo and Guerrero that December. Though disagreeing with Somervell’s decision not to cross the Rio Grande in pursuit of the Mexicans, Cooke did return to San Antonio before disbanding.

In 1837 he had married Sarah Lott, daughter of John Lott of Washington, and settled on Doe Run near Farquhar’s plantation. They had two sons. A photo that appears by Cooke’s gravestone on the Findagrave website is that of Pam Puryear of Navasota. She reportedly, sometime early, working on family ancestry found this graveyard and Cooke’s monument tipped over onto the ground. She arranged to have it remounted. I believe there is a familial connection to Cooke through his wife, Sarah Lott. The large gravestone today still stands.

Next there is the burial of General Tilghman Ashurst Howard. Howard was born in South Carolina, became an attorney practicing first in Tennessee where he met Sam Houston, then in Indiana. There he became District Attorney for Indiana, then a member of the 26^th Congress, to then run unsuccessfully for governor in 1840. In the early summer of 1844, as the annexation of Texas to the Union became imminent, President John Tyler appointed Howard as Charge D’affaires to the Republic of Texas to address the Indian problems. He left Indiana July 4, of that year, arriving in Galveston Aug. 1.

Howard made his way to Washington on the Brazos and was staying in the Farquhar home when he became ill and died in the home of a near stranger on Aug.16. For three years he lay in the Farquhar cemetery marked by a distinctive gravestone that still stands. In 1847, when his former law partner, James Whitcomb, now governor of Indiana, had his body returned to Indiana.

R. M. Whitman’s burial grave marker carries a much later date of 1873 as it leans against a tree in the Farquhar cemetery. Whitman, born in New Hampshire in the fall of 1804, studied medicine in the “Thompsonian” order to begin practice in 1829 at Huntsville, Alabama. He next purchased a plantation in Bedford County, Tennessee to add planter and stock trader to his career.

Whitman was a late comer to the area arriving in 1868 to join his sons James and Edward, who had come shortly after the Civil War setting up a mercantile agricultural supply business in Washington County at a spot near Farquhar’s plantation establishing the small community of Whitman.

Whitman, himself was a seemingly wealthy jack of all trades person to become known as a “farmer, medical practitioner, preacher of the gospel, and real estate and stock trader.” He had lost two wives and married a third. Over his lifetime, he had followed the Western migration through Virginia, Alabama and then Tennessee. Whitman obviously became friends of Farquhar before he died March 26, 1873. At one time, when Washington County voted Brenham as its county seat, the village of Whitman was in contention. It no longer exists.

Whitman died March 26, 1873. His gravestone is embellished with the image of a tree in full leaf.