Submitted by

Bettie Sarver

 

 

Capt. Thomas Jackson Rawls

Co. G, 4th Fla Infantry, CSA,

January 9,1838 – September 7, 1881

Buried in Beulah Cemetery Falls Co., Texas

     Capt. Thomas Jackson Rawls was born in Alachua Co. FL, was captured at the Battle of Missionary Ridge on Nov. 25, 1863, and spent the rest of the war in the infamous Johnson's Island POW camp. He was released at the end of the war and returned to Florida. He came to Texas, married, and was living in Falls Co. when he suffered a heat stroke while plowing and died. His widow, Mary Pinnina Chappell Rawls, and children moved to Bell Co. to be near her family. When she died in 1932, she was buried in Reed's Lake Cemetery.

 

     At the time we were looking for it, there was a complete screen of brush and cedar between the cemetery and the road. When you worked your way in, it was an island of green in the shade of the tall trees - granted there was green briar and a snake or two mixed in with the periwinkle, but it was beautiful. There is an iron fence around his grave, but the marker, a metal plaque bearing name and dates, on a cedar cross, disappeared after the bar of the cross rotted off and the plaque was hung on the fence. For a period of sixty-plus years, the grave was unmarked except by the iron fence and cedar post. After application by Bettie Sarver, Mary Sarver’s daughter-in-law, a CSA military marker was placed on his grave in 1994. (Mary Sarver was his granddaughter.) When the marker was placed by James T. Wilkey, the Adams Funeral Home, someone had cleaned up the cemetery. At that time, the remaining part of the cedar post was removed. After being without a CSA marker for so many years, through a governmental mix-up, the marker was duplicated and so there are two identical markers now.