Submitted by
Co. G,
4th Fla Infantry, CSA,
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.