DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about General John Slater Besser. Now, some men pass through a single state and leave a single mark. John Slater Besser was not that kind of man.
Born in Pennsylvania, he had already built himself a considerable life by the time Texas even entered the picture. He was a brigadier general, a legislator, and a judge, and all of that happened in Missouri. Then, in 1842, he packed up his family and pointed them south and west, toward Texas.
That's the kind of move that either breaks a man or proves something about him. For Besser, it seems to have proved something. He settled into Montgomery and Walker counties, and he did not slow down.
Public offices, one after another, before the Civil War and after it. Now here's a detail worth sitting with for a moment: he served as director and financial agent of the state penitentiary under not one, not two, but seven governors. Seven.
Bell, Henderson, Pease, Runnels, Houston, Clark, and Lubbock. Administrations came and went, politics shifted, the whole state cracked apart and put itself back together through a war, and through all of it, Besser held that post. Then he added Walker County Judge to the list, serving from 1878 to 1880.
As for his personal life, he married four times, and with his first wife, Julia Hampton, he had nine children. Nine. Pennsylvania to Missouri to Texas, seven governors, four marriages, nine children.
John Slater Besser lived like a man who figured time was not something to be wasted.
What the marker says
A native of Pennsylvania, John Slater Besser was a brigadier general, legislator, and judge in Missouri before moving his family to Texas in 1842. While living in Montgomery and Walker counties, Besser held a number of public offices before and after the Civil War. He served as director and financial agent of the state penitentiary under Governors Bell, Henderson, Pease, Runnels, Houston, Clark, and Lubbock, and was Walker County Judge from 1878 to 1880. Married four times, Besser was the father of nine children born to his first wife, Julia Hampton.