Photo: John Carman taken abt. 1860
Age at Enlistment: 48
Length of Service: 1864-1865
State: Texas
Rank: Pvt
Unit: TX Infantry of Conscripts
Service Record: He was conscripted to serve at age 48 in June 1864; he owned a plantation and probably could not find a substitute; NFR
Survived War: Yes
Cemetery / Burial:
Information on Cemetery: SETTLER’S CEMETERY UNCOVERED DURING ROAD PROJECT 02/01/99 An early settler’s family cemetery has been discovered on the site of a $3.2 million road expansion project after a backhoe operator uncovered nails and discolored soil in the shape of two coffins. The state project to widen FM 1409, about 15 miles east of Houston, has been halted while officials unearth the remains and rebury them elsewhere. In the meantime, official notice has been printed in the local newspapers to alert any descendants of plantation owner John Carman that the Carman family cemetery has been found. The cemetery, located on a bluff near a bridge that crosses Old River on FM 1409, is supposed to include five graves with burials from 1850 to 1867, according to historical records. Evidence of two of those graves has been found and there are plans to search for a third, but two others are believed to have been covered when FM 1409 first was built, said Texas Department of Transportation engineer Ed Seymour. After being warned of the cemetery’s existence by a Chambers County historian, a backhoe operator spent three days digging before uncovering the nails and discolored soil around two graves. No markers or bones have been found. Plans call for an anthropologist and mortician to unearth the remains and rebury them in new coffins in another family cemetery nearby that belonged to Carman’s brother-in-law, Dr. Edward G. Hartman, a German immigrant and physician. Local historian Kevin Ladd said Carman was born in 1816 in Tennessee and had a plantation in Louisiana before settling in Old River. Records indicate he had nine children with his first wife and four with his second wife. After fighting in the Civil War, Carman relocated to Jasper and Newton counties. He died at age 59 and was buried in San Antonio in 1875, Ladd told the Houston Chronicle in Monday’s editions. The five people buried at the Chambers County site are his daughter, Mary Emily Carman, who drowned at age 4 in 1850; his maternal grandmother, Mary Hart, who died at age 80 in 1853; his son, John Robert Carman, who drowned at age 6 in 1855; his wife, Martha Carman, who died at age 46 in 1858; and a daughter with his second wife, Amanda-Mary Willy Carman, who died at the age of 7 months in 1867.
Soldier Info: Born in TN in 1816; Died in Bexar Co., TX in 1875
Relationship to Author: 2nd cousin 5x
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