Benjamin Simms Fitzgerald, educator, soldier, and businessman, was born in Johnston County, North Carolina, in 1828.  The son of Gisborn and Mary Fitzgerald, he spent much of his early life in Mississippi.  He was working as a sawyer at the time the 1850 census was taken in De Soto County. He moved to Texas in 1851, settling in the country about fifty miles from what is currently Waller County (but was then part of Grimes County) where he taught school for several months.  At the December 13, 1851, meeting of the Baylor University board of trustees, he was elected tutor in place of a Mr. Edwards who had resigned.  Between 1851 and 1854, he taught ancient languages, mathematics, and moral and intellectual philosophy.  At Independence, on January 19, 1854, he married Harriet ("Hattie") Louise Davis, sister-in-law of Horace Clark.  He resigned his position in 1854 and moved to Travis County where he conducted a country school near Austin until 1857 when he was persuaded to return to Baylor.

In 1859 and 1860, and again in 1863 and 1864, Fitzgerald was professor of languages and principal of the preparatory department.  He was one of seven faculty members of the Male and Female Departments who in mid-March 1861 signed a circular refuting rumors of animosity between the two departments.  At the March 12, 1862, meeting of the Baylor board of trustees, Fitzgerald proposed to sell his house and lot at Independence to the university for use as a boarding house for the Female Department.  The board declined the offer due to a desire not to incur any further large liabilities during the "pecuniary embarrassment of the country."

At Independence on March 22, 1862, Fitzgerald enlisted in Company I of the 5th Texas Infantry Regiment, Hood's Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia.  He became ill and on August 7, 1862, was left at Richmond, Virginia, where he was hospitalized on the 15th.  In November or December, he was furloughed to Texas where he remained until about May 1864.  While on furlough he was engaged as a professor of ancient languages in Baylor's Male Department and on February 5, 1864, was appointed collection agent for income on the endowments and the tuition of the Male Department.  However, on March 26, 1864, he was instructed at the request of the faculty not to collect the interest on the endowment fund for the time being.  By late spring 1864, he had returned to the army where on January 24, 1865, he was chosen chairman of a meeting of officers and men of the Texas Brigade which protested plans to consolidate it with one or more other brigades and passed resolutions affirming the brigade's continuing faith in the Confederacy.  At Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 10, 1865, he was paroled to return to his home in Texas.

In 1865 and 1866, Fitzgerald was a professor of mathematics and natural sciences at Baylor.  At the July 8, 1865, board of trustees meeting, during which he was elected professor of mathematics, it was ordered that the A.M. degree be conferred upon him.  His resignation was received and accepted on February 8, 1866.  In June 1866, Horace Clark, principal of the Female Department, was granted a twelve-months leave of absence, provided he secure the services of Fitzgerald and a sufficient number of teachers to keep the department operating.  During Clark's absence, the Female Department was made Baylor Female College, and Fitzgerald thus became its first president, serving in that capacity until Clark's return.

Fitzgerald moved to Houston in 1868 and in 1870 and 1871 was a professor of mathematics. He may have contemplated a return to Baylor, for a Baylor circular issued in August 1872 announced him as professor of mathematics and natural sciences.  By 1873 he was principal of the Houston Academy, a position he held until 1875.  During these years he engaged himself in a number of enterprises.  He was a dealer in religious and denominational books in 1873.  In 1874 he was associated with University Publishing Company's Houston agency and in 1874 and 1875 was an agent for Western Publishing and School Furnishing Company.  In connection with the American Journal of Education, Fitzgerald in 1874 was involved in a publishing venture called Texas Education.  He wrote Baylor's William Carey Crane on July 1, 1875, stating his desire to work for the railway postal service in Texas.

The 1877/'78 Houston city directory listed Fitzgerald as "emigration agent Houston and Texas Central Railway."  He was listed in the 1882/'83 directory as a bookkeeper for the M. T. Jones (lumber) Company.  By 1886, he owned his own lumber company and remained in the lumber business through the 1890's.  A week after his and his wife's golden wedding anniversary, Benjamin Simms Fitzgerald died at the residence of his daughter Mrs. James L. (Mary) Bates (1418 Rusk Avenue) at 10:48 a. m., January 27, 1904.  Obituaries state that interment was to have been in Hollywood Cemetery.  Fitzgerald is buried in Glenwood Cemetery.  He was a lifelong member of the Baptist Church.

Deed records indicate that Fitzgerald may have considered a move to Brazoria County.  He purchased 9.91 acres from W. Zychlinski in May of 1894; however, he sold it in August of the same year to W. J. Larkin.  In March of 1895, Fitzgerald purchased lot 23 block 9 in the town of Pearland.  In November 1913, B. S. Fitzgerald, Jr., Mrs. Frances Underwood, R. S. Collins and wife Carrie L. Collins quit claimed the lot to Mrs. James L. (Mary) Bates.  James Love Bates, who was the husband of Mary (Fitzgerald) Bates, was at one time the county treasurer of Brazoria County and was the son of Confederate Army Colonel Joseph Bates, commander of the regiment he raised for coastal defense, known as Bates's (13th Texas Infantry) Regiment. James and Mary Bates were the parents of a son named Fitzgerald Bates.

Overton Young, the son of Isaac N. and Mary (Austin) Young, was born in Lawrenceville, Gwinnett County, Georgia, on September 26, 1826. He was a student at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, from 1847 to 1849 but did not graduate. He studied law with the noted Georgia jurist Nathan L. Hutchins in Lawrenceville where he was admitted to the bar in 1850. Overton Young was the brother of Isaac M. Young (a twenty-year-old attorney) and William H. Young (an eighteen-year-old student at Franklin College) shown on the 1850 Gwinnett County census boarding in the home of Judge Hutchins. At the time the census was taken, twenty-three-year-old law student Overton Young was boarding in the nearby home of John F. Martin. In 1851 Overton Young began practicing law in Richmond, Fort Bend County, Texas. On May 13, 1852, he married Ann Elizabeth (Compton) Manadue, daughter of Alexander and Elizabeth Grace Compton and widow of Brazoria County, Texas, planter Warren Henry Manadue, Jr., who had died in March 1850. (Warren and Ann's four-year-old daughter Laura died in April 1850 and the census that year listed the twenty-two-year-old widow and daughters Harriet, age 3, and Lelia, age 2.) An 1853 listing of Texas lawyers indicates that Young was practicing law in Richmond and was a partner with Hiram B. Waller in the law firm of Waller & Young.

Following his marriage, Young shifted his occupation from attorney to planter, operating a sizeable sugar plantation near Sandy Point, Brazoria County, the census of 1860 indicating his acquisition of considerable wealth. By that time, Overton and Ann were the parents of four sons, Lee, Henry Cecil, Overton, Jr., and William. An additional son, Austin P., and three daughters, Anna, Fria, and Madora, were born over about the next decade.

On December 12, 1861, Young was commissioned colonel of the Twelfth Texas Infantry Regiment (erroneously referred to in some official and other records as the Eighth Texas Infantry Regiment). The Twelfth Texas Infantry was organized and mustered into Confederate service at Waco, Texas, during the spring of 1862. Its men were recruited in the cities and towns of Clarksville (Red River County), Cameron (Milam County), Hempstead (Waller County), Nacogdoches (Nacogdoches County), Fairfield (Freestone County), and Waco (McLennan County), and in the counties of Comanche, Grimes, and Milam. With other Texas infantry regiments, the Twelfth was ordered to Camp Nelson, near Austin in Prairie (but now Lonoke) County, Arkansas. There the regiment was brigaded, forming the First Brigade, with the Eighteenth (Col. William Beck Ochiltree's) and the Twenty-Second (Col. Richard B. Hubbard's) Texas Infantry regiments, the Thirteenth (Col. John Burnett's) Texas Cavalry (dismounted), and Captain Horace Haldeman's artillery battery. Young was made brigade commander but was succeeded by Lt. Col. Benjamin A. Philpott (of Freestone County). Young's First Brigade was combined with the Second (Col. Horace Randal's) Brigade and the Third (Col. George M. Flournoy's) Brigade to form the Texas Division, commanded by General Henry Eustace McCulloch. A fourth brigade of the division, commanded by Col. James Deshler was detached, soon after it was organized, for service at Arkansas Post. The Texas Division was officially known as McCulloch's Division and as the First Division, Second Corps, Army of the Trans-Mississippi Department. It became known as Walker's Texas Division, following the assumption of command by General John George Walker in November of 1862. The Texas Division, due to its ability to travel swiftly over many miles on foot earned for itself the nickname ?Walker's Greyhounds.? At Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in April 1863, Col. Overton Young was succeeded as commander of the First Brigade by Brigadier General James M. Hawes, whereupon Young again took command of the Twelfth Infantry Regiment. John C. Porter, in his memoirs (Early Days of Pittsburg, Texas, 1859-1874: Life of John C. Porter and Sketch of His Experiences in the Civil War) states that, "Here [Pine Bluff] Col. [William Beck] Ochiltree resigned. He made us a speech and left. Here also Gen. [James M.] Hawes took command of our Brigade, and we serenaded Col. Young, our former Commander."

Col. Young commanded his regiment with distinction during the Red River campaign and at the April 30, 1864, battle of Jenkins' Ferry (a crossing point on the Saline River in Louisiana) where he received a severe wound. Young's commanding officer at Jenkins' Ferry, Gen. Thomas N. Waul, commended Young for his actions during the engagement, writing "As at Mansfield and Pleasant Hill, he behaved courageously and cooly, managing his regiment with great skill and exhibiting much fitness for command." Waul further stated that the Twelfth Regiment would be deprived of one of its best officers if Young's wound prevented him from returning to his unit. Waul recommended Young for promotion. Young evidently did not return to his unit because he was president of Court Martial in Houston in 1864 and '65. In 1865, he was given a promotion to the rank of Brigadier General.

Following the war, Young returned to his Brazoria County plantation near Sandy Point where he continued his occupation as a planter. On September 8, 1877, Overton Young died in Galveston, Galveston County, Texas. His place of burial is not known, though his wife, Ann Young, is buried in Sandy Point Cemetery. Lee Young, Overton and Ann's eldest son, studied law in the early 1870?s in the Galveston law offices of George M. Flournoy. It should be noted that Overton Young usually signed himself simply using his first and last names. Various listings and sketches have shown him as having the middle initial "C" or "S," and one source listing military leaders of Texas refers to him as having "Stephen" as his middle name. An extensive search of Brazoria County, Texas, deed records gives no instances in which Overton Young signed his name using a middle name or initial.