On this day in 1858, doctor, fourth and final President of the Republic of Texas and Architect of Annexation, Anson Jones, died from a self inflicted gunshot wound, in the Capitol Hotel (now the Post Rice Lofts, formerly the Rice Hotel) in Houston, Texas at the age of 59. Born on 20 January 1798 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Before becoming president Jones served as Texas congressman, Minister to the United States under Sam Houston, Texas senator and Secretary of State under Houston. On 19 February 1846, a formal ceremony was held in Austin to bring Texas into the United States. Jones delivered a speech that he concluded by declaring, “The final act in this great drama is now performed. The Republic of Texas is no more.” In his final official act as president, Jones lowered the Texas flag from its pole; Houston, with tears in his eyes, stepped from the crowd to gather the flag in his arms. Jones had hoped to be selected as one of Texas’ two U.S. senators, however, Houston and Thomas Rusk were chosen. 
The Final Footprint – Jones is interred in the Jones Private Estate in Glenwood Cemetery in Houston. His grave is marked by an upright granite monument and a full ledger stone marker. The ledger is inscribed; In Memory of Anson Jones Last President of the late Republic of Texas Protector and Consuminator of her Annexation to the Confederacy of the North American States: First Grand Master and Implanter of Ancient York Masonry in Texas: The Revered of Senates and the Light of Cabinets! One of my offices in Houston overlooked the Glenwood Cemetery. Jones County and the county seat town of Anson were named after him. I have driven through Anson many times going back and forth betwee Austin and the Texas Panhandle. Other notable Final Footprints at Glenwood include; Maria Franklin Prentiss Langham Gable, Oveta Culp Hobby, William P. Hobby, Howard Hughes, Glenn McCarthy, and Gene Tierney.
On this day in 1923, writer Katherine Mansfield died from a pulmonary haemorrhage in Fontainebleau, Île-de-France, France, at the age of 34. Born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp on 14 October 1888 in Thorndon, Wellington, New Zealand. She wrote short stories and poetry under the pen name Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in 1917.
She was the daughter of a successful businessman who sent her away to school in England. At 18, her parents brought her back to New Zealand, and she found that she no longer had anything in common with her family.
She became one of the wildest bohemians in New Zealand. She had affairs with men and women, lived with Aborigines, and published scandalous stories. She moved back to London and lived in the bohemian scene there. she became a friend of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Lady Ottoline Morrell and others in the orbit of the Bloomsbury Group. At one point, she married a man she barely knew and left him before the wedding night was over because she couldn’t stand the pink bedspread.
She didn’t begin to write the stories that made her famous until her younger brother came to see her in 1915. They had long talks, reminiscing about growing up in New Zealand. He left that fall for World War I and was killed two months later. She was devastated by his death, and she wrote a series of short stories about her childhood, including “The Garden Party,” which many critics consider to be her masterpiece.
She said;
Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare fiddle?
If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools. With mushrooms it is so simple — you salt them well, put them aside and have patience. But with love, you have no sooner lighted on anything that bears even the remotest resemblance to it than you are perfectly certain it is not only a genuine specimen, but perhaps the only genuine mushroom ungathered.
“Love and Mushrooms,” journal entry (1917), published in More Extracts from a Journal, ed. J. Middleton Murry, in The Adelphi (1923), p. 1068
The Final Footprint
Mansfield suffered a fatal pulmonary haemorrhage after running up a flight of stairs. She died within the hour. Because Murry forgot to pay for her funeral expenses, she initially was buried in a pauper’s grave; when matters were rectified, her casket was moved to its current resting place at Cimetiere d’Avon, Avon, near Fontainebleau.
#RIP #OTD in 2019 actress (Medium Cool, High Plains Drifter, Where Have All The People Gone?, The Last Temptation of Christ, Honkytonk Man, Animal House) Verna Bloom died in Bar Harbor, Maine, from complications of dementia aged 80. Cremation
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