Freestone County, Texas
Obits and Death Notices


     [death notice of William Alexander Kirven]

A Memorial and Biographical History of Navarro, Henderson, Anderson, Limestone, 
Freestone and Leon Counties, Texas (published 1891), p. 905-906

[Bio of Oliver Carter Kirven contains the death notice of William Alexander Kirven]

After the death of his wife, William A. Kirven started, in August, 1856, on a 
visit to his mother in Alabama, intending to bring her and other relatives to his
home in Texas at Galveston. He took passage on the steamship Nautilus for New 
Orleans, but fate ordained that he should never again behold his mother in this 
existence: the vessel was wrecked and every soul on board of her, except the 
steward and one other, found their last, long sleep on the bottom of the turbulent 
Gulf of Mexico. The two little boys, doubly orphaned, Oliver Carter Kirven and 
his brother, Thomas L., were adopted by their material grandfather, Colonel 
Oliver Carter, and his wife, Mary Livingston Carter, and taken to their home and
their hearts.