ASSOCIATION
In a quiet corner of Graceland Cemetery in Chicago lies an unmarked grave: the infant son of Texas Jack Junior. Born in Calcutta, India, in 1890 while his parents toured with a Wild West exhibition, the child — also named Texas Jack — died in Chicago two years later. No stone marks where he was laid to rest.
In September 2023, TJA member and Omohundro cousin Lee Zurligen visited Graceland and confirmed the burial: Block 15, Grave 448. That confirmation grounds this effort in documented fact and gives us a clear starting point for a permanent marker.
Texas Jack Junior was rescued as a child from a Comanche camp by Texas Jack Omohundro. Not knowing his birth name, the boy took the name of his rescuer and grew up to become an international performer, touring the United States, Australia, India, and South Africa — and giving a young Will Rogers his first job in show business. Junior died in South Africa in 1905. His son's grave in Chicago has faded from memory. Until now.
Chicago is a fitting place for this act of remembrance. It was there, in December 1872, that Texas Jack first took the stage with Buffalo Bill in The Scouts of the Prairie — and there that he first met Giuseppina Morlacchi. The city is a bookend: the beginning of the story, and now a place of quiet remembrance.
“The Texas Jack Association's spirit of marking graves as a remembrance is wonderful. It is an honour, and with deepest gratitude, that I endorse the marking of my great uncle's resting place with a memorial plaque."
— Mervyn Sutherland-Dadds, great-grandson of Texas Jack Junior
The Project
With the blessing of Texas Jack Junior's descendants, the Association will place a permanent etched-granite marker at Block 15, Grave 448.
Our goal is $3,000. This covers the etched granite stone, Graceland Cemetery's site preparation fee, and installation contingencies. Because the Texas Jack Association is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, every donation is tax-deductible, and contributions go entirely toward the memorial. Should we exceed our goal, remaining funds will be directed toward similar preservation and educational initiatives in alignment with the Association's mission.
Join Us in This Act of Remembrance
Help us mark the grave — and in doing so, mark our commitment to preserving the legacy of the American West.
A Stone for Texas Jack III ✮ Graceland Cemetery, Chicago
A project of the Texas Jack Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
All donations are tax-deductible.
In September of 1908, Buffalo Bill Cody brought his entire Wild West troupe to Evergreen Cemetery in Leadville, Colorado, to honor his closest friend and first stage partner, John B. "Texas Jack" Omohundro. Jack's grave had been marked for nearly three decades by a succession of simple wooden slabs. That evening, in the shadow of Mount Massive, Cody promised a permanent granite memorial — and the stone he commissioned, placed with John M. Burke and Johnny Baker, stands to this day.
More than a century later, historian Joe Dobrow followed that example, raising a long-overdue headstone in 2017 for Major John M. Burke himself — the publicist who first met Cody and Omohundro as Giuseppina Morlacchi's manager, and who died penniless and unmarked in 1917.
Marking graves has long been part of the Texas Jack story. Now the Texas Jack Association continues the tradition.