Decimus et Ultimus Barziza
Decimus et Ultimus Barziza (also known as D.U. Barziza,
Early life
Barziza was born in Virginia in 1838. His father, Phillip Ignatius Barziza (originally Filippo Ignazio Barziza), was a
Barziza attended the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg from 1854-1857. He then moved to Texas and later in 1857 enrolled in the law school at Baylor University. He graduated in 1859 and established his law practice in Owensville.[6]
In 1861, the
After spending a year in hospital as a prisoner of war, he escaped by leaping out the window of a moving prisoner-transport train in the middle of the night, and walking to Upper Canada, where Confederate sympathizers relayed him to Nova Scotia, and then Bermuda; there, a blockade runner returned him to North Carolina.[3] From North Carolina, he was able to return to Texas, where he wrote his memoirs of captivity and of life as a fugitive, titled The Adventures of a Prisoner of War, and Life and Scenes in Federal Prisons: Johnson's Island, Fort Delaware, and Point Lookout, by an Escaped Prisoner of Hood's Texas Brigade.
Political career
Barziza represented
During the fourteenth legislature, he played a key role in the controversial transition of the Governorship from Edmund J. Davis to Richard Coke.[4]
During the fifteenth legislature he ran for Speaker of the House but lost by two votes.[6] At the end of the session, Barziza became embroiled in a procedural dispute regarding the Texas and Pacific Railway: in an effort to prevent a vote, he and 33 other representatives did not return from recess on July 31, 1876, so that there would not be a quorum.[4] In response, the speaker ordered that the absentee representatives be arrested and forcibly brought back to the legislature.[4] On August 2, 1876, Barziza resigned.[2]
Ancestry
Barziza was the great-grandson of scholar John Paradise.[4]
Legacy
Barziza Street, in the Houston neighborhood of Eastwood, is named for him.[4]
In 1964, the University of Texas Press re-published his memoirs.[3]
References
- ^ Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Texas (first Session of the fifteenth Legislature), published April 18, 1876 (via Google Books)
- ^ a b c Decimus Barziza, at the Legislative Reference Library of Texas; retrieved January 1, 2016
- ^ Parke Rouse; published May 9, 1993; retrieved January 1, 2016
- ^ Southwestern Historical Quarterly; vol. 66, no. 4 (July 1962 – April 1963); page 501-512
- ^ Italians and the American Civil War, by Valentino J. Belfiglio; in Italian Americana; Vol. 4, No. 2 (SPRING/SUMMER 1978), pp. 163-175
- ^ a b c BARZIZA, DECIMUS ET ULTIMUS at the Texas State Historical Association; by Jeffrey William Hunt; retrieved December 31, 2013
- ^ Sons of Garibaldi in Blue and Gray: Italians in the American Civil War, by Frank W. Alduino and David J. Coles; published 2007 by Cambria Press
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