F.S. Stockdale, the last governor of Confederate Texas, was born in Kentucky, admitted to the bar there, and came to Texas in the 1840s, where he bought and developed extensive coastal lands. A legal scholar and statesman, he was president of the Indianola Railroad in 1859 and later legal counsel for the Southern Pacific. He served in the Texas Senate from 1857 to 1861 and in the State Secession Convention, where he sat on the Committee on Federal Relations to draw up the Ordinance of Secession and on the committee to draft the constitution. In 1861 he was military aide to Gov. F.R. Lubbock, and in 1862-63 he was a major on the staff of Gen. T.H. Holmes, commander of the Confederate armies west of the Mississippi River. Elected lieutenant governor in 1863, he became governor on June 11, 1865, when Gov. Pendleton Murrah left Texas with other Southern leaders for Mexico in hope of making a later fight for independence, and he served as chief executive until Aug. 2, when A.J. Hamilton, military governor, deposed him. In 1870 he pioneered refrigerated shipping of Texas beef to help restore the state economy, aided moves to end Reconstruction, helped draw up the 1876 state constitution, died at his home in Cuero on Feb. 4, 1890, and was buried in Maple Grove Cemetery, Russellville, Ky.