1896 :: Confederate Veterans Reunion at Rockdale

Galveston Daily News
Galveston, Texas
24 July 1896

Confederate Veterans. 
Reunion at Rockdale. 
Selecting a Burying Ground. 

Rockdale, Milam Co., Tex., July 22.-- Second day's programme Camp Ben McCulloch No. 29, United Confederate Veterans opening this morning. 

The camp was called to order at the stand at 10:30 a.m. Music by the choir. Colonel W.B. Woody, who attended the reunion at Richmand as a delegate from this camp, was called upon for his report. His report was received and adopted. The camp then went into the annual election of officers, which resulted as follows:

Commanding officer, Colonel N.H. Tracy; adjutant major, J.B. Moore; treasurer, Captain J.B. Wolf. Rev. James Peeler had heretofore been elected permanent chaplain, which was ratified.

Adjourned for dinner.

At 2 p.m. the camp assembled again for business. It was proposed that the camp buy two acres of ground on the opposite side of the river, adjoining the plot on which the camp is situated, which belongs to the city of Rockdale, and build a pavilion and make it a permanent meeting place for the camp. In furtherance of this plan the camp elected Captain J.W. Perry, Messrs. D.S. Harriss, J.H. Sparkman and W.M. Gill as trustees to consummate the purchase and receive the deed to the property.

Major J.B. Moore and Captain J.B. Wolf were appointed to receive the deed from the cemetery association at Cameron to a plot of ground donated to the camp by the ladies of Cameron for a burying ground for indigent ex-confederate soldiers.

Captain J.J. Irwin, R.C. Turnham, D.S. Harriss, H.E. Joiner, Captain L.L. Lee, M.M. Caldwell, Captain G.W. Adams and B.V. Arnold were appointed as a finance committee to solicit funds to be used for the different interests of the camp, especially for the burial of indigent ex-confederate soldiers, it being one of the principles of this camp that an ex-confederate shall never be buried as a pauper.

The business interest of the camp was then adjourned, to meet on the same grounds on July 21, 1897.

1984 :: Joinerburgers

The Rockdale Reporter, July 26, 1984. Joinerburgers: what was the recipe? by Bill Cooke. Happy Days (circa 1950's) had Arnold's, the hang-out hamburger place. Rockdale had one, too, in the late 1940's and through 1952. It was Joiner's Cafe, although it was more commonly called Joinerburger's. . . . Ira Joiner was the proprietor of Joiner's Cafe in a small frame building that butted right up against what is now (1984) Richard Thrasher's downtown Promenade mall. Through the years that big corner building housed a car dealership and later a hardware store, with Joiner's Cafe securely affixed to its west side. Mr. Joiner served a full lineup of hamburgers and other short orders but his cafe became best known in these parts for his Joinerburger which he produced with his "secret" recipe. For Rockdale teenagers, Joiner's was the hang-out because it was the only such place. We're talking pre-Dairy Queen, folks. Joiner's was, pure and simple, an Arnold's-before-its-time. . . . Ira Joiner sold his cafe to Red Smith in 1952 and moved to Florida for a brief retirement. Then he opened another Joiner's Cafe . . . in Lampasas (Texas). After several successful years in that city, he sold out, retired and moved back to Rockdale, only to die within a month, according to his brother, Quintus W. Joiner, and sister, Alice Fleming, both of Rockdale. . . . I can still almost taste those Joinerburgers. Wonder what was in that recipe?