MCCUTCHEON, JOE ALFRED (1880 ~ 1969). Joe Alfred McCutcheon was born in Tuscalusa, Alabama on March 3, 1880 to James and Sally Emily Martin McCutcheon. Joe was the youngest of eight children.
By the time he was two, he had lost his father and moved with his mother and siblings to Manor, Travis County, Texas. Not long after arriving in Texas, Joe's mother passed away and the eight children had to be separated. On May 10, 1900, Joe Rogers, who served as Chairman of the Texas State Board of Managers, took the nine-year-old orphan, Joe McCutcheon, to Rufus Y. King, the Superintendent of the Men's Confederate Home in Austin, Texas. Upon their arrival, Mr. Rogers said, "Here is a boy I want you to raise for me."
From that day on Joe A. McCutcheon made the Confederate Home for Men his own home. Growing up, Joe attended the Pease School. During the early 1900s, industry depended on "on the job training" with large manufacturing companies in metropolitan cities to learn professional trades. Following in this tradition, the Texas State Management Department of Eleemosynary Institutions sent certain employees to learn professional trades.
Joe was sent to St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and many other cities for qualifications to be an engineer. During his younger years, Joe took correspondence courses. Joe married Ethel Catharine Johnson of Austin, Texas in a ceremony in San Antonio, Texas on September 18, 1917. In 1918, Joe was given the responsibility of installing machinery in the San Antonio Texas State Hospital.
His next job returned him to the Confederate Home for Men, where he worked as Chief Engineer, Superintendent, Storekeeper, and Accountant. One qualification necessary to fill the position of Superintendent was to be a Confederate soldier or the son of a Confederate veteran. Joe met this requirement because his father, James McCutcheon, served in the Confederacy as a Corporal in Company I, 12th Regiment of the Alabama Cavalry and enlisted on December 9, 1861.
Under Joe's supervision, the Confederate Home grew as the numbers of Confederate Veterans increased. Joe's service to the State of Texas continued on after the Home was converted into a Senile Institution in 1943. Joe gave a lifetime of service to the home and died on October 18, 1969. Joe was buried in the Texas State Cemetery by a proclamation from Governor Price Daniel.
Information taken from Texas State Cemetery file materials. |
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