Aaron Lowery

Trinity County, TX

After the Civil War, Alexander and Jane Smith brought their family from Alabama to settle the Nogalus Prairie community, and this ground became its burial place—by family tradition, first opened to bury a son, Nathan, who had been murdered, though grave dates from 1875 hint at even earlier interments. Over the following century, churches, families, and associations expanded and cared for the cemetery, which by 1992 held more than 380 graves, among them veterans of the Civil War, both World Wars, and Korea.

Groveton, TX

Georgia native Micajah Y. Bennett reached Texas by 1850, and family tradition holds that while clearing this hilltop he chose a spot beneath a great tree for his own grave. When he died in 1856, kin honored the wish, and the site grew into a burying ground first called Pleasant Hill, though local history traces burials here to 1843. Renamed for the Bennetts after his son donated the land to the farming community of Crecy, the cemetery now holds more than 1,500 graves, including pioneer settlers and military veterans.

Houston County, TX

A Tennessean who settled in East Texas in the 1820s, James English fought in the 1835 siege of Bexar and served as a militia commissioner during the Texas Revolution. For that service the Republic granted him land in Houston County, where he and his wife Mary Lucinda settled around 1842. Part of that property became this family cemetery.

Houston County, TX

Alfred M. Hallmark (1817-1880), born in Madison County, Alabama, came to Texas with his parents in 1834 and settled in present-day Houston County. He enlisted in the Texas Army on March 6, 1836, and fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto that April, later farming and helping run the post office in the Mustang Prairie community. In 1842 he married his cousin Sarah, with whom he raised twelve children.