Alum Creek Cemetery
Bastrop, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In the 1820s, several families answered Stephen F. Austin's call to settle this part of Texas, then a part of Mexico. The Cottle, Highsmith, Grimes, Craft, Ridgeway, White and Parks families were among those who arrived in this area from Missouri in 1828. Three years later, Sarah (Turner) Cottle, whose husband had died during the journey to Texas, received title to her land, situated along Alum Creek. After her death in 1843, the property was divided among her heirs. In 1857, Newton and Mary (Cottle) Alsup deeded land to the Alum Creek community for a cemetery and a Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Other denominations held services in the building, which was also used for a community school. The first marked graves in the cemetery date to 1875, and a number of burials are marked by fieldstones. In 1950, community members formed an association. It continues to maintain the cemetery, which remains a link to the settlers who arrived in the years before Texas independence and to the generations that have since been a part of the Alum Creek community. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2004
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1828, families answering Stephen F. Austin's call to colonize Mexican Texas arrived from Missouri and settled along Alum Creek. After the widowed Sarah Cottle received her land title in 1831, the community took shape, and in 1857 her descendants deeded ground for a cemetery and a Methodist church that also served as a school. The earliest marked graves date to 1875, with many older burials marked only by fieldstones.
Why it matters
Alum Creek Cemetery is a tangible link to Austin's colonists, the Anglo-American pioneers whose settlement of Mexican Texas set the stage for Texas independence.
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Related people
- · Stephen F. Austin
- · Sarah Cottle
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Claiborne Cemetery
Bastrop, TX
After Moses Gage bought land along Alum Creek in 1837, a small settlement known as Craft's Prairie grew up around his family in Bastrop County. When his son Sherly Gage died in 1850 he was buried on a rise above Little Alum Creek, and the Black, Rector, and Gage families—along with roughly thirty enslaved people in the site's southeast corner—filled the graveyard through the 1860s. Martha Jane Claiborne formally established the cemetery before her death in 1936, and a family association has cared for it since 1947.
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