Antioch Cemetery
Malakoff, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Located on a two-acre site purchased in 1883 by the trustees of the New Hope Methodist Episcopal Church from J. Thomas and Oma Henry, this cemetery has long served the Black farming community of Antioch. The earliest marked grave is that of Allen Delorah, who died in 1894. The cemetery contains numerous unmarked graves of early settlers and ministers. One of the earliest graveyards in this part of Henderson County, Antioch Cemetery is the burial site for many of the area's pioneers. (1984)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On a two-acre tract bought in 1883 by the trustees of the New Hope Methodist Episcopal Church, this cemetery has long served the Black farming community of Antioch. Its earliest marked grave, that of Allen Delorah, dates to 1894, and the ground holds numerous unmarked graves of early settlers and ministers. It stands as one of the oldest graveyards in this part of Henderson County.
Why it matters
Antioch Cemetery preserves the history of a self-sustaining African American farming community in the decades after emancipation, a heritage often left unrecorded elsewhere.
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Related people
- · Allen Delorah
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church on Walker Street
Malakoff, TX
In 1894 the Rev. Monroe F. Jackson arrived in Malakoff and founded a congregation he named Good Hope Baptist Church, with trustees acquiring land at this site the same year. Over the decades the fellowship helped seed several other churches across western Henderson County, including Antioch and Macedonia. After a 1939 merger with Mt. Olive Baptist Church, the congregation took its present name.
St. Paul Industrial Training School
Caney City, TX
In 1926 two young Alabama-born educators—James William Smothers, trained at Hampton and Prairie View, and Alice Wingfield, a Tuskegee graduate—came to Henderson County's self-sufficient St. Paul community to run an industrial training school. They arrived to a single schoolhouse of twelve pupils; children soon came from across Texas, and even after a 1942 tornado leveled the campus the couple rebuilt it in brick. Alongside academics, students learned scientific agriculture, home economics, blacksmithing, sewing, typing, and music before the school closed in the 1980s.
William Richardson
Athens, TX
Born in South Carolina in 1805, William Richardson moved to Alabama, married Mary "Polly" Kilpatrick, and in 1855 brought his large family, his brothers' families, and the people he enslaved to Texas by wagon train, arriving at this location. He became a successful planter, registered his "Three Circles" cattle brand, and helped lay out an early road between Athens and Kaufman that Highway 175 still roughly follows. The enslaved people he brought all took the Richardson name; many stayed on after emancipation and, with their descendants, founded the nearby Sand Flat community.
Mt. Providence Baptist Church
Athens, TX
Mt. Providence Baptist Church took shape in 1888, its earliest congregants worshipping in borrowed churches, homes, and brush arbors before trustees bought land in 1890. Its classrooms did double duty for pupils of the Blackshear School, and baptisms were held in a pool near the old Harbison-Walker brickyard. After World War II the congregation bought a surplus military barracks from Camp Fannin and hauled it in as their new sanctuary, later bricking it over and adding an indoor baptismal pool. The church remains a hub of community aid in Athens.