Antioch Cemetery
Ratcliff, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This graveyard has long been associated with the Antioch Primitive Baptist Church, which was organized in 1859. The first marked grave, that of Mary J. Cramer, is dated 1860. Antioch Cemetery also contains unmarked burial sites, many of which are for transient sawmill workers who lived in the area while the 4C Mill was in operation at Ratcliff. The communities of Ratcliff, Hagerville, Kennard, and Stubblefield continue to use the cemetery for the burial of descendants of Antioch Church members. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This graveyard grew up with the Antioch Primitive Baptist Church, organized in 1859, its first marked grave dated the following year. Many of its unmarked burials belong to transient sawmill workers who lived nearby during the years the great 4C Mill operated at Ratcliff. Several neighboring communities still use the cemetery for the descendants of the church's original members.
Why it matters
The mingled graves of churchgoers and itinerant mill hands make the cemetery a record of the timber industry that briefly boomed across the East Texas Piney Woods.
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Related people
- · Mary J. Cramer
Related events
- · Operation of the 4C Mill
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pioneer Settlers of Coltharp
Houston County, TX
Settled in the 1850s, Coltharp grew into one of Houston County's notable early communities, with a schoolhouse, Masonic lodge, church, stores, and the farms of pioneer families like the Coltharps, Conners, and Greggs. Its economy shifted from cotton and corn to timber in the late 1880s. But when the railroad passed it by, residents drifted off to nearby sawmill towns, and by 1925 the community had faded.
Ratcliff
Ratcliff, TX
Around 1875 a thirty-two-wagon train of Georgia settlers reached this spot in the East Texas pineywoods, where Jess H. Ratcliff's sawmill drew still more families and a town took shape with stores, doctors, and a post office. Sold to lumber companies at the turn of the century, the mill grew into a vast operation that ran until 1917. When it closed, many residents drifted away, though the community hung on by turning to logging and other work.
Four C Mill
Houston County, TX
In 1899 R.M. Keith, agent for the Central Coal & Coke Company, began buying up the region's virgin pine, and by 1902 the great "Four C" mill was sawing 300,000 board feet a day. A railroad from Lufkin and a web of tram lines fed fresh-cut timber to the mill, and the company built houses, a store, and logging camps for its workers. Rivalry with the nearby town of Ratcliff turned bitter—a 16-foot fence between them was dynamited more than once—before the company exhausted its 120,000 acres and dismantled the mill in 1920.
Ratcliff CCC Camp
Houston County, TX
By the early 1930s decades of timber cutting — begun with J. H. Ratcliff's 1880s sawmill — had stripped Houston County's densest virgin forest. In 1933–34 the federal government built Civilian Conservation Corps Camp F-4-T on this site, and its workers set about repairing the damage: raising fire towers, cutting roads, turning an old mill pond into a public lake, and planting some three million trees. The Davy Crockett National Forest followed in 1935, and the camp closed in 1941.