Atoka Cemetery
Novice, Coleman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Settlement of this area began in the 1850s with the establishment of Camp Colorado, a United States cavalry outpost. At the outbreak of the Civil War the camp was occupied by Texas State Troops and Texas Ranger units. The existence of the camp spurred permanent settlement in the area, and many families moved here from the southern United States after the Civil War. The settlers established farms and ranches, and the Atoka community included a general store operated by D.A. Parker and S.N. Edenborough, a combination church/school building, and a cotton gin built by D.A. Parker. This cemetery was established in 1880 on land deeded by C.E. Bush. Among the early pioneers buried here are the Rev. Hugh Martin Childress, Sr., a former Texas Ranger and Republic of Texas soldier; his son, Elisha Childress, who served as the first Coleman County sheriff; veterans of the Civil War; and several workers killed in an explosion that occurred during the construction of a Santa Fe Railroad bridge across Jim Ned Creek in 1910. The cemetery, which is maintained by an association of descendants of those buried here, is one of the few physical reminders of the Atoka community and its pioneer settlers. (1996)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlement of this Coleman County area began in the 1850s around Camp Colorado, a U.S. cavalry outpost held by Texas State Troops and Rangers during the Civil War. After the war, families from the South established farms and ranches and the Atoka community grew up with a store, a church-school, and a cotton gin. The 1880 cemetery holds early pioneers including former Texas Ranger and Republic of Texas soldier Rev. Hugh Martin Childress, his son the county's first sheriff, Civil War veterans, and workers killed in a 1910 railroad-bridge explosion.
Why it matters
Atoka Cemetery gathers into one place the whole sweep of West Texas frontier history—army outpost, Civil War, ranching settlement, and railroad building—now the last physical trace of a vanished community.
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Related people
- · Hugh Martin Childress, Sr.
- · Elisha Childress
- · D.A. Parker
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Content Cemetery
Crews, TX
Tucked into the West Texas ranch country of Runnels County, Content Cemetery opened in 1883 with the burial of a cowboy named James Hanna, a fitting first for a landscape then given over to cattle and open range. Among those who followed was his kinsman John A. Hanna, a Confederate veteran of the 8th Texas Cavalry in the Army of Tennessee, laid to rest in 1889 alongside siblings, in-laws, and infant grandchildren. The dozen 19th-century graves gather a single frontier family across a generation of hard living.
Counts Cemetery
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Counts Cemetery grew from the rural community once known as "Content" on the West Texas frontier, its earliest recorded burial a child laid to rest in 1880. In 1884 more than a dozen local men purchased four acres for a public burial ground, later named for R. F. Counts, whose family owned the surrounding land, with more acreage added in the 1930s. Among those interred are an unknown number of Confederate Civil War veterans who had come west to build new lives in Runnels County.
Coleman County
Coleman, TX
Coleman County occupies land where Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa people once camped and kept lookouts from its hills. White settlement began in 1857 around Camp Colorado, a U.S. 2nd Cavalry post on Jim Ned Creek; the county was created in 1858 and named for Robert M. Coleman, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and San Jacinto veteran. In 1862 cattleman John Chisum arrived to raise beef for Confederate troops, and the county formally organized in 1864.
Colonel James E. McCord
Coleman, TX
James E. McCord came to Texas from South Carolina in 1853 and made his name surveying the raw frontier, including the ground around Camp Colorado. When the Civil War drained regular defenses, he took charge of the Texas Frontier Regiment, a hard-to-discipline band of frontiersmen, and in 1863 was unanimously elected its colonel. He scrapped the predictable patrol routes that raiders had learned to slip past, favoring surprise scouting expeditions, and his outfit was eventually absorbed into Confederate service as the 46th Texas Cavalry.