Balis Edens Cemetery
Grapeland, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Balis Edens was born in 1805 in South Carolina, the son of John Edens and his wife Lavinia Langford. The family moved to Texas in 1831, and in 1834 John Edens received a league and labor of land in the David G. Burnet colony. Balis Edens had remained in Louisiana, but followed his family to Texas in 1838. In 1839, he joined Captain James Cleveland's company of mounted rangers and later returned home where he farmed and built and repaired cotton gins. He married Elizabeth Thompson Grigsby in 1842; she died in 1843. Edens then married Ruth Ann Grigsby. When John Edens died in 1857, Balis Edens inherited land on Elkhardt Creek in Houston County and moved there with his family. The Balis Edens Cemetery was established on the land with the burial of Balis and Ruth Ann Edens' son, Isaac Newton Edens, in 1873. Later that year Balis Edens died and was buried in the cemetery. Also interred there are Vivian Edens, 1875; Luvinia Edens Beazley, 1876; John M. Edens, 1877; Sarah Matthews Edens, 1878; Rebecca Matthews Edens, 1882. The last recorded burial was that of Ruth Ann Grigsby Edens in 1884. The site is maintained by members of the Edens Family Association. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Balis Edens, born in South Carolina in 1805, followed his family to Texas in 1838 and served in 1839 with a company of mounted rangers before settling to farm and build cotton gins. He eventually inherited land on Elkhardt Creek in Houston County, where the family cemetery was begun in 1873 with the burial of his son. Edens himself was laid there later that year, joined over the next decade by a dozen kin, the last in 1884.
Why it matters
Family burial grounds like this one preserve the intimate genealogy of frontier settlement, tracing how one pioneer household put down roots and endured across the generations that built rural Texas.
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Related people
- · Balis Edens
- · Ruth Ann Grigsby Edens
- · John Edens
Themes & tags
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