Barker Cemetery
Athens, Henderson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Hester (Stovall) and Armstead R. Barker struggled to buy the lands they worked for their former masters, W. C. Larkin and Nat Coleman. When Mrs. Barker died in 1893, her husband set aside 4 previous acres of land to be used as a cemetery by the settlers of the Gum Creek community and their descendants. Although Hester was the first person to be interred on this land, several earlier graves were relocated from their original sites. John Ellick, originally buried on the Barker farm in 1866, is the oldest of these. During the Depression, Lazarus Barker was forced to offer the four acres for sale. Concerned citizens of the Gum Creek and Lease Springs communities formed the Barker Cemetery Association in August of 1933, and by December Barker deeded the land to the association. Others donated land for a driveway to the road. Cemetery maintenance proved difficult for the farming families of the area, but in 1958 the Barker Cemetery Improvement Club sparked new development. A chain link fence, an organized list of graves, and a brick entrance were all completed by 1985. In 1997, over 300 graves had been counted in Barker Cemetery. Still in use, the site is a monument to the vision of Hester and Armstead Barker. (1997)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Hester and Armstead Barker were formerly enslaved people who struggled to buy the very land they had once worked for others. When Hester died in 1893, Armstead set aside four acres as a cemetery for the Gum Creek community and its descendants. Through hard times—including a forced Depression-era sale that concerned neighbors reversed by forming an association in 1933—the burial ground endured, growing to more than 300 graves and remaining in use today.
Why it matters
This cemetery is a monument to freedpeople who, against long odds, secured land, community, and a dignified resting place for generations after slavery.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Hester Stovall Barker
- · Armstead R. Barker
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Gum Creek School
Athens, TX
After the Civil War, Armstead Barker brought his family to this area and other African American families followed, forming the settlement of Gum Creek. By the mid-1880s their children were learning through the eighth grade in a one-room frame schoolhouse, attending only from October through March so they could work the fields. Shared for decades with Wade's Chapel A.M.E. Church, the school closed in 1939 and its building later burned, but it stands in memory as a foundation of local Black education.
Thomas Boucher Wood Family Cemetery
Athens, TX
Dr. Thomas Boucher Wood earned his medical degree at Louisville in 1849, writing his thesis on pneumonia, and soon came to Henderson County to farm and practice medicine, marrying Susan Amanda Pinson in 1850. Their family cemetery began in 1851 with a stillborn daughter and filled steadily with children lost to the harsh conditions of pioneer life—and, cruelly, both the doctor and a grown son died of the very pneumonia he had studied. Enslaved people held by the family are believed buried just outside the plot; descendants restored the site in the late 1990s.
Richard Columbus Fisher
Athens, TX
Born in Falls County in 1888, Richard Columbus Fisher trained as a teacher at Prairie View and in 1914 joined the Blackshear Colored School in Athens. Over nearly two decades he built it from a seven-grade school into an accredited twelve-grade high school, and in 1932 the community moved into a new brick building and named it Fisher High School in his honor—the same year he died.
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.