Bath Cemetery
Huntsville, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Bath Cemetery, near Union Hill Church, was established in the 1870s. The earliest recorded burial is that of William Arnold (d. 1877). The burial ground has served the Bath community, locally called Possum Walk since that time, and area residents and descendants of settlers continue to maintain the property. Bath Cemetery is shaded by trees planted more than 100 years ago, and the community's history can be found in the cemetery's markers inscribed with the names of teachers, veterans, ministers, postmasters, and other early Bath residents. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2002
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in the 1870s near Union Hill Church, Bath Cemetery has served the East Texas community of Bath—locally nicknamed Possum Walk—since its earliest recorded burial, that of William Arnold in 1877. Shaded by trees planted over a century ago, its markers read like a village roster: teachers, veterans, ministers, and postmasters who built and sustained the settlement, tended today by descendants of those first families.
Why it matters
Small community cemeteries like Bath preserve the everyday texture of Reconstruction-era rural Texas, keeping the names and roles of ordinary settlers within reach of their descendants.
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Related people
- · William Arnold
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
East Sandy Community
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In the 1850s the Sandel and Powell families moved from Mississippi to the south bank of East Sandy Creek, establishing a Methodist congregation that worshiped in a small building doubling as a schoolhouse. The adjoining East Sandy Cemetery holds a marked grave from 1861 and, by oral tradition, still-earlier unmarked burials. The school ran until about 1913 before merging with a neighbor, and the cemetery now marks where a scattered rural community once centered its life.
Ebenezer Cemetery
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Pool's Cemetery
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Among the 1850s settlers here were John W. Pool and his wife Joannah, whose son William deeded about two acres in 1885 to the Union Grove Baptist and Methodist churches, which also housed a school. The cemetery began that same year with the burial of a young child, John C. Montgomery, and later gifts of land expanded the grounds. Among those interred are Confederate soldiers Henry E. Williams and John Randolph Stovall, and the Pool's Cemetery Association still maintains the historic graveyard today.
Buck Foster Cemetery
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