Belew Cemetery
Aubrey, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Around 1856, Richard (Dick) Aaron Belew (1820-1900) and Mary Jane Belew (1822-1902), their five children and 39 other families came together by wagon from Tennessee to Denton County. They stopped on a hill in an area later known as the belew schoolhouse settlement, part of the A.G. Stapp survey north of Aubrey. A school soon opened in a log cabin at the site and was later used as a church. The cemetery was located in close proximity to the school. The first piece of land was purchased in October 1880 from Richard Aaron Belew by the citizens of the belew schoolhouse community to be used as a public grave yard. Over 70 red sandstone rocks mark many of the early graves in this original 2.8 acres. By the early 1900s, the Belew Cemetery was established as the main burial ground for the aubrey area. In 1902, a ladies cemetery society was organized by Kate Hodges (1857-1906), Mary L. (Mollie) Henderson (1854-1919), Ola Price (1877-1955), Bettie Catlett (1855-1918), Mary Caddell (1854-1940) and Nora McIntosh (1872-1965) to raise funds for the care of the cemetery. To raise money for additional land, the Ladies Cemetery Society voted to hold a Thanksgiving dinner for the community. For 85 years, this fundraiser was a success and allowed the society, later renamed the Belew Cemetery Association, to purchase additional land in 1903 and for the construction of a house for the Sexton in 1906 and a Pavilion in 1910. Additional land was acquired in 1962 and 1983. The association’s first directors represented rural school districts in the surrounding area. Early settlers, association founders and veterans from the Civil War to the Gulf War are buried here. This historic cemetery continues to honor the area’s heritage and ancestors.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Around 1856 Richard and Mary Jane Belew led their family and 39 other households by wagon from Tennessee to a hilltop north of Aubrey, founding the Belew Schoolhouse settlement. The community bought its first burial ground from Belew in 1880, and more than 70 red-sandstone markers still note its earliest graves. In 1902 a Ladies Cemetery Society formed, and its 85-year run of Thanksgiving dinners funded new land, a sexton's house, and a pavilion; veterans from the Civil War to the Gulf War lie here.
Why it matters
The cemetery — and the women who sustained it for generations — embodies how migrant families from the Upper South built and maintained lasting communities on the North Texas frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1850s, the Upper South was on the move. Families in states like Tennessee, land growing scarce and expensive, looked toward Texas as a place where a household could still acquire acreage and start again. They traveled in groups for safety and mutual help, and they carried their institutions with them — the habits of church, school, and neighborly obligation that turned a patch of open land into a community.
North Texas was the destination for many of them. It offered farmable ground and room to spread out, but almost no ready-made infrastructure. A settlement's schoolhouse, its church, and its burying ground were not amenities that arrived later; they were among the first things people built, often in the very same log structure serving all three purposes by turns.
This marker sits in that world — the frontier of settlement in Denton County, where migrant families were laying down the first permanent institutions of a place that had none.
People & events
Around 1856, Richard (Dick) Aaron Belew and his wife Mary Jane Belew brought their five children and thirty-nine other families by wagon from Tennessee to Denton County. They stopped on a hill north of Aubrey, on land within the A.G. Stapp survey, and there the Belew Schoolhouse settlement took root. A school soon opened in a log cabin, later doubling as a church, and the community's cemetery grew up close beside it.
The burying ground became official in October 1880, when the citizens of the community bought their first parcel — 2.8 acres — from Richard Belew himself. More than seventy red-sandstone rocks still mark the earliest graves there, humble stones that record a generation before formal monuments were common. By the early 1900s this had become the main burial ground for the Aubrey area.
Its survival owed a great deal to a group of women. In 1902 a Ladies Cemetery Society was organized by Kate Hodges, Mary L. (Mollie) Henderson, Ola Price, Bettie Catlett, Mary Caddell, and Nora McIntosh to raise funds for the cemetery's care. To buy more land they held a community Thanksgiving dinner — and that dinner succeeded for eighty-five years, funding additional acreage in 1903, a sexton's house in 1906, and a pavilion in 1910. The group, later the Belew Cemetery Association, kept the grounds going, and further land was added in 1962 and 1983.
Its place in the American story
The Belew Cemetery tells a story that played out across the American frontier but is rarely marked so clearly: how migrant families from the Upper South reassembled entire communities from scratch. The same log cabin that taught children on weekdays and hosted worship on Sundays, and the cemetery just beyond it, show how tightly school, faith, and remembrance were bound together in a new settlement.
It is also a monument to the ordinary, sustained labor of women — the kind of work that seldom makes it into national histories but held countless communities together. An eighty-five-year run of Thanksgiving dinners is not a dramatic event; it is something better, a demonstration of persistence, and it is what actually bought the land and built the pavilion.
The roll of those buried here — early settlers, the founders of the association, and veterans from the Civil War through the Gulf War — turns the ground into a continuous record. One place holds the arc from a wagon train's arrival to service in modern American wars, a local span that quietly touches the whole national story.
If you visit
Look first for the oldest stones. The more than seventy red-sandstone markers scattered through the original acreage are the real treasures here — rough, weathered, and often unlettered, they represent the settlement's first generation and the moment before store-bought monuments arrived.
Walk the ground and notice how it sits on a rise. Settlers chose hilltops for cemeteries for good practical reasons, and standing there gives you a sense of the countryside those Tennessee families first saw. The pavilion and the layout speak to the generations of care that followed; picture the Thanksgiving dinners that funded so much of what you're standing in.
It's a quiet, contemplative stop rather than a busy attraction. Give yourself time to read a few names and dates and to feel the long reach of the place — from a hilltop where wagons stopped in the 1850s to the veterans of much later wars who rest there now.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Richard Aaron Belew
- · Mary Jane Belew
Themes & tags
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