HistoricSiteMarkers
Early RepublicCivil War

Benjamin Burke

Trinity County, Trinity County, Texas

Marker Inscription

(1793-1863) Pioneer farmer Benjamin Burke migrated to Texas about 1829 and received an 1834 land grant from the Mexican government in what is now Tyler County. He served in the Texas Army during the war for independence. About 1859 he moved to the Centralia Community in Trinity County. He married Susan (Ogden) Burke (1808-1890) and had nine children. Two of his sons fought in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Benjamin Burke came to Texas around 1829 and secured an 1834 land grant from the Mexican government, then took up arms with the Texas Army in the fight for independence. He later settled with his large family in Trinity County, where two of his sons went on to serve in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

Why it matters

Burke's life spans the defining chapters of early Texas — Mexican colonization, the revolution for independence, and the Civil War — in the story of one pioneer family.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · Benjamin Burke
  • · Susan Ogden Burke

Related events

  • · Texas Revolution

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionFrontier HistoryMonument

Nearby & related markers

North Cedar Community

Groveton vicinity, TX

North Cedar Community took root in 1856 as pioneers like Abner Womack and the Burke family carved farms from the East Texas woods—some reportedly sleeping in tree houses for fear of animals while their cabins were built by enslaved laborers. After the Civil War it became a small enclave of Confederate supporters, many fleeing the ruined states of the Deep South, and slowly gained a church, a cemetery, and Womack School. Lumber companies, then the Civilian Conservation Corps, shaped its later years, but by the twenty-first century only a few scattered houses remained.

Calvary Cemetery

Trinity County, TX

After the Civil War, Alexander and Jane Smith brought their family from Alabama to settle the Nogalus Prairie community, and this ground became its burial place—by family tradition, first opened to bury a son, Nathan, who had been murdered, though grave dates from 1875 hint at even earlier interments. Over the following century, churches, families, and associations expanded and cared for the cemetery, which by 1992 held more than 380 graves, among them veterans of the Civil War, both World Wars, and Korea.

Prairie View United Methodist Church

Trinity County, TX

On the Nogalus Prairie, early Methodist families began gathering for worship in the 1880s, raising their first sanctuary in 1883 on land whose owner reserved two acres for the church. Baptists shared the site, and the two congregations built brush arbors for revivals, baptized in nearby creeks, and spread Sunday lunches beneath the pines. Members later donated cows to be sold for lumber to build anew, and the congregation raised its present church in the 1950s.

Stubblefield Church

Kennard, TX

Civil War veteran Wyatt M. Stubblefield bought land here in 1872, and the community took his name. Around the same time the New Ivie Missionary Baptist Church—rooted in the older Ivie Board congregation—began meeting in the local schoolhouse before building its own sanctuary, which twice burned before a third rose in 1926. Through Depression-era hardship, members grew cotton and saved butter-and-egg money to fund their preacher and missions, and though regular services ended in the 1950s, descendants still gather each May for the Stubblefield homecoming.