Bethesda Cemetery
Normangee, Leon County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Located on land granted to Thomas Moore (ca. 1805-1848) by the Republic of Texas, this cemetery began in the 1840s as a small family graveyard. Although Thomas Moore's grave is the oldest documented burial, his son, Ed B. Moore, may have been interred here two years earlier. By the 1850s the cemetery had become a community burial ground. Among the graves here are those of seven citizens of the Republic of Texas, as well as veterans of the Civil War, World War I, and World War II.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bethesda Cemetery sits on land granted to Thomas Moore (c. 1805–1848) by the Republic of Texas, where a small family graveyard took root in the 1840s. By the 1850s it had grown into a community burial ground, and today its graves include seven citizens of the Republic of Texas alongside veterans of the Civil War and both World Wars. The cemetery is a quiet record of Leon County's settlement from republic to modern times.
Why it matters
Republic-era cemeteries like Bethesda preserve the earliest layer of Anglo-Texan settlement and the generations of service that followed.
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Related people
- · Thomas Moore
- · Ed B. Moore
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Edward McMillan
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This marker remembers Edward McMillan, an Irish immigrant born in 1814 who joined the fight for Texas independence and stood among the veterans of the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. His wife, Ann Marjorie McQuiston McMillan, was born in Tennessee. Both are commemorated here in Robertson County, where their lives closed in the decades after the Republic gave way to statehood.
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