Board Branch Cemetery
Llano, Llano County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This graveyard developed as a public burial ground for the Lone Grove community and surrounding area on the property of W. A. and Sallie Templeton. According to oral history, the earliest grave on this site may be that of William Kinderly, reportedly killed by Indians in 1864. The earliest documented grave is that of Susan Reed (d. 1886), the wife of John S. Reed. There are more than eighty graves dating from 1900 or before. The cemetery is called Board Branch for a mill operation once located on nearby Board Branch Creek. Among the graves of interest on this site are those of Confederate veterans such as Dr. Cyrus Reeves, an Army surgeon from Alabama, and eight others. Veterans of World War I, World War II, and other wars and conflicts are interred here, as well. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This burial ground served the Lone Grove community on land owned by W.A. and Sallie Templeton, taking its name from a mill once on nearby Board Branch Creek. Oral history holds that its earliest grave belongs to a settler reportedly killed in 1864, and more than eighty burials predate 1900. Among those resting here are Confederate veterans, including an Army surgeon, alongside veterans of the World Wars and other conflicts.
Why it matters
A community cemetery like this preserves the layered military and settlement history of the Texas frontier, from Civil War service through the twentieth century's wars.
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Related people
- · Cyrus Reeves
- · William Kinderly
- · Susan Reed
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Packsaddle Mountain
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On August 4, 1873, atop Packsaddle Mountain a few miles east of here, Captain J. R. Moss led a small party of settlers — among them his kinsmen and neighbors — against a band of Native fighters said to outnumber them three to one. The settlers prevailed in what the marker records as the last Indian battle in this region. The fight closed a long era of frontier conflict in the Texas Hill Country.
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Chew Cemetery
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George Oliver Chew, born in West Virginia in 1832, came to Texas as a boy and settled in western Llano County in 1883, buying 320 acres where a family cemetery soon took shape around the graves of two young grandchildren. The Chews built a life on the land, running a school and later a cotton gin, and though they sold the property in 1927, the one-acre cemetery was later donated back. More than forty graves lie here, including both a Confederate and a Union soldier.
Charles Haynes
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