Bobbitt Family Cemetery
San Augustine vicinity, San Augustine County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A. T. L. Bobbitt, Sr. (1826-1909), a native of Tennessee, came to Texas from Mississippi and joined the household of his brother, Roderick R. Bobbitt, in 1846. In 1851, A. T. L. married Martha Hobdy (1828-1905), who was born near this site, and they were the parents of nine children. This cemetery began in 1873 with the burial of their son Alfonzo Iza near their home on the family farm. Other family members, including A. T. L. and Martha, are interred in the graveyard, which is one of the few remaining reminders of early 19th-century Anglo settlement in this area. (2001)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A.T.L. Bobbitt, Sr., a Tennessee native, came to Texas from Mississippi in 1846 to join his brother's household and in 1851 married Martha Hobdy, who had been born near this spot. The family cemetery began in 1873 with the burial of their son Alfonzo, and it grew to hold A.T.L., Martha, and other relatives on the old family farm. It stands as one of the few remaining reminders of early Anglo settlement in this part of San Augustine County.
Why it matters
Family burial grounds like the Bobbitts' mark the private homesteads at the root of Texas's mid-19th-century Anglo settlement, before formal towns and public cemeteries took shape.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Bobbitt Family Cemetery takes you back to the very first chapters of Anglo-American life in Texas. San Augustine County lies in the deep East Texas woodlands, along the historic corridor that early settlers used to enter the region — the old road that carried migrants from the United States into what was then a raw and distant frontier. This was the doorway through which much of early Texas settlement arrived.
When A.T.L. Bobbitt, Sr. came to Texas in 1846, the region was just crossing the threshold from the Republic of Texas era into American statehood. Settlement in this part of the country was a matter of individual families staking out farms in the forest, far from the towns and public institutions that would come later.
In that world, the homestead was everything. A family's farm was its economy, its home, and — as this cemetery shows — often its final resting place. There were as yet few formal towns, churches, or public burial grounds in these rural districts, so the land a family cleared and worked became the land in which it buried its own.
People & events
A.T.L. Bobbitt, Sr. (1826–1909) was born in Tennessee and came to Texas by way of Mississippi, arriving in 1846 to join the household of his brother, Roderick R. Bobbitt. He was a young man then, part of the steady stream of Southerners moving west in search of land and a fresh start on the Texas frontier.
In 1851 he married Martha Hobdy (1828–1905), and here the story puts down roots in a very literal sense: Martha had been born near this very site. Together they raised a large family of nine children on the land — a household that was, in the fullest sense, of this place.
The cemetery itself began in 1873 with a parent's hardest duty: the burial of their son, Alfonzo Iza Bobbitt, near the family home on the farm. Over the years that followed, other members of the family joined him, including A.T.L. and Martha themselves. What started as a single grave became the family's permanent resting place, gathered close to the house they had built their lives around.
Its place in the American story
The Bobbitt cemetery embodies the earliest layer of American settlement in Texas — the private homestead era, before towns and public cemeteries organized rural life. The marker calls it one of the few remaining reminders of early 19th-century Anglo settlement in the area, and that scarcity is precisely what gives it weight.
The Bobbitts' path — born in Tennessee, moving through Mississippi, and settling at last in Texas — traces one of the defining migrations of the American 19th century. Hundreds of thousands of families made versions of that same westward journey, chasing land and opportunity toward the frontier. A single family plot like this one puts a human face on that vast movement of people.
And the family burial ground itself is an American institution worth remembering. Before communities had the population and permanence to establish churchyards and municipal cemeteries, families buried their dead at home. These small graveyards on old farmsteads are among the truest markers of where the frontier once was — the physical record of the first families to make a place their own.
If you visit
A family cemetery like this is an intimate thing, quite different from a large public burial ground. Expect something small, rural, and personal — a plot tied to the land of a single family's old homestead in the San Augustine countryside.
Look for the founders' generation: the graves of A.T.L. Bobbitt, Sr. and his wife Martha Hobdy Bobbitt, and the resting place of their son Alfonzo, whose 1873 burial began the cemetery. Reading those dates together, you can almost reconstruct the arc of a frontier family's life — arrival, marriage, children, loss, and the long tenure of a farm passed down through the years.
Standing here, it helps to remember what the marker tells you: this is one of the few tangible reminders left of the very earliest Anglo settlers in this corner of Texas. Treat it as the quiet, private place it is, and let it be a chance to imagine the vanished homestead that once stood nearby — the house, the fields, and the family who chose to keep even their dead close at hand.
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
- · A.T.L. Bobbitt, Sr.
- · Martha Hobdy Bobbitt
- · Roderick R. Bobbitt
- · Alfonzo Iza Bobbitt
Themes & tags
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