Bonin Family Cemetery
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Paul Norval Bonin was born on September 2, 1814 in Fausse Pointe, Iberia Parish, Louisiana to Joseph Baron Bonin and Euphrosine Louise (Borel) Bonin. Norval married Marie Coralie Hayes in Louisiana in 1835, and in 1852, the Bonins moved with several of their children and approximately fifty other French families to North Harris County, Texas. Bonin purchased 1253 acres, including this site, for $1250 in 1857. The Bonin family’s property was located at the heart of the area’s French settlement, and families such as Leleux, Melancon, and Pevateaux were neighbors. A 500-acre parcel was sold to Norval’s son-in-law Leon Leleux in 1859. Those buried here are descendants of Norval and Coralie Bonin and their spouses and in-laws. The earliest known grave marker in the cemetery states that Ofelait Bonin, three-year-old daughter of Joseph Telesphore Bonin and Marie Gertrude (Arceneaux) Bonin, died on September 9, 1865. Norval Bonin died in November 1868 and his wife, Coralie, died in February 1871; both were buried here. After the deaths of Norval and Coralie, the remaining family property passed to the five Bonin sons who survived their parents – Telesphore, Oneziphore, Zepherin, Ernst Adness and Alcide – and each received approximately 150 acres to farm. In 1987, Vernon Roland and Freddie Brill, together with other Bonin descendants, formed the Bonin Cemetery Association to oversee care and preservation of the site. The Bonin family cemetery remains active, and descendants meet each April to remember and honor their ancestors.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1852 Paul Norval Bonin, born in Louisiana in 1814, led his family and some fifty other French families from the bayou country to North Harris County, buying more than 1,200 acres at the heart of what became the area's French settlement. Neighbors bore names like Leleux, Melancon, and Pevateaux, and the earliest grave here marks a Bonin child who died in 1865. After the deaths of Norval and his wife Coralie, the land passed to their surviving sons, and in 1987 descendants formed an association that still gathers each April to honor their ancestors.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the memory of a transplanted French Louisiana community that helped settle frontier Texas and whose descendants still tend its graves generations later.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Paul Norval Bonin
- · Marie Coralie Hayes
- · Leon Leleux
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
McDougle Cemetery
Klein, TX
In 1838 George McDougle brought his family to 100 acres carved from the John House survey, building a home and raising cattle on land his descendants would hold for a full century. This small burying ground reflects the 19th-century Texas custom of interring kin near the homestead; among its graves lie a Texas Ranger, a Civil War veteran who served as a Harris County commissioner, and several generations of the family.
Oklahoma School
Magnolia, TX
Pioneer farm families settled the Oklahoma community in the mid-to-late 1800s, shipping their crops and livestock from the nearby Hufsmith rail station. Valuing education, they built the first one-room school by 1880 with a small donation and family-donated land, using it as both schoolhouse and church. Successive buildings followed, and after students transferred to Tomball and then Magnolia in the 1930s and 1940s, the schoolhouse lived on as a community center and polling place.
Oklahoma Cemetery
Conroe, TX
Local tradition holds that the settlement earned the name 'Oklahoma' when a man who announced he was moving to Oklahoma instead settled near here. George W. Snook and his wife Bonnie set aside the first acre for a burial ground after their young daughter Jessie died in 1894, choosing a spot near a storm-uprooted tree she had last visited. Her uncle John Henry Goodson donated another acre in 1903, and the cemetery has since doubled in size while chronicling the families of this corner of Montgomery County.
Spring Creek County
Tomball, TX
Because the Republic of Texas capped its Congress at 40 members, sixteen new "judicial" counties—Spring Creek among them—were created in 1841 to provide courts and local government without adding congressmen. Established at the petition of 130 residents, Spring Creek County stretched along its namesake creek toward a planned seat named Greenville and elected a full slate of officials in May 1841. The Republic's Supreme Court struck the judicial counties down as unconstitutional in 1842, and the land reverted to Harris and Montgomery counties.