Boontown Cemetery
Trinity County, Trinity County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This burial ground was established in the 1880s on property granted to Edward Thomas “Buck” Smith. The cemetery served the Boontown community, which Whitney Alston Boone founded around the Civil War; Boone is among those interred. The earliest marked graves date to 1887, though there may be earlier unmarked burials. Others buried here include early community pioneers and veterans of military conflicts. Southland Paper Mill deeded an acre of land to the property in 1963. Today, descendants of the deceased continue to care for the cemetery, which is the only remaining vestige of the historic Boontown settlement.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded around the time of the Civil War by Whitney Alston Boone, the Boontown community established this burial ground in the 1880s on land granted to Edward Thomas "Buck" Smith. Boone himself lies among the interred, alongside pioneers and veterans of the nation's wars, with the earliest marked graves dating to 1887. A local paper mill deeded an additional acre in 1963, and descendants still maintain the site. Today the cemetery is the last physical trace of the vanished Boontown settlement.
Why it matters
As the sole surviving remnant of a lost rural community, the cemetery is a quiet monument to the countless small settlements that once dotted the American South.
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Related people
- · Whitney Alston Boone
- · Edward Thomas "Buck" Smith
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Thornton Church Community
Groveton, TX
In 1858 James D. Thornton brought his family by wagon train from Mississippi to join friends and relatives already settled in Trinity County. The farming community they built centered on the Thornton Church and School, raised on land Thornton donated. Farming sustained the settlement until its population began to fade after World War II, and many of its pioneers rest in the church cemetery.
Trinity County Seats
Groveton, TX
After Trinity County was organized in 1850, its seat of government wandered restlessly for three decades—from Sumpter, now a ghost town, to Trinity, to Pennington, and finally to Groveton in 1882. Courthouse fires, a theft of district-court records, and shifting population repeatedly forced new elections and moves. The sawmill-and-railroad town of Groveton at last secured the county records, donated square and all, becoming the fourth and final seat.
Holly Cemetery
Lovelady vicinity, TX
Straddling the Houston-Trinity county line, Holly Cemetery grew up around a Primitive Baptist church on land oral tradition credits to William and Harriet Brannen. Its unmarked graves may reach back to 1863, while the earliest dated marker belongs to a Brannen infant who died in 1880. Headstones carry a roll of pioneer family names, and veterans of several wars rest among them.
Pennington Baptist Church
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Eight settlers gathered in 1860 to form the Salem Baptist Church, with Elder R. A. Clifton as first pastor. After Daniel Dailey laid out the town of Pennington in 1866, the congregation bought this land and rebuilt, taking the name Pennington Baptist Church at an 1869 conference. Successive buildings in 1913 and 1955 traced the community's endurance across nearly a century.