Brazos Bottom Baptist Church Cemetery
Snook, Burleson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Also known as the Old Tunis Cemetery, this burial ground originally served a pioneer area of the fertile Brazos valley. Graves date from the 1840s, and John and Sarah Wright Echols formally set aside land in 1867 for this graveyard and a Baptist Church, which disbanded in 1883. The headstones preserve the names of farmers, veterans, families and pioneers, including Judge John Gregg (1798-1848), a Texas War for Independence veteran, planter and Milam County justice. A cemetery association maintains the site, preserving the rich history of the valley. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2000
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Also called the Old Tunis Cemetery, this burial ground served pioneers of the fertile Brazos valley, with graves reaching back to the 1840s. John and Sarah Wright Echols formally set aside the land in 1867 for a graveyard and a Baptist church that later disbanded. Among those resting here is Judge John Gregg, a veteran of the Texas War for Independence, planter, and Milam County justice.
Why it matters
It safeguards the names of the settlers and independence-era veterans who first turned the Brazos bottomlands into farms and communities.
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Related people
- · John Gregg
- · John Echols
- · Sarah Wright Echols
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Providence Baptist Church
Caldwell, TX
Providence Baptist Church was organized in 1841 in the Republic of Texas, gathering Brazos-bottom planters and their households — including enslaved people — a few times a year until a pastor could be called. By 1875 it was among the most influential churches in the area, famed for its weeks-long brush-arbor revival meetings.
Fort Oldham
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Fort Oldham was raised in 1836–37 by pioneers who sheltered with William Oldham, an infantry major in the Texas War for Independence. In seasons of Native raids dozens lived within its walls, and by 1838 it had a post office and stood on the Independence–Tenoxtitlan Road; Oldham himself later rode with the Somervell and Mier Expeditions, was captured by Mexican forces, and escaped to make his way home.
Giesenschlag Cemetery
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Prussian-born Johann Joachim Giesenschlag brought his wife Anna and their children to Texas in 1855, settling first in Washington County before moving to Burleson County in the 1870s, where they bought more than a thousand acres. Giesenschlag set aside this tract as a family cemetery and was the first laid to rest here; in 1883 his family deeded the ground to a nearby Evangelical Lutheran church. For years a schoolhouse stood on adjoining Giesenschlag land beside this pioneer burial ground.
Near Homesite of Judge Andrew S. Broaddus
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Andrew S. Broaddus was already a Virginia legislator when, in 1854, he led a mile-long wagon train of some 200 people west to the Texas frontier, where the newcomers raised Salem Baptist Church as a piece of the home they'd left behind. A restless public man, he debated Sam Houston at a nearby campground, sat in the 1861 Secession Convention and several sessions of the Texas Legislature, and helped choose the site for what became Texas A&M. He closed his life as a district judge, father of thirteen, on the land near this spot.