Brumley Crossroads Cemetery
Gilmer, Upshur County, Texas
Marker Inscription
BRUMLEY CROSSROADS CEMETERY LOCATED NEAR THE CHEROKEE TRACE AND THE JEFFERSON-QUITMAN ROAD, THIS HISTORIC CEMETERY IS THE FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR PIONEER SETTLERS AND LOCAL RESIDENTS. MT. GILEAD PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH ORGANIZED IN 1848 AND FOUNDED THE CEMETERY. THE OLDEST LEGIBLE GRAVESTONE IS THAT OF MUZADO HARRISS, AN INFANT OF ONE OF THE FIRST FAMILIES TO SETTLE HERE. THERE IS EVIDENCE OF EARLIER BURIALS IN THE FORM OF ILLEGIBLE STONE MARKERS. GRAVE MARKERS VARY FROM SANDSTONE, IRON ORE, CONCRETE AND GRANITE. BURIALS INCLUDE VETERANS FROM THE CIVIL WAR, SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR, WWI, WWII, KOREAN WAR AND VIETNAM WAR. BRUMLEY CROSSROADS CEMETERY REPRESENTS A RECORD OF EARLY PIONEER SETTLEMENT IN UPSHUR COUNTY.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Brumley Crossroads Cemetery sits near the old Cherokee Trace and the Jefferson-Quitman Road, routes that carried early settlers into Upshur County. The Mt. Gilead Primitive Baptist Church, organized in 1848, founded the burial ground, whose oldest legible stone marks the infant Muzado Harriss. Weathered fieldstones, ironstone, and later granite markers trace generations of pioneer families and veterans of conflicts from the Civil War through Vietnam.
Why it matters
Founded beside frontier trace roads, the cemetery preserves the physical record of one of Upshur County's earliest settlements and the families who anchored it for over a century.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Muzado Harriss
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Matinburg Cemetery
Pittsburg, TX
Local tradition holds that this cemetery began in 1871 when W. P. Jones buried his wife, Delila, here, meaning only to move her later to an established graveyard — but her grave stayed and became its first. In 1883 O. S. and Jane Bradfield deeded the land to the Fairview Baptist Church. Annual spring cleanups, a tradition since 1909, still draw the descendants of pioneers, lodge members, and veterans from the Civil War through Vietnam who rest here.
Leesburg Cemetery
Leesburg, TX
Established around 1870 on land donated by Dwight Hays Townsend, this graveyard grew into the resting place of a whole rural East Texas community. Its earliest burials are believed to be two children reinterred from the old Leesburg schoolyard, and its oldest marked grave dates to 1870. Generations of pioneers, community leaders, and war veterans lie here, a stone record of the people who built and defended Leesburg.
Captain Henry Stout
Quitman, TX
Henry Stout arrived in Texas from Tennessee in 1818 and lived through nearly every chapter of its early history. He served in the Republic of Texas Army in 1836, captained a Texas Ranger company from 1839 to 1845, and later helped organize Wood County, becoming its first sheriff and a state legislator before serving as a Confederate officer. He is buried in a family cemetery beside this site.
Mattox Cemetery
New Diana, TX
Families from Alabama and Georgia settled this area in the 1850s, and oral tradition holds that enslaved people were among the first buried here, with the earliest recorded grave that of Milla Ann Greer Oliver in 1861. Deeded for a church and cemetery by William and Martha Greer in 1887, the "Old Family Cemetery" holds more than four hundred burials, including veterans of every conflict from the Civil War to Vietnam. A cemetery association formed in 1970 to care for the grounds.