Brummett Cemetery
Bigfoot, Frio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Between Old Laredo Road and Fort Ewell Road, in a locality accessible to the pioneers, this cemetery was in use by 1860, as shown by gravestone of Elijah Ross, aged two. The burial ground was deeded to the public by Mrs. Kizzie Brummett and her son William Brummett on Sept. 21, 1889. Interments have included John T. Brummett (1815-1881), the husband and father to the donors; two Brummett daughters; noted early Texan James Washington Winters (1817-1903), a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto; also many Winters descendants. There are now (1974) about 275 graves. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2006
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Tucked between the old Laredo and Fort Ewell roads, this pioneer burial ground was in use by 1860—its earliest known grave that of two-year-old Elijah Ross—and was formally deeded to the public in 1889 by Kizzie Brummett and her son William. Among its roughly 275 graves lie the family patriarch John T. Brummett and James Washington Winters, a veteran of the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, along with many of his descendants. It is recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery.
Why it matters
The cemetery anchors the memory of the pioneer families who settled the Texas brush country and of a San Jacinto veteran who helped win Texas independence.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By 1860 the brush country of South Texas — the thorny, sun-hammered land between San Antonio and the Rio Grande — was one of the harder frontiers in the young state. Settlement clung to the roads and the creeks. This particular ground lay between two of those lifelines: the old road toward Laredo and the route to Fort Ewell, a short-lived army post established the previous decade out on the Nueces. Roads and forts were what made such country livable, and where they ran, pioneer families followed.
This was cattle-and-mesquite country on the eve of enormous upheaval. The families who settled here faced isolation, drought, and danger, and they did it in the last years before the Civil War would reach even remote Texas. Life was precarious enough that a community's first shared institution was very often its burial ground — a place made necessary by how thin the margin of survival really was.
The presence here of a veteran of the Texas Revolution is a reminder of how compressed this history is. Men who had fought to win Texas its independence in the 1830s were still living, farming, and being laid to rest on this frontier decades later. The Republic was not distant history to these settlers; it was their own lifetimes.
People & events
The oldest evidence of this cemetery is heartbreakingly small: the gravestone of a two-year-old child, showing the ground was already in use by 1860. That single early marker tells you what these pioneer families were up against, and why a burial place came so soon.
For decades the site served informally until it was formally deeded to the public in 1889 by a widow and her son, securing for the community a place that had already held its dead for a generation. Among those buried here is the family patriarch, born in 1815 and died in 1881 — husband and father to the two who gave the land — along with two of his daughters.
The cemetery's most storied resident is a noted early Texan who lived from 1817 to 1903 and had, as a young man, stood among the soldiers at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive fight that won Texas its independence in the spring of 1836. He lived on into the twentieth century, and many of his descendants lie near him. By the 1970s the burial ground held roughly two hundred seventy-five graves, and it is recognized today as a Historic Texas Cemetery.
Its place in the American story
This small cemetery ties a patch of South Texas brush country to one of the pivotal chapters in the American story: the Texas Revolution and the eventual expansion of the United States to the Rio Grande and beyond. The San Jacinto veteran buried here helped secure the independence that would, within a decade, bring Texas into the Union — a step that reshaped the map and the future of the nation.
It is also a testament to the ordinary settlers who did the slow, unglamorous work of populating the frontier. The great events get the headlines, but it was families like these — burying their children, deeding their land, farming ground that gave up its crops grudgingly — who actually held the country once the fighting was over. Their persistence is the real substance of westward expansion.
That the site is now a protected Historic Texas Cemetery reflects an important national instinct: to remember not only the famous but the founders of specific places. A grave here links a two-year-old child, a family patriarch, and a revolutionary soldier in one enduring record of how a community came to be.
If you visit
This is a place to seek out for its quiet, not its spectacle. Set in the open brush country, the cemetery rewards visitors who come slowly and read the stones with care. Look for the oldest markers, and remember that the earliest known grave belongs to a very young child — a sobering measure of frontier life.
Seek out the resting place of the San Jacinto veteran and the cluster of his descendants nearby; standing there, you are only one long human lifetime removed from the founding of the Texas Republic. The gathering of one family's generations in a single small ground is the whole pioneer story in miniature.
The surrounding country still feels remote, which is exactly the point — you are seeing roughly what the settlers saw. Bring water, tread respectfully among older and possibly unmarked graves, and take a moment to appreciate that a community chose to preserve this place rather than let the brush reclaim it.
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
- · John T. Brummett
- · James Washington Winters
- · Kizzie Brummett
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
James Washington Winters
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James Washington Winters fought at San Jacinto in the 1836 revolution that won Texas independence and later joined the Somervell Expedition. A loyal follower of Sam Houston, he refused to sign the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy at Oakville on July 4, 1861, yet served as a captain, provost marshal, and scout in the militia patrolling the country between the Nueces and Rio Grande. He spent eight years in Tuxpan, Mexico, and raised a large family with his wives Piercy Tullos and Elizabeth Wier.
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William A. A. Wallace—known far and wide as "Big Foot"—became a legend of the Texas frontier as a soldier, ranger, and mail rider. Through decades of hard service he helped guard the advancing line of settlement against raids and danger until his death in 1899. His nickname and exploits made him one of the most storied figures of nineteenth-century Texas.
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William Carvin Winters was born in Tennessee in 1809 and came to Texas in 1834, on the eve of its war for independence. He was among the men wounded at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the decisive fight that won the Republic of Texas its freedom. He lived on until 1863, one of the early Anglo settlers whose lives spanned the birth and growth of Texas.
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